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JEAN DE METZ, squire, one of the men who accompanied her to Chinon to see the Dauphin (later Charles VII): "I said to her, 'What are you doing here, my dear?' . . . and the Maid answered me: 'Before mid-Lent I must be with the King, even if I have to wear my legs down to the knees. For there is no one on earth, be he king or duke or the King of Scotland's daughter or anyone else, who can restore the kingdom of France, and he will have no help except through me.' "
SÉGUIN SÉGUIN, Dominican friar and theologian: "I asked her what tongue her voice spoke, and she answered, 'A better tongue than you do.' And I asked her again whether she believed in God. She answered, 'Yes, more than you do.' "
SIMON BEAUCROIX, squire, one of her companions at arms: "She would never allow immoral women to come to the army and join the soldiers . . . She drove them away unless the soldiers were willing to take them for their wives."
THIBAULT D'ARMAGNAC, knight: "In disposing an army for battle and haranguing the soldiers, she behaved like the most experienced captain in all the world."
JEAN, COUNT OF DUNOIS, Bastard of Orleans: "When we were in her company, we had no wish or desire to approach or have intercourse with women. That seems to me to be almost a miracle."
HAIMOND DE MACY, knight: "I tried several times playfully to touch her breasts . . . She pushed me off with all her might. She was indeed a modest woman."
ISAMBART DE LA PIERRE, Dominican friar: "The executioner . . . said to me that he greatly feared he was damned, for he had burnt a saint."
The Verdict. The tribunal, six years after the first testimony was taken, accomplished what it had set out to do: it formally found that Joan of Arc had been wrongfully condemned. And the record noted with satisfaction the evil fate that had befallen three of the chief figures in her trial: Bishop Cauchon died suddenly while a barber was trimming his beard, Canon Jean d'Estivet, the "promoter," i.e., prosecutor, disappeared mysteriously and his body was discovered in a gutter, and their right-hand man, Nicolas Midy, was stricken with leprosy.
Yet, while the tribunal cleared Joan of the charges of heresy and diabolic inspiration, it could not erase the fact that she was a devilish nuisance. She patronized kings and she lectured bishops. She set her private visions above the judgment of ecclesiastics. The record suggests that, very likely, even without English pressure and unjust judges, the fire would have been her inevitable end. For, unfortunately, saints have a way of being insufferable until they are good and dead.