was really acting, not the Church. The Church was being used as a blind,
a disguise; and for a forcible reason: the Church was not only able to
take the life of Joan of Arc, but to blight her influence and the
valor-breeding inspiration of her name, whereas the English power could
but kill her body; that would not diminish or destroy the influence of
her name; it would magnify it and make it permanent. Joan of Arc was the
only power in France that the English did not despise, the only power in
France that they considered formidable. If the Church could be brought to
take her life, or to proclaim her an idolater, a heretic, a witch, sent
from Satan, not from heaven, it was believed that the English supremacy
could be at once reinstated.

The Duke of Burgundy listened--but waited. He could not doubt that the
French King or the French people would come forward presently and pay a
higher price than the English. He kept Joan a close prisoner in a strong
fortress, and continued to wait, week after week. He was a French prince,
and was at heart ashamed to sell her to the English. Yet with all his
waiting no offer came to him from the French side.

One day Joan played a cunning truck on her jailer, and not only slipped
out of her prison, but locked him up in it. But as she fled away she was
seen by a sentinel, and was caught and brought back.

Then she was sent to Beaurevoir, a stronger castle. This was early in
August, and she had been in captivity more than two months now. Here she
was shut up in the top of a tower which was sixty feet high. She ate her
heart there for another long stretch--about three months and a half. And
she was aware, all these weary five months of captivity, that the
English, under cover of the Church, were dickering for her as one would
dicker for a horse or a slave, and that France was silent, the King