The first time that I heard this Voice, I was very much frightened; it was mid-day, in the summer, in my father's garden. I had not fasted the day before. I heard this Voice to my right, towards the Church; rarely do I hear it without its being accompanied also by a light. This light comes from the same side as the Voice. Generally it is a great light.

I saw them with my bodily eyes as well as I see you; and when they left me, I wept; and I fain would have had them take me with them too.

I got there towards mid-day, and lodged first at an inn. After dinner, I went to the King [then Dauphin], who was at the Castle. When I entered the room where he was I recognized him among many others by the counsel of my Voice, which revealed him to me. I told him that I wished to go and make war on the English.

that when she was at Tours or Chinon she sent for a sword which was in the church of Ste. Catherine de Fierbois, behind the altar; and immediately it was found there all rusted over.

Asked how she knew that this sword was there, she answered that the sword was in the ground, rusted over, and upon it were five crosses; and she knew it was there through her voices, and she had never seen the man who fetched it. She wrote to the clergy of the place asking if it was their pleasure that she should have the sword, and they sent it to her. Nor was it buried deep behind the altar, but she believed she wrote saying it was behind. She added that as soon as the sword was found the priests rubbed it, and the rust fell off at once without effort; a merchant, an armorer of Tours, fetched it. The local priests gave her a scabbard, as did those of Tours also; they made two in all, one of crimson velvet, in French "de velous vermeil", and the other of cloth of gold. She herself had another made of very strong leather.

that she would save Orléans and would compel the English to raise the siege, that she herself in a battle before Orléans would be wounded by a shaft but would not die of it, and that the King, in the course of the coming summer, would be crowned at Reims, together with other things which the King keeps secret.

No words can adequately describe the disgraceful ingratitude and apathy of Charles and his advisers in leaving the Maid to her fate. If military force had not availed, they had prisoners like the Earl of Suffolk in their hands, for whom she could have been exchanged. Joan was sold by John of Luxembourg to the English for a sum which would amount to several hundred thousand dollars in modern money. There can be no doubt that the English, partly because they feared their prisoner with a superstitious terror, partly because they were ashamed of the dread which she inspired, were determined at all costs to take her life. They could not put her to death for having beaten them, but they could get her sentenced as a witch and a heretic.

Moreover, they had a tool ready to their hand in Pierre Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais, an unscrupulous and ambitious man who was the creature of the Burgundian party. A pretext for invoking his authority was found in the fact that Compiègne, where Joan was captured, lay in the Diocese of Beauvais. Still, as Beauvais was in the hands of the French, the trial took place at Rouen — the latter see being at that time vacant. This raised many points of technical legality which were summarily settled by the parties interested.

The Vicar of the Inquisition at first, upon some scruple of jurisdiction, refused to attend, but this difficulty was overcome before the trial ended. Throughout the trial Cauchon's assessors consisted almost entirely of Frenchmen, for the most part theologians and doctors of the University of Paris. Preliminary meetings of the court took place in January, but it was only on 21 February, 1431, that Joan appeared for the first time before her judges. She was not allowed an advocate, and, though accused in an ecclesiastical court, she was throughout illegally confined in the Castle of Rouen, a secular prison, where she was guarded by dissolute English soldiers. Joan bitterly complained of this. She asked to be in the church prison, where she would have had female attendants. It was undoubtedly for the better protection of her modesty under such conditions that she persisted in retaining her male attire. Before she had been handed over to the English, she had attempted to escape by desperately throwing herself from the window of the tower of Beaurevoir, an act of seeming presumption for which she was much browbeaten by her judges. This also served as a pretext for the harshness shown regarding her confinement at Rouen, where she was at first kept in an iron cage, chained by the neck, hands, and feet. On the other hand she was allowed no spiritual privileges — e.g. attendance at Mass — on account of the charge of heresy and the monstrous dress (difformitate habitus) she was wearing.

As regards the official record of the trial, which, so far as the Latin version goes, seems to be preserved entire, we may probably trust its accuracy in all that relates to the questions asked and the answers returned by the prisoner. These answers are in every way favourable to Joan. Her simplicity, piety, and good sense appear at every turn, despite the attempts of the judges to confuse her. They pressed her regarding her visions, but upon many points she refused to answer. Her attitude was always fearless, and, upon 1 March, Joan boldly announced that "within seven years' space the English would have to forfeit a bigger prize than Orléans." In point of fact Paris was lost to Henry VI on 12 November, 1437 — six years and eight months afterwards.

She consented to sign some sort of retraction, but what the precise terms of that retraction were will never be known. In the official record of the process a form of retraction is in inserted which is most humiliating in every particular. It is a long document which would have taken half an hour to read. What was read aloud to Joan and was signed by her must have been something quite different, for five witnesses at the rehabilitation trial, including Jean Massieu, the official who had himself read it aloud, declared that it was only a matter of a few lines.

revision of her trial, the procès de réhabilitation, was opened at Paris with the consent of the Holy See. The popular feeling was then very different, and, with but the rarest exceptions, all the witnesses were eager to render their tribute to the virtues and supernatural gifts of the Maid. The first trial had been conducted without reference to the pope; indeed it was carried out in defiance of St. Joan's appeal to the head of the Church. Now an appellate court constituted by the pope, after long inquiry and examination of witnesses, reversed and annulled the sentence pronounced by a local tribunal under Cauchon's presidency. The illegality of the former proceedings was made clear, and it speaks well for the sincerity of this new inquiry that it could not be made without inflicting some degree of reproach upon both the King of France and the Church at large, seeing that so great an injustice had been done and had so long been suffered to continue unredressed.

Quiche Lorraine

One 9-inch deep-dish pie crust (you can "cheat" and get store-bought unbaked crust. Thaw before using.)
8 oz thick-cut bacon (about 6 slices), diced
1/2 cup chopped shallots, from 2 medium shallots
4 large eggs
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Pinch ground nutmeg
4 oz Gruyère cheese, finely shredded (about 1 1/4 cups)

Heat your oven to 400^oF. Put the crust in a deep 9" pie tin. Prick the crust all over with a fork, put the tin on top of a baking sheet, and bake for about 10 minutes until golden. If it puffs up while baking, prick it again (you can also try baking it with another pie tin sitting on top so it presses down on the dough). Keep the pie tin on the baking sheet.

Turn the oven down to 325^oF.

In a frying pan, cook the bacon until crisp. Remove from pan and drain. Remove all but about a tablespoon of bacon grease from the pan, and then add the shallots, cooking over medium heat until they're transluscent but not brown. Then remove them from the pan as well and set aside.

In a bowl, beat the eggs, then add in the heavy cream, salt, cayenne pepper, and nutmeg.

Spread the shallots over the bottom of the crust. Top with half of the bacon, all of the Gruyère, and then the rest of the bacon. Pour the egg/cream mixture over top. Slide the baking sheet into the oven and bake at 325^oF for about 45 to 50 minutes. Serve hot or cold, preferably with a green salad, roasted vegetables, crusty bread, and a nice Gewürztraminer. Follow up with fruit or with the classic chocolate mousse:


Mousse au Chocolat

6 eggs, at room temperature, separated
2/3 cup heavy cream, cold
9 TBSP powdered sugar
2 pinches of salt
8.8 oz good quality dark chocolate
0.6 oz butter
9 oz or so of raspberries

In a chilled large bowl, whip cream with powdered sugar until soft peaks form.

In a separate bowl, beat egg whites with salt til stiff peaks form.

Break the chocolate into small pieces in a medium bowl and melt add to the butter, which you have already melted in a double boiler at a low simmer. Stir occasionally 'til the chocolate is melted. Once the chocolate is almost melted (with small lumps left), mix with a large rubber spatula, pour into another bowl, and continue to stir while cooling. Add the room temperature egg yolks one by one to the melted chocolate while mixing.

Stir the whipped cream in the chocolate/egg yolks mixture.

Gently fold egg whites into the above (don't stir! Fold!).

Arrange half of the raspberries at the bottom of six serving glasses and divide the mousse between them. Cover glasses with plastic film and refrigerate for at least two hours, preferably overnight. Top with remaining raspberries to make it pretty.