In the eyes of the Church her dress was a crime and she abandoned it; but a renewed affront forced her to resume the one safeguard left her, and the return to it was treated as a relapse into heresy which doomed her to death.

At the close of May, 1431, a great pile was raised in the market-place of Rouen where her statue stands now.

Even the brutal soldiers who snatched the hated "witch" from the hands of the clergy and hurried her to her doom were hushed as she reached the stake.

One indeed passed to her a rough cross he had made from a stick he held, and she clasped it to her bosom.

As her eyes ranged over the city from the lofty scaffold she was heard to murmur, "O Rouen, Rouen, I have great fear lest you suffer for my death." "Yes! my voices were of God!" she suddenly cried as the last moment came; "they have never deceived me!" Soon the flames reached her, the girl's head sank on her breast, there was one cry of "Jesus!"-- "We are lost," an English soldier muttered as the crowd broke up; "we have burned a Saint." [Sidenote: Death of Bedford] The English cause was indeed irretrievably lost.