At last the procession came to the Old Market, an open space encumbered with three erections--one reaching up so high that the shadow of it seemed to touch the sky, the horrid stake with wood piled up in an enormous mass, made so high, it is said, in order that the executioner himself might not reach it to give a merciful blow, to secure unconsciousness before the flames could touch the trembling form. Two platforms were raised opposite, one furnished with chairs and benches for Winchester and his court, another for the judges, with the civil officers of Rouen who ought to have pronounced sentence in their turn. Without this form the execution was illegal: what did it matter? No sentence at all was read to her, not even the ecclesiastical one which was illegal also. She was probably placed first on the same platform with her judges, where there was a pulpit from which she was to be _preschée_ for the last time. Of all Jeanne's sufferings this could scarcely be the least, that she was always _preschée_, lectured, addressed, sermonised through every painful step of her career.
The moan was still unsilenced on her lips, and her distracted soul scarcely yet freed from the sick thought of a possible deliverance, when the everlasting strain of admonishment, and re-enumeration of her errors, again penetrated the hum of the crowd. The preacher was Nicolas Midi, one of the eloquent members of that dark fraternity; and his text was in St. Paul's words: "If any of the members suffer, all the other members suffer with it." Jeanne was a rotten branch which had to be cut off from the Church for the good of her own soul, and that the Church might not suffer by her sin; a heretic, a blasphemer, an impostor, giving forth false fables at one time, and making a false penitence the next. It is very unlikely that she heard anything of that flood of invective. At the end of the sermon the preacher bade her "Go in peace." Even then, however, the fountain of abuse did not cease. The Bishop himself rose, and once more by way of exhorting her to a final repentance, heaped ill names upon her helpless head. The narrative shows that the prisoner, now arrived at the last point in her career, paid no attention to the tirade levelled at her from the president's place. "She knelt down on the platform showing great signs and appearance of contrition, so that all those who looked upon her wept. She called on her knees upon the blessed Trinity, the blessed glorious Virgin Mary, and all the blessed saints of Paradise." She called specially--was it with still a return towards the hoped for miracle? was it with the instinctive cry towards an old and faithful friend?--"St. Michael, St. Michael, St. Michael, help!" There would seem to have been a moment in which the hush and silence of a great crowd surrounded this wonderful stage, where was that white figure on her knees, praying, speaking--sometimes to God, sometimes to the saintly unseen companions of her life, sometimes in broken phrases to those about her. She asked the priests, thronging all round, those who had churches, to say a mass for her soul. She asked all whom she might have offended to forgive her. Through her tears and prayers broke again and again the sorrowful cry of "Rouen, Rouen! Is it here truly that I must die?" No reason is given for the special pang that seems to echo in this cry. Jeanne had once planned a campaign in Normandy with Alençon. Had there been perhaps some special hope which made this conclusion all the more bitter, of setting up in the Norman capital her standard and that of her King?