But the simple shrewdness of the peasant girl foiled the efforts of her judges.

"Do you believe," they asked, "that you are in a state of grace ?" "If I am not," she replied, "God will put me in it.

If I am, God will keep me in it." Her capture, they argued, showed that God had forsaken her.

"Since it has pleased God that I should be taken," she answered meekly, "it is for the best." "Will you submit," they demanded at last, "to the judgement of the Church Militant ?" "I have come to the King of France," Jeanne replied, "by commission from God and from the Church Triumphant above: to that Church I submit." "I had far rather die," she ended passionately, "than renounce what I have done by my Lord's command." They deprived her of mass.

"Our Lord can make me hear it without your aid," she said, weeping.