Saint Joan1957

Joan Of Arc:
"Perpetual imprisonment"!  Am I not then to be set free?  …  [tears up her signed confession]  Light your fire.  Do you think I would dread it as much as life as a rat in a hole?  My voices were right.  Yes, they told me you were fools, and that I was not to listen to your fine words, nor trust to your charity.  You promised me my life, but you lied!  You think life is nothing but not being stone dead.  It is not the bread and water I fear; I can live on bread, but if I ask for more, bread has no sorrow for me, water no affliction.  But, to shut me from the light of the sky, and the sight of the fields and flowers, to chain my feet so that I can never again ride with the soldiers, nor climb the hills, to make me breathe foul, damp darkness and keep me from everything that brings me back to the love of God, when your wickedness and foolishness tempted me to hate him!  [cries]  I could do without my warhorse, I could drag about in a skirt, I could let the trumpets and the banners and the knights and the soldiers pass me and leave me behind as they leave the other women, if only I could still hear the wind in the trees, the locks in the sunshine, the young lambs crying through the frost, and the blessed church bells that send my voices to me on the wind.  But without these things, I cannot live!  And by your wanting to take them from me, or from any human creature, I know that your council is of the devil, and that mine is of God!  [audience jeers]