Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/393

 JOAN OF ARC. 377 asleep and was told on waking that the apparition had shown itself during her slumber. Then she took a precautionary sleep during the day, and lay awake all night without seeing the white lady. Catharine was probably an impostor rather than an enthu- siast, and seems to have escaped the Inquisition.* During Joan's imprisonment her place for a time was taken by a peasant, variously known as Pastourel or Guillaume le Berger, who professed to have had divine revelations ordering him to take up arms in aid of the royal cause. He demonstrated the truth of his mission by exhibiting stigmata on hands, side, and feet, like St. Francis, and commanded wide belief. Pothon de Xaintrailles, Joan's old companion-in-arms, placed confidence in him and car- ried him along in his adventurous forays. Guillaume's career, however, was short. He accompanied an expedition into Nor- mandy under the lead of the Marechal de Boussac and Pothon, which was surprised and scattered by Warwick. Pothon and the shepherd were both captured and carried in triumph to Rouen. Experience of inquisitorial delays in the case of Joan probably caused the English to prefer more summary methods, and the un- lucky prophet was tossed into the Seine and drowned without a trial. His sphere of influence had been too limited to render him worth making a conspicuous example.f Thus Joan passed away, but the spirit which she had aroused was beyond the reach of bishop or inquisitor. Her judicial murder was a useless crime. The Treaty of Arras, in 1435, withdrew Bur- gundy from the English alliance, and one by one the conquests of Henry V. were wrenched from the feeble grasp of his son. When, in 1449, Charles VII. obtained possession of Rouen he ordered an inquest on the spot into the circumstances of her trial, for it ill comported with the dignity of a King of France to owe his throne to a witch condemned and burned by the Church. The time had not come, however, when a sentence of the Inquisition could be set aside by secular authority, and the attempt was abandoned. Proces, p. 480. f Monstrelet, II. 101.— Journal d'un Bourgeois, an 1431— Memoires de Saint- Remy ch. 172.— Abrege de l'Hist. de Charles VII. (Godefroy, p. 334).
 * Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris, an 1430. — Nider Formicar. v. viii. —