One or two particulars may still be added to make the background at least more clear.The prison of Jeanne,as we have seen,was not left in the usual silence of such a place;the constant noise with which the English troopers filled the air,jesting,gossiping,and carrying on their noisy conversation,if nothing worse and more offensive--sometimes,as Jeanne complains,preventing her from hearing (her sole solace)the soft voices of her saintly visitors--was not her only disturbance.Her solitude was broken by curious and inquisitive visitors of various kinds.L'Oyseleur,the abominable detective,who professed to be her countryman and who beguiled her into talk of her childhood and native place,was the first of these;and it is possible that at first his presence was a pleasure to her.One other visitor of whom we hear accidentally,a citizen of Rouen,Pierre Casquel,seems to have got in private interest and with a more or less good motive and no evil meaning.He warned her to answer with prudence the questions put to her,since it was a matter of life and death.She seemed to him to be "very simple"and still to believe that she might be ransomed.Earl Warwick,the commander of the town,appears on various occasions.He probably had his headquarters in the Castle,and thus heard her cry for help in her danger,executing,let us hope,summary vengeance on her brutal assailant;but he also evidently took advantage of his power to show his interesting prisoner to his friends on occasion.And it was he who took her original captor,Jean de Luxembourg,now Comte de Ligny,by whom she had been given up,to see her,along with an English lord,sometimes named as Lord Sheffield.
The Belgian who had put so many good crowns in his pocket for her ransom,thought it good taste to enter with a jesting suggestion that he had come to buy her back.
"Jeanne,I will have you ransomed if you will promise never to bear arms against us again,"he said.The Maid was not deceived by this mocking suggestion."It is well for you to jest,"she said,"but Iknow you have no such power.I know that the English will kill me,believing,after I am dead,that they will be able to win all the kingdom of France:but if there were a hundred thousand more Goddens than there are,they shall never win the kingdom of France."The English lord drew his dagger to strike the helpless girl,all the stories say,but was prevented by Warwick.Warwick,however,we are told,though he had thus saved her twice,"recovered his barbarous instincts"as soon as he got outside,and indignantly lamented the possibility of Jeanne's escape from the stake.
Such incidents as these alone lightened or darkened her weary days in prison.A traitor or spy,a prophet of evil shaking his head over her danger,a contemptuous party of jeering nobles;afterwards inquisitors,for ever repeating in private their tedious questions:these all visited her--but never a friend.Jeanne was not afraid of the English lord's dagger,or of the watchful eye of Warwick over her.
Even when spying through a hole,if the English earl and knight,indeed permitted himself that strange indulgence,his presence and inspection must have been almost the only defence of the prisoner.Our historians all quote,with an admiration almost as misplaced as their horror of Warwick's "barbarous instincts,"the /vrai galant homme/of an Englishman who in the midst of the trial cried out "/Brave femme/!"(it is difficult to translate the words,for /brave/means more than brave)--"why was she not English?"However we are not concerned to defend the English share of the crime.The worst feature of all is that she never seems to have been visited by any one favourable and friendly to her,except afterwards,the two or three pitying priests whose hearts were touched by her great sufferings,though they remained among her judges,and gave sentence against her.No woman seems ever to have entered that dreadful prison except those "matrons"who came officially as has been already said.The ladies de Ligny had cheered her in her first confinement,the kind women of Abbeville had not been shut out even from the gloomy fortress of Le Crotoy.But here no woman ever seems to have been permitted to enter,a fact which must either be taken to prove the hostility of the population,or the very vigorous regulations of the prison.Perhaps the barbarous watch set upon her,the soldiers ever present,may have been a reason for the absence of any female visitor.At all events it is a very distinct fact that during the whole period of her trial,five months of misery,except on the one occasion already referred to,no woman came to console the unfortunate Maid.She had never before during all her vicissitudes been without their constant ministrations.
