452 * THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. be given up to them. " I would rather die," she cried, in despair, " than be surrendered to the English ! " Then her thoughts recurred to her work unfinished — her coun- try not yet delivered. " Is it possible," she added, " that God will let those good people of Compiegne perish, who have been and are so loyal to their lord ? " Some days of anguish passed. Then she took a desperate resolution. " I could bear it no longer," she afterwards said ; and so, " recommending herself to God and our Lady," she sprang one night from the tower in which she was confined to the ground, a height, as M. Quicherat computes, of between sixty and seventy feet. It was her only chance, and it was a chance, for she was found the next morning lying at the foot of the tower, insensible, indeed, but with no bones broken, and not seriously injured. She soon revived, and in three days was able to walk about. The English claimed their prey, and soon had her safe in the castle of Rouen. Her new masters did not mean that she should escape. They assigned her a room in the first story of the castle, " up eight steps," placed two pair of shackles upon her legs, and chained her night and day to a thick post. It was their policy to degrade as well as to keep her, and they accordingly gave her five guards of the lowest rank, three of whom were to be always in her room, night and day, and two outside. In this woful plight, manacled, chained, watched, but not protected, by soldiers, with only a bed for all furniture, was she held captive for three months, awaiting trial — she who had until recently shone resplen- dent at the head of armies, and to whom mothers had held up their children as she passed through towns, hop- ing to win for them the benediction of her smile. Her room, we are told, had three keys, one of which was kept by the Cardinal of Winchester, one by the Inquisitor, and the other by the manager of the trial ;
