THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. 473 had heard the people of Compiegne were to he put to the sword, even to children seven years of age, and that she preferred to die rather than to survive such a massacre of good people. " That," she added, " was one of the reasons. The other was, I knew I had been sold to the English, and I held it better to die than fall into the hands of my adversaries." On another occasion she declared that she had not sprung from the tower in despair, but in the hope of escaping, and of going to the succor of the brave men who were in peril. She owned, however, that it was a rash and wrong action, of which she had repented. As she often expressed a desire to hear mass, they asked her one day which she would pre- fer, to put on a woman's dress and hear mass, or retain her man's clothes and not hear it. Her answer was, " First assure me that I shall hear mass if I put on woman's clothes, and then I will answer you." " Yery well," said the questioner, " I engage that you shall hear mass if you will put on a woman's dress." She replied that she would wear a woman's dress to mass, but that on her return she should resume her man's clothes. They asked her finally, and the trial turned upon this point, if she was willing to submit all her word-s and deeds to the judgment of the holy mother Church. " The Church ! " she exclaimed. " I love it, and desire <to sustain it with my whole power, for the sake of our Christian faith. It is not I who should be hindered from going to church and hearing mass." But she would not answer this decisive question in a way to increase her chances of escape. As to what she had done for her king and country, she said she submitted it all to God, who had sent her, and then she wandered into a prediction that the French were on the eve of a great victory. The priest repeated his question, but she only replied that she
