The day after that on which he had spewed such furious vituperation over
the Tribunal, Gilles de Rais appeared again before his judges. He
presented himself with bowed head and clasped hands. He had once more
jumped from one extreme to the other. A few hours had sufficed to break
the spirit of the energumen, who now declared that he recognized the
authority of the magistrates and begged forgiveness for having insulted
them.
They affirmed that for the love of Our Lord they forgot his
imprecations, and, at his prayer, the Bishop and the Inquisitor revoked
the sentence of excommunication which they had passed on him the day
before.
This hearing was, in addition, taken up with the arraignment of Prelati
and his accomplices. Then, authorized by the ecclesiastical text which
says that a confession cannot be regarded as sufficient if it is "dubia,
vaga, generalis illativa, jocosa," the Prosecutor asserted that to
certify the sincerity of his confessions Gilles must be subjected to the
"canonic question," that is, to torture.
The Marshal besought the Bishop to wait until the next day, and claiming
the right of confessing immediately to such judges as the Tribunal were
pleased to designate, he swore that he would thereafter repeat his
confession before the public and the court.
Jean de Malestroit granted this request, and the Bishop of Saint Brieuc
and Pierre de l'Hospital were appointed to hear Gilles in his cell. When
he had finished the recital of his debauches and murders they ordered
Prelati to be brought to them.
At sight of him Gilles burst into tears and when, after the
interrogatory, preparations were made to conduct the Italian back to his
dungeon, Gilles embraced him, saying, "Farewell, Francis my friend, we
shall never see each other again in this world. I pray God to give you
good patience and I hope in Him that we may meet again in great joy in
Paradise. Pray God for me and I shall pray for you."
And Gilles was left alone to meditate on his crimes which he was to
confess publicly at the hearing next day. That day was the impressive
day of the trial. The room in which the Tribunal sat was crammed, and
there were multitudes sitting on the stairs, standing in the corridors,
filling the neighbouring courts, blocking the streets and lanes. From
twenty miles around the peasants were come to see the memorable beast
whose very name, before his capture, had served to close the doors those
evenings when in universal trembling the women dared not weep aloud.
This meeting of the Tribunal was to be conducted with the most minute
observance of all the forms. All the assize judges, who in a long
hearing generally had their places filled by proxies, were present.
The courtroom, massive, obscure, upheld by heavy Roman pillars, had been
rejuvenated. The wall, ogival, threw to cathedral height the arches of
its vaulted ceiling, which were joined together, like the sides of an
abbatial mitre, in a point. The room was lighted by sickly daylight
which was filtered through small panes between heavy leads. The azure of
the ceiling was darkened to navy blue, and the golden stars, at that
height, were as the heads of steel pins. In the shadows of the vaults
appeared the ermine of the ducal arms, dimly seen in escutcheons which
were like great dice with black dots.
Suddenly the trumpets blared, the room was lighted up, and the Bishops
entered. Their mitres of cloth of gold flamed like the lightning. About
their necks were brilliant collars with orphreys crusted, as were the
robes, with carbuncles. In silent processional the Bishops advanced,
weighted down by their rigid copes, which fell in a flare from their
shoulders and were like golden bells split in the back. In their hands
they carried the crozier from which hung the maniple, a sort of green
veil.
At each step they glowed like coals blown upon. Themselves were
sufficient to light the room, as they reanimated with their jewels the
pale sun of a rainy October day and scattered a new lustre to all parts
of the room, over the mute audience.
Outshone by the shimmer of the orphreys and the stones, the costumes of
the other judges appeared darker and discordant. The black vestments of
secular justice, the white and black robe of Jean Blouyn, the silk
symars, the red woollen mantles, the scarlet chaperons lined with fur,
seemed faded and common.
The Bishops seated themselves in the front row, surrounding Jean de
Malestroit, who from a raised seat dominated the court.
Under the escort of the men-at-arms Gilles entered. He was broken and
haggard and had aged twenty years in one night. His eyes burned behind
seared lids. His cheeks shook. Upon injunction he began the recital of
his crimes.
In a laboured voice, choked by tears, he recounted his abductions of
children, his hideous tactics, his infernal stimulations, his impetuous
murders, his implacable violations. Obsessed by the vision of his
victims, he described their agonies drawn out or hastened, their cries,
the rattle in their throats. He confessed to having wallowed in the
elastic warmth of their intestines. He confessed that he had ripped out
their hearts through wounds enlarged and opening like ripe fruit. And
with the eyes of a somnambulist he looked down at his fingers and shook
them as if blood were dripping from them.
The thunder-struck audience kept a mournful silence which was lacerated
suddenly by a few short cries, and the attendants, at a run, carried
out fainting women, mad with horror.
He seemed to see nothing, to hear nothing. He continued to tell off the
frightful rosary of his crimes. Then his voice became raucous. He was
coming to the sepulchral violations, and now to the torture of the
little children whom he had cajoled in order to cut their throats as he
kissed them.
He divulged every detail. The account was so formidable, so atrocious,
that beneath their golden caps the bishops blanched. These priests,
tempered in the fires of confessional, these judges who in that time of
demonomania and murder had never heard more terrifying confessions,
these prelates whom no depravity had ever astonished, made the sign of
the Cross, and Jean de Malestroit rose and for very shame veiled the
face of the Christ.
Then all lowered their heads, and without a word they listened. The
Marshal, bathed in sweat, his face downcast, looked now at the crucifix
whose invisible head and bristling crown of thorns gave their shapes to
the veil.
He finished his narrative and broke down completely. Till now he had
stood erect, speaking as if in a daze, recounting to himself, aloud, the
memory of his ineradicable crimes. But at the end of the story his
forces abandoned him. He fell on his knees and, shaken by terrific sobs,
he cried, "O God, O my Redeemer, I beseech mercy and pardon!" Then the
ferocious and haughty baron, the first of his caste no doubt, humiliated
himself. He turned toward the people and said, weeping, "Ye, the parents
of those whom I have so cruelly put to death, give, ah give me, the
succour of your pious prayers!"
Then in its white splendour the soul of the Middle Ages burst forth
radiant.
Jean de Malestroit left his seat and raised the accused, who was beating
the flagstones with his despairing forehead. The judge in de Malestroit
disappeared, the priest alone remained. He embraced the sinner who was
repenting and lamenting his fault.
A shudder overran the audience when Jean de Malestroit, with Gilles's
head on his breast, said to him, "Pray that the just and rightful wrath
of the Most High be averted, weep that your tears may wash out the blood
lust from your being!"
And with one accord everybody in the room knelt down and prayed for the
assassin. When the orisons were hushed there was an instant of wild
terror and commotion. Driven beyond human limits of horror and pity, the
crowd tossed and surged. The judges of the Tribunal, silent, enervated,
reconquered themselves.
With a gesture, brushing away his tears, the Prosecutor arrested the
proceedings. He said that the crimes were "clear and apparent," that the
proofs were manifest, that the court would now "in its conscience and
soul" chastise the culprit, and he demanded that the day of passing
judgment be fixed. The Tribunal designated the day after the next.
And that day the Official of the church of Nantes, Jacques de
Pentcoetdic, read in succession the two sentences. The first, passed by
the Bishop and the Inquisitor for the acts coming under their common
jurisdiction, began thus:
"The Holy Name of Christ invoked, we, Jean, Bishop of Nantes, and
Brother Jean Blouyn, bachelor in our Holy Scriptures, of the order of
the preaching friars of Nantes, and delegate of the Inquisitor of
heresies for the city and diocese of Nantes, in session of the Tribunal
and having before our eyes God alone--"
And after enumerating the crimes it concluded:
"We pronounce, decide, and declare, that thou, Gilles de Rais, cited
unto our Tribunal, art heinously guilty of heresy, apostasy, and
evocation of demons; that for these crimes thou hast incurred the
sentence of excommunication and all other penalties determined by the
law."
The second judgment, rendered by the Bishop alone, on the crimes of
sodomy, sacrilege, and violation of the immunities of the Church, which
more particularly concerned his authority, ended in the same
conclusions and in the pronunciation, in almost identical form, of the
same penalty.
Gilles listened with bowed head to the reading of these judgments. When
it was over the Bishop and the Inquisitor said to him, "Will you, now
that you detest your errors, your evocations, and your crimes, be
reincorporated into the Church our Mother?"
And upon the ardent prayers of the Marshal they relieved him of all
excommunication and admitted him to participate in the sacraments. The
justice of God was satisfied, the crime was recognized, punished, but
effaced by contrition and penitence. Only human justice remained.
The Bishop and the Inquisitor remanded the culprit to the secular court,
which, holding against him the abductions and the murders, pronounced
the penalty of death and attainder. Prelati and the other accomplices
were at the same time condemned to be hanged and burned alive.
"Cry to God mercy," said Pierre de l'Hospital, who presided over the
civil hearings, "and dispose yourself to die in good state with a great
repentance for having committed such crimes."
The recommendation was unnecessary. Gilles now faced death without fear.
He hoped, humbly, avidly, in the mercy of the Saviour. He cried out
fervently for the terrestrial expiation, the stake, to redeem him from
the eternal flames after his death.
Far from his châteaux, in his dungeon, alone, he had opened himself and
viewed the cloaca which had so long been fed by the residual waters
escaped from the abattoirs of Tiffauges and Mâchecoul. He had sobbed in
despair of ever draining this stagnant pool. And thunder-smitten by
grace, in a cry of horror and joy, he had suddenly seen his soul
overflow and sweep away the dank fen before a torrential current of
prayer and ecstasy. The butcher of Sodom had destroyed himself, the
companion of Jeanne d'Arc had reappeared, the mystic whose soul poured
out to God, in bursts of adoration, in floods of tears.
Then he thought of his friends and wished that they also might die in a
state of grace. He asked the Bishop of Nantes that they might be
executed not before nor after him, but at the same time. He carried his
point that he was the most guilty and that he must instruct them in
saving their souls and assist them at the moment when they should mount
the scaffold. Jean de Malestroit granted the supplication.
"What is curious," said Durtal, interrupting his writing to light a
cigarette, "is that--"
A gentle ring. Mme. Chantelouve entered.
She declared that she could stay only two minutes. She had a carriage
waiting below. "Tonight," she said, "I will call for you at nine. First
write me a letter in practically these terms," and she handed him a
paper. He unfolded it and read this declaration:
"I certify that all that I have said and written about the Black
Mass, about the priest who celebrated it, about the place where
I claimed to have witnessed it, about the persons alleged to
have been there, is pure invention. I affirm that I imagined all
these incidents, that, in consequence, all that I have narrated
is false."
"Docre's?" he asked, studying the handwriting, minute, pointed, twisted,
aggressive.
"Yes, and he wants this declaration, not dated, to be made in the form
of a letter from you to a person consulting you on the subject."
"Your canon distrusts me."
"Of course. You write books."
"It doesn't please me infinitely to sign that," murmured Durtal. "What
if I refuse?"
"You will not go to the Black Mass."
His curiosity overcame his reluctance. He wrote and signed the letter
and Mme. Chantelouve put it in her card-case.
"And in what street is the ceremony to take place?"
"In the rue Olivier de Serres."
"Where is that?"
"Near the rue de Vaugirard, away up."
"Is that where Docre lives?"
"No, we are going to a private house which belongs to a lady he knows.
Now, if you'll be so good, put off your cross-examination to some other
time, because I am in an awful hurry. At nine o'clock. Don't forget. Be
all ready."
He had hardly time to kiss her and she was gone.
"Well," said he, "I already had data on incubacy and poisoning by
spells. There remained only the Black Mass, to make me thoroughly
acquainted with Satanism as it is practised in our day. And I am to see
it! I'll be damned if I thought there were such undercurrents in Paris.
And how circumstances hang together and lead to each other! I had to
occupy myself with Gilles de Rais and the diabolism of the Middle Ages
to get contemporary diabolism revealed to me." And he thought of Docre
again. "What a sharper that priest is! Among the occultists who maunder
today in the universal decomposition of ideas he is the only one who
interests me.
"The others, the mages, the theosophists, the cabalists, the spiritists,
the hermetics, the Rosicrucians, remind me, when they are not mere
thieves, of children playing and scuffling in a cellar. And if one
descend lower yet, into the hole-in-the-wall places of the pythonesses,
clairvoyants, and mediums, what does one find except agencies of
prostitution and gambling? All these pretended peddlers of the future
are extremely nasty; that's the only thing in the occult of which one
can be sure."
Des Hermies interrupted the course of these reflections by ringing and
walking in. He came to announce that Gévingey had returned and that they
were all to dine at Carhaix's the night after next.
"Is Carhaix's bronchitis cured?"
"Yes, completely."
Preoccupied with the idea of the Black Mass, Durtal could not keep
silent. He let out the fact that he was to witness the ceremony--and,
confronted by Des Hermies's stare of stupefaction, he added that he had
promised secrecy and that he could not, for the present, tell him more.
"You're the lucky one!" said Des Hermies. "Is it too much to ask you the
name of the abbé who is to officiate?"
"Not at all. Canon Docre."
"Ah!" and the other was silent. He was evidently trying to divine by
what manipulations his friend had been able to get in touch with the
renegade.
"Some time ago you told me," Durtal said, "that in the Middle Ages the
Black Mass was said on the naked buttocks of a woman, that in the
seventeenth century it was celebrated on the abdomen, and now?"
"I believe that it takes place before an altar as in church. Indeed it
was sometimes celebrated thus at the end of the fifteenth century in
Biscay. It is true that the Devil then officiated in person. Clothed in
rent and soiled episcopal habits, he gave communion with round pieces of
shoe leather for hosts, saying, 'This is my body.' And he gave these
disgusting wafers to the faithful to eat after they had kissed his left
hand and his breech. I hope that you will not be obliged to render such
base homage to your canon."
Durtal laughed. "No, I don't think he requires a pretend like that. But
look here, aren't you of the decided opinion that the creatures who so
piously, infamously, follow these offices are a bit mad?"
"Mad? Why? The cult of the Demon is no more insane than that of God. One
is rotten and the other resplendent, that is all. By your reckoning all
people who worship any god whatever would be demented. No. The
affiliates of Satanism are mystics of a vile order, but they are
mystics. Now, it is highly probable that their exaltations into the
extra-terrestrial of Evil coincide with the rages of their frenzied
senses, for lechery is the wet nurse of Demonism. Medicine classes,
rightly or wrongly, the hunger for ordure in the unknown categories of
neurosis, and well it may, for nobody knows anything about neuroses
except that everybody has them. It is quite certain that in this, more
than in any previous century, the nerves quiver at the least shock. For
instance, recall the newspaper accounts of executions of criminals. We
learn that the executioner goes about his work timidly, that he is on
the point of fainting, that he has nervous prostration when he
decapitates a man. Then compare this nervous wreck with the invincible
torturers of the olden time. They would thrust your arm into a sleeve of
moistened parchment which when set on fire would draw up and in a
leisurely fashion reduce your flesh to dust. Or they would drive wedges
into your thighs and split the bones. They would crush your thumbs in
the thumbscrew. Or they would singe all the hair off your epidermis with
a poker, or roll up the skin from your abdomen and leave you with a kind
of apron. They would drag you at the cart's tail, give you the
strappado, roast you, drench you with ignited alcohol, and through it
all preserve an impassive countenance and tranquil nerves not to be
shaken by any cry or plaint. Only, as these exercises were somewhat
fatiguing, the torturers, after the operation, were ravenously hungry
and required a deal of drink. They were sanguinaries of a mental
stability not to be shaken, while now! But to return to your companions
in sacrilege. This evening, if they are not maniacs, you will find
them--doubt it not--repulsive lechers. Observe them closely. I am sure
that to them the invocation of Beelzebub is a prelibation of carnality.
Don't be afraid, because, Lord! in this group there won't be any to make
you imitate the martyr of whom Jacques de Voragine speaks in his history
of Saint Paul the Eremite. You know that legend?"
"No."
"Well, to refresh your soul I will tell you. This martyr, who was very
young, was stretched out, his hands and feet bound, on a bed, then a
superb specimen of femininity was brought in, who tried to force him. As
he was burning and was about to sin, he bit off his tongue and spat it
in the face of the woman, 'and thus pain drove out temptation,' says the
good de Voragine."
"My heroism would not carry me so far as that, I confess. But must you
go so soon?"
"Yes, I have a pressing engagement."
"What a queer age," said Durtal, conducting him to the door. "It is just
at the moment when positivism is at its zenith that mysticism rises
again and the follies of the occult begin."
"Oh, but it's always been that way. The tail ends of all centuries are
alike. They're always periods of vacillation and uncertainty. When
materialism is rotten-ripe magic takes root. This phenomenon reappears
every hundred years. Not to go further back, look at the decline of the
last century. Alongside of the rationalists and atheists you find
Saint-Germain, Cagliostro, Saint-Martin, Gabalis, Cazotte, the
Rosicrucian societies, the infernal circles, as now. With that, good-bye
and good luck."
"Yes," said Durtal, closing the door, "but Cagliostro and his ilk had a
certain audacity, and perhaps a little knowledge, while the mages of our
time--what inept fakes!"