"How is Gilles de Rais progressing?"
"I have finished the first part of his life, making just the briefest
possible mention of his virtues and achievements."
"Which are of no interest," remarked Des Hermies.
"Evidently, since the name of Gilles de Rais would have perished four
centuries ago but for the enormities of vice which it symbolizes. I am
coming to the crimes now. The great difficulty, you see, is to explain
how this man, who was a brave captain and a good Christian, all of a
sudden became a sacrilegious sadist and a coward."
"Metamorphosed over night, as it were."
"Worse. As if at a touch of a fairy's wand or of a playwright's pen.
That is what mystifies his biographers. Of course untraceable influences
must have been at work a long time, and there must have been occasional
outcropping not mentioned in the chronicles. Here is a recapitulation of
our material.
"Gilles de Rais was born about 1404 on the boundary between Brittany and
Anjou, in the château de Mâchecoul. We know nothing of his childhood.
His father died about the end of October, 1415, and his mother almost
immediately married a Sieur d'Estouville, abandoning her two sons,
Gilles and René. They became the wards of their grandfather, Jean de
Craon, 'a man old and ancient and of exceeding great age,' as the texts
say. He seems to have allowed his two charges to run wild, and then to
have got rid of Gilles by marrying him to Catherine de Thouars, November
30, 1420.
"Gilles is known to have been at the court of the Dauphin five years
later. His contemporaries represent him as a robust, active man, of
striking beauty and rare elegance. We have no explicit statement as to
the rôle he played in this court, but one can easily imagine what sort
of treatment the richest baron in France received at the hands of an
impoverished king.
"For at that moment Charles VII was in extremities. He was without
money, prestige, or real authority. Even the cities along the Loire
scarcely obeyed him. France, decimated a few years before, by the
plague, and further depopulated by massacres, was in a deplorable
situation.
"England, rising from the sea like the fabled polyp the Kraken, had cast
her tentacles over Brittany, Normandy, l'Ile de France, part of Picardy,
the entire North, the Interior as far as Orléans, and crawling forward
left in her wake towns squeezed dry and country exhausted.
"In vain Charles clamoured for subsidies, invented excuses for
exactions, and pressed the imposts. The paralyzed cities and fields
abandoned to the wolves could afford no succour. Remember his very claim
to the throne was disputed. He became like a blind man going the rounds
with a tin cup begging sous. His court at Chinon was a snarl of intrigue
complicated by an occasional murder. Weary of being hunted, more or less
out of harm's way behind the Loire, Charles and his partisans finally
consoled themselves by flaunting in the face of inevitable disaster the
devil-may-care debaucheries of the condemned making the most of the few
moments left them. Forays and loans furnished them with opulent cheer
and permitted them to carouse on a grand scale. The eternal _qui-vive_
and the misfortunes of war were forgotten in the arms of courtesans.
"What more could have been expected of a used-up sleepy-headed king, the
issue of an infamous mother and a mad father?"
"Oh, whatever you say about Charles VII pales beside the testimony of
the portrait of him in the Louvre painted by Foucquet. That bestial
face, with the eyes of a small-town ursurer and the sly psalm-singing
mouth that butter wouldn't melt in, has often arrested me. Foucquet
depicts a debauched priest who has a bad cold and has been drinking sour
wine. Yet you can see that this monarch is of the very same type as the
more refined, less salacious, more prudently cruel, more obstinate and
cunning Louis XI, his son and successor. Well, Charles VII was the man
who had Jean Sans Peur assassinated, and who abandoned Jeanne d'Arc.
What more need be said?"
"What indeed? Well, Gilles de Rais, who had raised an army at his own
expense, was certainly welcomed by this court with open arms. There is
no doubt that he footed the bills for tournaments and banquets, that he
was vigilantly 'tapped' by the courtiers, and that he lent the king
staggering sums. But in spite of his popularity he never seems to have
evaded responsibility and wallowed in debauchery, like the king. We find
Gilles shortly afterward defending Anjou and Maine against the English.
The chronicles say that he was 'a good and hardy captain,' but his
'goodness' and 'hardiness' did not prevent him from being borne back by
force of numbers. The English armies, uniting, inundated the country,
and, pushing on unchecked, invaded the interior. The king was ready to
flee to the Mediterranean provinces and let France go, when Jeanne d'Arc
appeared.
"Gilles returned to court and was entrusted by Charles with the 'guard
and defence' of the Maid of Orleans. He followed her everywhere, fought
at her side, even under the walls of Paris, and was with her at Rheims
the day of the coronation, at which time, says Monstrelet, the king
rewarded his valour by naming him Marshal of France, at the age of
twenty-five."
"Lord!" Des Hermies interrupted, "promotion came rapidly in those times.
But I suppose warriors then weren't the bemedalled, time-serving
incompetents they are now."
"Oh, don't be misled. The title of Marshal of France didn't mean so
much in Gilles's time as it did afterward in the reign of Francis I, and
nothing like what it has come to mean since Napoleon.
"What was the conduct of Gilles de Rais toward Jeanne d'Arc? We have no
certain knowledge. M. Vallet de Viriville, without proof, accuses him of
treachery. M. l'abbé Bossard, on the contrary, claims--and alleges
plausible reasons for entertaining the opinion--that he was loyal to her
and watched over her devotedly.
"What is certain is that Gilles's soul became saturated with mystical
ideas. His whole history proves it.
"He was constantly in association with this extraordinary maid whose
adventures seemed to attest the possibility of divine intervention in
earthly affairs. He witnessed the miracle of a peasant girl dominating a
court of ruffians and bandits and arousing a cowardly king who was on
the point of flight. He witnessed the incredible episode of a virgin
bringing back to the fold such black rams as La Hire, Xaintrailles,
Beaumanoir, Chabannes, Dunois, and Gaucourt, and washing their old
fleeces whiter than snow. Undoubtedly Gilles also, under her
shepherding, docilely cropped the white grass of the gospel, took
communion the morning of a battle, and revered Jeanne as a saint.
"He saw the Maid fulfil all her promises. She raised the siege of
Orléans, had the king consecrated at Rheims, and then declared that her
mission was accomplished and asked as a boon that she be permitted to
return home.
"Now I should say that as a result of such an association Gilles's
mysticism began to soar. Henceforth we have to deal with a man who is
half-freebooter, half-monk. Moreover--"
"Pardon the interruption, but I am not so sure that Jeanne d'Arc's
intervention was a good thing for France."
"Why not?"
"I will explain. You know that the defenders of Charles were for the
most part Mediterranean cut-throats, ferocious pillagers, execrated by
the very people they came to protect. The Hundred Years' War, in effect,
was a war of the South against the North. England at that epoch had not
got over the Conquest and was Norman in blood, language, and tradition.
Suppose Jeanne d'Arc had stayed with her mother and stuck to her
knitting. Charles VII would have been dispossessed and the war would
have come to an end. The Plantagenets would have reigned over England
and France, which, in primeval times before the Channel existed, formed
one territory occupied by one race, as you know. Thus there would have
been a single united and powerful kingdom of the North, reaching as far
as the province of Languedoc and embracing peoples whose tastes,
instincts, and customs were alike. On the other hand, the coronation of
a Valois at Rheims created a heterogeneous and preposterous France,
separating homogeneous elements, uniting the most incompatible
nationalities, races the most hostile to each other, and identifying
us--inseparably, alas!--with those stained-skinned, varnished-eyed
munchers of chocolate and raveners of garlic, who are not Frenchmen at
all, but Spaniards and Italians. In a word, if it hadn't been for Jeanne
d'Arc, France would not now belong to that line of histrionic, forensic,
perfidious chatterboxes, the precious Latin race--Devil take it!"
Durtal raised his eyebrows.
"My, my," he said, laughing. "Your remarks prove to me that you are
interested in 'our own, our native land.' I should never have suspected
it of you."
"Of course you wouldn't," said Des Hermies, relighting his cigarette.
"As has so often been said, 'My own, my native land is wherever I happen
to feel at home.' Now I don't feel at home except with the people of the
North. But I interrupted you. Let's get back to the subject. What were
you saying?"
"I forget. Oh, yes. I was saying that the Maid had completed her task.
Now we are confronted by a question to which there is seemingly no
answer. What did Gilles do when she was captured, how did he feel about
her death? We cannot tell. We know that he was lurking in the vicinity
of Rouen at the time of the trial, but it is too much to conclude from
that, like certain of his biographies, that he was plotting her rescue.
"At any rate, after losing track of him completely, we find that he has
shut himself in at his castle of Tiffauges.
"He is no longer the rough soldier, the uncouth fighting-man. At the
time when the misdeeds are about to begin, the artist and man of letters
develop in Gilles and, taking complete possession of him, incite him,
under the impulsion of a perverted mysticism, to the most sophisticated
of cruelties, the most delicate of crimes.
"For he was almost alone in his time, this baron de Rais. In an age when
his peers were simple brutes, he sought the delicate delirium of art,
dreamed of a literature soul-searching and profound; he even composed a
treatise on the art of evoking demons; he gloried in the music of the
Church, and would have nothing about his that was not rare and difficult
to obtain.
"He was an erudite Latinist, a brilliant conversationalist, a sure and
generous friend. He possessed a library extraordinary for an epoch when
nothing was read but theology and lives of saints. We have the
description of several of his manuscripts; Suetonius, Valerius Maximus,
and an Ovid on parchment bound in red leather, with vermeil clasp and
key.
"These books were his passion. He carried them with him when he
travelled. He had attached to his household a painter named Thomas who
illuminated them with ornate letters and miniatures, and Gilles himself
painted the enamels which a specialist--discovered after an assiduous
search--set in the gold-inwrought bindings. Gilles's taste in
furnishings was elevated and bizarre. He revelled in abbatial stuffs,
voluptuous silks, in the sombre gilding of old brocade. He liked
knowingly spiced foods, ardent wines heavy with aromatics; he dreamed of
unknown gems, weird stones, uncanny metals. He was the Des Esseintes of
the fifteenth century!
"All this was very expensive, less so, perhaps, than the luxurious court
which made Tiffauges a place like none other.
"He had a guard of two hundred men, knights, captains, squires, pages,
and all these people had personal attendants who were magnificently
equipped at Gilles's expense. The luxury of his chapel and collegium was
madly extravagant. There was in residence at Tiffauges a complete
metropolitan clergy, deans, vicars, treasurers, canons, clerks, deacons,
scholasters, and choir boys. There is an inventory extant of the
surplices, stoles, and amices, and the fur choir hats with crowns of
squirrel and linings of vair. There are countless sacerdotal ornaments.
We find vermilion altar cloths, curtains of emerald silk, a cope of
velvet, crimson and violet with orpheys of cloth of gold, another of
rose damask, satin dalmatics for the deacons, baldachins figured with
hawks and falcons of Cyprus gold. We find plate, hammered chalices and
ciboria crusted with uncut jewels. There are reliquaries, among them a
silver head of Saint Honoré. A mass of sparkling jewelleries which an
artist, installed in the château, cuts to order.
"And anyone who came along was welcome. From all corners of France
caravans journeyed toward this château where the artist, the poet, the
scholar, found princely hospitality, cordial goodfellowship, gifts of
welcome and largesse at departure.
"Already undermined by the demands which the war had made on it, his
fortune was giving way beneath these expenditures. Now he began to walk
the terrible ways of usury. He borrowed of the most unscrupulous
bourgeois, hypothecated his châteaux, alienated his lands. At times he
was reduced to asking advances on his religious ornaments, on his
jewels, on his books."
"I am glad to see that the method of ruining oneself in the Middle Ages
did not differ sensibly from that of our days," said Des Hermies.
"However, our ancestors did not have Monte Carlo, the notaries, and the
Bourse."
"And _did_ have sorcery and alchemy. A memorial addressed to the king by
the heirs of Gilles de Rais informs us that this immense fortune was
squandered in less than eight years.
"Now it's the signories of Confolens, Chabanes, Châteaumorant, Lombert,
ceded to a captain for a ridiculous price; now it's the fief of Fontaine
Milon, of Angers, the fortress of Saint Etienne de Mer Morte acquired by
Guillaume Le Ferron for a song; again it's the châteaux of Blaison and
of Chemille forfeited to Guillaume de la Jumelière who never has to pay
a sou. But look, there's a long list of castellanies and forests, salt
mines and farm lands," said Durtal, spreading out a great sheet of paper
on which he had copied the account of the purchases and sales.
"Frightened by his mad course, the family of the Marshal supplicated the
king to intervene, and Charles VII, 'sure,' as he said, 'of the
malgovernance of the Sire de Rais,' forbade him, in grand council, by
letters dated 'Amboise, 1436,' to sell or make over any fortress, any
château, any land.
"This order simply hastened the ruin of the interdicted. The grand
skinflint, the master usurer of the time, Jean V, duke of Brittany,
refused to publish the edict in his states, but, underhandedly, notified
all those of his subjects who dealt with Gilles. No one now dared to buy
the Marshal's domains for fear of incurring the wrath of the king, so
Jean V remained the sole purchaser and fixed the prices. You may judge
how liberal his prices were.
"That explains Gilles's hatred of his family who had solicited these
letters patent of the king, and why, as long as he lived, he had nothing
to do with his wife, nor with his daughter whom he consigned to a
dungeon at Pouzauges.
"Now to return to the question which I put a while ago, how and with
what motives Gilles quitted the court. I think the facts which I have
outlined will partially explain.
"It is evident that for quite a while, long before the Marshal retired
to his estates, Charles had been assailed by the complaints of Gilles's
wife and other relatives. Moreover, the courtiers must have execrated
the young man on account of his riches and luxuries; and the king, the
same king who abandoned Jeanne d'Arc when he considered that she could
no longer be useful to him, found an occasion to avenge himself on
Gilles for the favours Gilles had done him. When the king needed money
to finance his debaucheries or to raise troops he had not considered the
Marshal lavish. Now that the Marshal was ruined the king censured him
for his prodigality, held him at arm's length, and spared him no
reproach and no menace.
"We may be sure Gilles had no reason to regret leaving this court, and
another thing is to be taken into consideration. He was doubtless sick
and tired of the nomadic existence of a soldier. He was doubtless
impatient to get back to a pacific atmosphere among books. Moreover, he
seems to have been completely dominated by the passion for alchemy, for
which he was ready to abandon all else. For it is worth noting that this
science, which threw him into demonomania when he hoped to stave off
inevitable ruin with it, he had loved for its own sake when he was rich.
It was in fact toward the year 1426, when his coffers bulged with gold,
that he attempted the 'great work' for the first time.
"We shall find him, then, bent over his retorts in the château de
Tiffauges. That is the point to which I have brought my history, and now
I am about to begin on the series of crimes of magic and sadism."
"But all this," said Des Hermies, "does not explain how, from a man of
piety, he was suddenly changed into a Satanist, from a placid scholar
into a violator of little children, a 'ripper' of boys and girls."
"I have already told you that there are no documents to bind together
the two parts of this life so strangely divided, but in what I have been
narrating you can pick out some of the threads of the duality. To be
precise, this man, as I have just had you observe, was a true mystic. He
witnessed the most extraordinary events which history has ever shown.
Association with Jeanne d'Arc certainly stimulated his desires for the
divine. Now from lofty Mysticism to base Satanism there is but one step.
In the Beyond all things touch. He carried his zeal for prayer into the
territory of blasphemy. He was guided and controlled by that troop of
sacrilegious priests, transmuters of metals, and evokers of demons, by
whom he was surrounded at Tiffauges."
"You think, then, that the Maid of Orleans was really responsible for
his career of evil?"
"To a certain point. Consider. She roused an impetuous soul, ready for
anything, as well for orgies of saintliness as for ecstasies of crime.
"There was no transition between the two phases of his being. The moment
Jeanne was dead he fell into the hands of sorcerers who were the most
learned of scoundrels and the most unscrupulous of scholars. These men
who frequented the château de Tiffauges were fervent Latinists,
marvellous conversationalists, possessors of forgotten arcana, guardians
of world-old secrets. Gilles was evidently more fitted to live with them
than with men like Dunois and La Hire. These magicians, whom all the
biographers agree to represent--wrongly, I think--as vulgar parasites
and base knaves, were, as I view them, the patricians of intellect of
the fifteenth century. Not having found places in the Church, where they
would certainly have accepted no position beneath that of cardinal or
pope, they could, in those troubled times of ignorance, but take refuge
in the patronage of a great lord like Gilles. And Gilles was, indeed,
the only one at that epoch who was intelligent enough and educated
enough to understand them.
"To sum up: natural mysticism on one hand, and, on the other, daily
association with savants obsessed by Satanism. The sword of Damocles
hanging over his head, to be conjured away by the will of the Devil,
perhaps. An ardent, a mad curiosity concerning the forbidden sciences.
All this explains why, little by little, as the bonds uniting him to the
world of alchemists and sorcerers grow stronger, he throws himself into
the occult and is swept on by it into the most unthinkable crimes.
"Then as to being a 'ripper' of children--and he didn't immediately
become one, no, Gilles did not violate and trucidate little boys until
after he became convinced of the vanity of alchemy--why, he does not
differ greatly from the other barons of his times.
"He exceeds them in the magnitude of his debauches, in opulence of
murders, and that's all. It's a fact. Read Michelet. You will see that
the princes of this epoch were redoubtable butchers. There was a sire de
Giac who poisoned his wife, put her astride of his horse and rode at
breakneck speed for five leagues, until she died. There was another,
whose name I have forgotten, who collared his father, dragged him
barefoot through the snow, and calmly thrust him into a subterranean
prison and left him there until he died. And how many others! I have
tried, without success, to find whether in battles and forays the
Marshal committed any serious misdeeds. I have discovered nothing,
except that he had a pronounced taste for the gibbet; for he liked to
string up all the renegade French whom he surprised in the ranks of the
English or in the cities which were not very much devoted to the king.
"We shall find his taste for this kind of torture manifesting itself
later on in the château de Tiffauges.
"Now, in conclusion, add to all these factors a formidable pride, a
pride which incites him to say, during his trial, 'So potent was the
star under which I was born that I have done what no one in the world
has done nor ever can do.'
"And assuredly, the Marquis de Sade is only a timid bourgeois, a
mediocre fantasist, beside him!"
"Since it is difficult to be a saint," said Des Hermies, "there is
nothing for it but to be a Satanist. One of the two extremes.
'Execration of impotence, hatred of the mediocre,' that, perhaps, is one
of the more indulgent definitions of Diabolism."
"Perhaps. One can take pride in going as far in crime as a saint in
virtue. And that expresses Gilles de Rais exactly."
"All the same, it's a mean subject to handle."
"It certainly is, but happily the documents are abundant. Satan was
terrible to the Middle Ages--"
"And to the modern."
"What do you mean?"
"That Satanism has come down in a straight, unbroken line from that age
to this."
"Oh, no; you don't believe that at this very hour the devil is being
evoked and the black mass celebrated?"
"Yes."
"You are sure?"
"Perfectly."
"You amaze me. But, man! do you know that to witness such things would
aid me signally in my work? No joking, you believe in a contemporary
Satanistic manifestation? You have proofs?"
"Yes, and of them we shall speak later, for today I am very busy.
Tomorrow evening, when we dine with Carhaix. Don't forget. I'll come by
for you. Meanwhile think over the phrase which you applied a moment ago
to the magicians: 'If they had entered the Church they would not have
consented to be anything but cardinals and popes,' and then just think
what kind of a clergy we have nowadays. The explanation of Satanism is
there, in great part, anyway, for without sacrilegious priests there is
no mature Satanism."
"But what do these priests want?"
"Everything!" exclaimed Des Hermies.
"Hmmm. Like Gilles de Rais, who asked the demon for 'knowledge, power,
riches,' all that humanity covets, to be deeded to him by a title signed
with his own blood."