Autobiography of Mark Twain (43 page)

2. Finally Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, paid the
_^
blood-
_^
money and bought Joan
ostensibly for the Church
to be tried for wearing male attire and for other impieties, but
really
_^
in reality
_^
for the English, the enemy into whose hands the poor girl was so piteously anxious
not
_^
never
_^
to fall. She was now shut up in the dungeons of the Castle of Rouen and kept in an iron cage, with her hands
and
feet and neck
_^
both
_^
chained to a
_^
wooden block and
_^
pillar
; and f
rom that time forth during all the months of her imprisonment
till
_^
until
_^
the end, several rough English soldiers stood guard over her night and day
—
and
not outside her room but in it. It was a dreary and hideous captivity, but it did not conquer her: nothing
could break that invincible spirit.
From first to last s
he was a prisoner
_^
for the whole
_^
year;
and she spent
the last three months of
it
_^
which she passed
_^
on trial for her life
before a formidable array of ecclesiastical judges,
and
disputing the ground with them foot by foot and inch by inch with brilliant
generalship
_^
fence
_^
and dauntless pluck. The spectacle of that solitary girl
, forlorn
_^
stands alone in its pathos and
_^
in
_^
its sublimity. Forlorn
_^
and friendless, without advocate or adviser,
and
without
_^
even
_^
the help and guidance of
any
copy of the charges brought against her or rescript of the complex and voluminous
daily
proceedings of the court
to modify
_^
by which to relieve