She was asked if she still thought and believed that it was not her duty to submit her deeds and words to the Church militant, or to any other except God, upon which she replied, "What I have always said and held to during the trial, I maintain to this moment"; and added that if she were in judgment and saw the fire lighted, the faggots burning, and the executioner ready to rake the fire, and she herself within the fire, she could say nothing else, but would sustain what she had said in her trial, to death.
Once more the scribe has written on his margin the words _Responsio Johannæ superba_--the proud answer of Jeanne. Her raised head, her expanded breast, something of a splendour of indignation about her, must have moved the man, thus for the third time to send down to us his distinctly human impression of the worn out prisoner before her judges. "And immediately the promoter and she refusing to say more, the cause was concluded," says the record, so formal, sustained within such purely abstract limits, yet here and there with a sort of throb and reverberation of the mortal encounter. From the lips of the Inquisitor too all words seemed to have been taken. It is as when amid the excited crowd in the Temple the officers of the Pharisees approaching to lay hands on a greater than Jeanne, fell back, not knowing why, and could not do their office. This man was silenced also. Two bishops were present, and one a great man full of patronage; but not for the richest living in Normandy could Peter Morice find any more to say.
These are in one sense the words of Jeanne; the last we have from her in her prison, the last of her consistent and unbroken life. After, there was a deeper horror to go through, a moment when all her forces failed. Here on the verge of eternity she stands heroic and unyielding, brave, calm, and steadfast as at the outset of her career, the Maid of France. Were the fires lighted and the faggots burning, and she herself within the fire, she had no other word to say.
(1) It is correct in French to use the second person plural in addressing God, _thou_ being a more intimate and less respectful form of speech. Such a difference is difficult to remember, and troubles the ear. The French, even those who ought to know better, sometimes speak of it as a supreme profanity on the part of the profane English, that they address God as _thou_.