In the midst of all these machinations the prisoner herself fell ill. Doctors were hurried to her cell to save her for the vengeance of her judges, and the "processes of law" were pushed forward more hastily than ever. On the 2nd of May she was once more confronted with the accusations made against her, in a long speech by the Archdeacon. She would add nothing to what had been already said. "Even if I saw the flames before me I should say what I have already told you, and do what I have done;" and the clerk writes "Superba Responsio" opposite the entry.
Determined to leave no means untried to overcome this resistance, her judges summoned her on Wednesday the 9th of May into the "Grosse Tour du château de Rouen," the donjon which you can visit in the Rouen of to-day, by turning to the left as you go northward up the Rue Bouvreuil (see Map D). The room in which Jeanne stood to answer her accusers has been carefully restored, but it is obscured by the huge plaster cast of a statue by Mercié. The vaulting is the original work intact, and on the keystone is carved the oldest existing shield of the arms of France, the six truncated Fleurs de Lys of Philip Augustus, which are reproduced more clearly on the huge and lofty cowl above the chimney. Beneath the floor there is still the old well that supplied the garrison, a little to the left of the entrance, and rather further round is the small spiral staircase leading to the upper rooms, which are not so large.
She was brought here because there was no room in her former prison for the instruments of torture, and the executioners' gear with which her courage was finally to be tested. Pierre Cauchon directed the proceedings, with Lemaître and nine others, of whom three were members of the Chapterhouse of Rouen, and one was Massieu the clerk. Besides these, the ushers and the guard of English soldiers lined the walls. Here it is recorded how she was threatened with torture "if she did not avow the truth," and shown the instruments and the officials who were ready to administer it. I will not attempt to translate the few words Jeanne d'Arc ever uttered whose echoes we may still imagine beneath the very roof that heard them. There is hardly a single other[52] place of which the same thing can be said.