Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain

It was necessary for me to have some way to gain bread for Noël and myself; and when the Pierrons found that I knew how to write, the applied to their confessor in my behalf, and he got a place for me with a good priest named Manchon, who was to be the chief recorder in the Great Trial of Joan of Arc now approaching. It was a strange position for me -- clerk to the recorder -- and dangerous if my sympathies and the late employment should be found out. But there was not much danger. Manchon was at bottom friendly to Joan and would not betray me; and my name would not, for I had discarded my surname and retained only my given one, like a person of low degree.

I attended Manchon constantly straight along, out of January and into February, and was often in the citadel with him -- in the very fortress where Joan was imprisoned, though not in the dungeon where she was confined, and so did not see her, of course.