478 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. been prepared beforehand in view of her possible abjura- tion. This document, after recounting her errors and her submission, relieved her from excommunication, and urged her to a true repentance ; but it ended with a few words of crushing import to such a spirit : " Since you have rashly sinned against God and holy Church, finally, definitively, we condemn you to perpetual imprisonment, with the bread of grief and the water of anguish, to the end that you may mourn your faults and commit no more." Then she was conveyed to the castle. That afternoon, in the presence of six or seven ecclesiastics, after exhortation, she took off her man's dress with apparent willingness, and put on that of a woman. She also allowed some locks of hair, which she had worn hitherto in the fashion of men, to be cut off and taken away. And thus, on that Thursday afternoon, May 24th, exactly one year after her capture, in the sixth month of her confinement in the castle, and fourth of her public trial, she found herself still in prison, chained as before, guarded as before by men, and deprived of the one solace that captives know — hope. She had saved her life, but not regained her darling liberty. She was not in the field. She was a captive, shorn, despoiled, degraded, hopeless, lacerated by fetters, and weighed down by heavy chains, with men always in her cell, and liable every hour to the taunts of hostile and contemptuous visitors. She bore it Friday, Saturday, Sunday. When she rose on Monday morning, she put on her man's dress. The bishop and several other members of the court arrived but too soon ; for this was welcome news to the English party. They asked her why she had resumed that dress. " Because," said she, " being with men, it is more decent. I have resumed it, too, because you have not kept your promises that I should hear mass, and receive my Saviour,
