It was a half fantastic prayer, because, from childhood upwards, visions that she had no power to mistrust, and the voices which sounded in her ear forever, had long since persuaded her mind that for her no such prayer could be granted.
All went wrong from this time. More than one military plan was entered upon which she did not approve. At length she was made prisoner by the Burgundians, and finally surrendered to the English.
Now came her trial. Never from the foundations of the earth was there such a trial as this, if it were laid open in all its beauty of defense, and all its hellishness of attack. Oh, child of France! shepherdess, peasant girl! trodden under foot by all around thee, how I honor thy flashing intellect, quick as God’s lightning, and true as God’s lightning to its mark, that ran before France and laggard Europe by many a century, confounding the malice of the ensnarer, and making dumb the oracles of falsehood!
On the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday in 1431, being then about nineteen years of age, the Maid of Arc underwent her martyrdom. She was conducted before midday, guarded by eight hundred spearmen, to a platform of prodigious height, constructed of wooden billets supported by occasional walls of lath and plaster, and traversed by hollow spaces in every direction for the creation of air currents.
What else, I demand, than mere weight of metal, absolute nobility of deportment, broke the vast line of battle then arrayed against her? What else but her meek, saintly demeanor won, from the enemies that till now had believed her a witch, tears of rapturous admiration? What else was it but her constancy, united with her angelic gentleness, that drove the fanatic English soldier--who had sworn to throw a fagot on her scaffold, as _his_ tribute of abhorrence, that _did_ so, that fulfilled his vow--suddenly to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere that he had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven from the ashes where she had stood?
What else drove the executioner to kneel at every shrine for pardon to his share in the tragedy! And if this were insufficient, then I cite the closing act of her life. The executioner had been directed to apply his torch from below. He did so. The fiery smoke rose in billowing volumes. A Dominican monk was then standing almost at her side. Wrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger, but still persisted in his prayers.