CHAPTER XVIII
The day after that on which he had spewed such furious vituperation overthe Tribunal, Gilles de Rais appeared again before his judges. Hepresented himself with bowed head and clasped hands. He had once morejumped from one extreme to the other. A few hours had sufficed to breakthe spirit of the energumen, who now declared that he recognized theauthority of the magistrates and begged forgiveness for having insultedthem.
They affirmed that for the love of Our Lord they forgot hisimprecations, and, at his prayer, the Bishop and the Inquisitor revokedthe sentence of excommunication which they had passed on him the daybefore.
This hearing was, in addition, taken up with the arraignment of Prelatiand his accomplices. Then, authorized by the ecclesiastical text whichsays that a confession cannot be regarded as sufficient if it is "dubia,vaga, generalis illativa, jocosa," the Prosecutor asserted that tocertify 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 claimingthe right of confessing immediately to such judges as the Tribunal werepleased to designate, he swore that he would thereafter repeat hisconfession before the public and the court.
Jean de Malestroit granted this request, and the Bishop of Saint Brieucand Pierre de l'Hospital were appointed to hear Gilles in his cell. Whenhe had finished the recital of his debauches and murders they orderedPrelati to be brought to them.
At sight of him Gilles burst into tears and when, after theinterrogatory, preparations were made to conduct the Italian back to hisdungeon, Gilles embraced him, saying, "Farewell, Francis my friend, weshall never see each other again in this world. I pray God to give yougood patience and I hope in Him that we may meet again in great joy inParadise. Pray God for me and I shall pray for you."
And Gilles was left alone to meditate on his crimes which he was toconfess publicly at the hearing next day. That day was the impressiveday of the trial. The room in which the Tribunal sat was crammed, andthere were multitudes sitting on the stairs, standing in the corridors,filling the neighbouring courts, blocking the streets and lanes. Fromtwenty miles around the peasants were come to see the memorable beastwhose very name, before his capture, had served to close the doors thoseevenings when in universal trembling the women dared not weep aloud.
This meeting of the Tribunal was to be conducted with the most minuteobservance of all the forms. All the assize judges, who in a longhearing generally had their places filled by proxies, were present.
The courtroom, massive, obscure, upheld by heavy Roman pillars, had beenrejuvenated. The wall, ogival, threw to cathedral height the arches ofits vaulted ceiling, which were joined together, like the sides of anabbatial mitre, in a point. The room was lighted by sickly daylightwhich was filtered through small panes between heavy leads. The azure ofthe ceiling was darkened to navy blue, and the golden stars, at thatheight, were as the heads of steel pins. In the shadows of the vaultsappeared the ermine of the ducal arms, dimly seen in escutcheons whichwere like great dice with black dots.
Suddenly the trumpets blared, the room was lighted up, and the Bishopsentered. Their mitres of cloth of gold flamed like the lightning. Abouttheir necks were brilliant collars with orphreys crusted, as were therobes, with carbuncles. In silent processional the Bishops advanced,weighted down by their rigid copes, which fell in a flare from theirshoulders and were like golden bells split in the back. In their handsthey carried the crozier from which hung the maniple, a sort of greenveil.
At each step they glowed like coals blown upon. Themselves weresufficient to light the room, as they reanimated with their jewels thepale sun of a rainy October day and scattered a new lustre to all partsof the room, over the mute audience.
Outshone by the shimmer of the orphreys and the stones, the costumes ofthe other judges appeared darker and discordant. The black vestments ofsecular justice, the white and black robe of Jean Blouyn, the silksymars, the red woollen mantles, the scarlet chaperons lined with fur,seemed faded and common.
The Bishops seated themselves in the front row, surrounding Jean deMalestroit, who from a raised seat dominated the court.
Under the escort of the men-at-arms Gilles entered. He was broken andhaggard and had aged twenty years in one night. His eyes burned behindseared lids. His cheeks shook. Upon injunction he began the recital ofhis crimes.
In a laboured voice, choked by tears, he recounted his abductions ofchildren, his hideous tactics, his infernal stimulations, his impetuousmurders, his implacable violations. Obsessed by the vision of hisvictims, he described their agonies drawn out or hastened, their cries,the rattle in their throats. He confessed to having wallowed in theelastic warmth of their intestines. He confessed that he had ripped outtheir hearts through wounds enlarged and opening like ripe fruit. Andwith the eyes of a somnambulist he looked down at his fingers and shookthem as if blood were dripping from them.
The thunder-struck audience kept a mournful silence which was laceratedsuddenly by a few short cries, and the attendants, at a run, carriedout fainting women, mad with horror.
He seemed to see nothing, to hear nothing. He continued to tell off thefrightful rosary of his crimes. Then his voice became raucous. He wascoming to the sepulchral violations, and now to the torture of thelittle children whom he had cajoled in order to cut their throats as hekissed 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 ofdemonomania and murder had never heard more terrifying confessions,these prelates whom no depravity had ever astonished, made the sign ofthe Cross, and Jean de Malestroit rose and for very shame veiled theface of the Christ.
Then all lowered their heads, and without a word they listened. TheMarshal, bathed in sweat, his face downcast, looked now at the crucifixwhose invisible head and bristling crown of thorns gave their shapes tothe veil.
He finished his narrative and broke down completely. Till now he hadstood erect, speaking as if in a daze, recounting to himself, aloud, thememory of his ineradicable crimes. But at the end of the story hisforces 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 theferocious and haughty baron, the first of his caste no doubt, humiliatedhimself. He turned toward the people and said, weeping, "Ye, the parentsof those whom I have so cruelly put to death, give, ah give me, thesuccour of your pious prayers!"
Then in its white splendour the soul of the Middle Ages burst forthradiant.
Jean de Malestroit left his seat and raised the accused, who was beatingthe flagstones with his despairing forehead. The judge in de Malestroitdisappeared, the priest alone remained. He embraced the sinner who wasrepenting and lamenting his fault.
A shudder overran the audience when Jean de Malestroit, with Gilles'shead on his breast, said to him, "Pray that the just and rightful wrathof the Most High be averted, weep that your tears may wash out the bloodlust from your being!"
And with one accord everybody in the room knelt down and prayed for theassassin. When the orisons were hushed there was an instant of wildterror and commotion. Driven beyond human limits of horror and pity, thecrowd tossed and surged. The judges of the Tribunal, silent, enervated,reconquered themselves.
With a gesture, brushing away his tears, the Prosecutor arrested theproceedings. He said that the crimes were "clear and apparent," that theproofs were manifest, that the court would now "in its conscience andsoul" chastise the culprit, and he demanded that the day of passingjudgment be fixed. The Tribunal designated the day after the next.
And that day the Official of the church of Nantes, Jacques dePentcoetdic, read in succession the two sentences. The first, passed bythe Bishop and the Inquisitor for the acts coming under their commonjurisdiction, began thus:
"The Holy Name of Christ invoked, we, Jean, Bishop of Nantes, andBrother Je
an Blouyn, bachelor in our Holy Scriptures, of the order ofthe preaching friars of Nantes, and delegate of the Inquisitor ofheresies for the city and diocese of Nantes, in session of the Tribunaland having before our eyes God alone--"
And after enumerating the crimes it concluded:
"We pronounce, decide, and declare, that thou, Gilles de Rais, citedunto our Tribunal, art heinously guilty of heresy, apostasy, andevocation of demons; that for these crimes thou hast incurred thesentence of excommunication and all other penalties determined by thelaw."
The second judgment, rendered by the Bishop alone, on the crimes ofsodomy, sacrilege, and violation of the immunities of the Church, whichmore particularly concerned his authority, ended in the sameconclusions and in the pronunciation, in almost identical form, of thesame penalty.
Gilles listened with bowed head to the reading of these judgments. Whenit was over the Bishop and the Inquisitor said to him, "Will you, nowthat you detest your errors, your evocations, and your crimes, bereincorporated into the Church our Mother?"
And upon the ardent prayers of the Marshal they relieved him of allexcommunication and admitted him to participate in the sacraments. Thejustice of God was satisfied, the crime was recognized, punished, buteffaced 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, pronouncedthe penalty of death and attainder. Prelati and the other accompliceswere at the same time condemned to be hanged and burned alive.
"Cry to God mercy," said Pierre de l'Hospital, who presided over thecivil hearings, "and dispose yourself to die in good state with a greatrepentance 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 outfervently for the terrestrial expiation, the stake, to redeem him fromthe eternal flames after his death.
Far from his chateaux, in his dungeon, alone, he had opened himself andviewed the cloaca which had so long been fed by the residual watersescaped from the abattoirs of Tiffauges and Machecoul. He had sobbed indespair of ever draining this stagnant pool. And thunder-smitten bygrace, in a cry of horror and joy, he had suddenly seen his souloverflow and sweep away the dank fen before a torrential current ofprayer and ecstasy. The butcher of Sodom had destroyed himself, thecompanion of Jeanne d'Arc had reappeared, the mystic whose soul pouredout to God, in bursts of adoration, in floods of tears.
Then he thought of his friends and wished that they also might die in astate of grace. He asked the Bishop of Nantes that they might beexecuted not before nor after him, but at the same time. He carried hispoint that he was the most guilty and that he must instruct them insaving their souls and assist them at the moment when they should mountthe scaffold. Jean de Malestroit granted the supplication.
"What is curious," said Durtal, interrupting his writing to light acigarette, "is that--"
A gentle ring. Mme. Chantelouve entered.
She declared that she could stay only two minutes. She had a carriagewaiting below. "Tonight," she said, "I will call for you at nine. Firstwrite me a letter in practically these terms," and she handed him apaper. 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 formof 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. "Whatif I refuse?"
"You will not go to the Black Mass."
His curiosity overcame his reluctance. He wrote and signed the letterand 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 othertime, because I am in an awful hurry. At nine o'clock. Don't forget. Beall ready."
He had hardly time to kiss her and she was gone.
"Well," said he, "I already had data on incubacy and poisoning byspells. There remained only the Black Mass, to make me thoroughlyacquainted with Satanism as it is practised in our day. And I am to seeit! 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 tooccupy myself with Gilles de Rais and the diabolism of the Middle Agesto get contemporary diabolism revealed to me." And he thought of Docreagain. "What a sharper that priest is! Among the occultists who maundertoday in the universal decomposition of ideas he is the only one whointerests me.
"The others, the mages, the theosophists, the cabalists, the spiritists,the hermetics, the Rosicrucians, remind me, when they are not merethieves, of children playing and scuffling in a cellar. And if onedescend lower yet, into the hole-in-the-wall places of the pythonesses,clairvoyants, and mediums, what does one find except agencies ofprostitution and gambling? All these pretended peddlers of the futureare extremely nasty; that's the only thing in the occult of which onecan be sure."
Des Hermies interrupted the course of these reflections by ringing andwalking in. He came to announce that Gevingey had returned and that theywere 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 keepsilent. 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 hadpromised 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 thename of the abbe who is to officiate?"
"Not at all. Canon Docre."
"Ah!" and the other was silent. He was evidently trying to divine bywhat manipulations his friend had been able to get in touch with therenegade.
"Some time ago you told me," Durtal said, "that in the Middle Ages theBlack Mass was said on the naked buttocks of a woman, that in theseventeenth century it was celebrated on the abdomen, and now?"
"I believe that it takes place before an altar as in church. Indeed itwas sometimes celebrated thus at the end of the fifteenth century inBiscay. It is true that the Devil then officiated in person. Clothed inrent and soiled episcopal habits, he gave communion with round pieces ofshoe leather for hosts, saying, 'This is my body.' And he gave thesedisgusting wafers to the faithful to eat after they had kissed his lefthand and his breech. I hope that you will not be obliged to render suchbase homage to your canon."
Durtal laughed. "No, I don't think he requires a pretend like that. Butlook here, aren't you of the decided opinion that the creatures who sopiously, infamously, follow these offices are a bit mad?"
"Mad? Why? The cult of the Demon is no more insane than that of God. Oneis rotten and the other resplendent, that is all. By your reckoning allpeople who worship any god whatever would be demented. No. Theaffiliates of Satanism are mystics of a vile order, but they aremystics. Now, it is highly probable that their exaltations into theextra-terrestrial of Evil coincide with the rages of their frenziedsenses, for lechery is the wet nurse of Demonism. Medicine classes,rightly or wrongly, the hunger for ordure in the unknown categories ofneurosis, and well it may, for nobody knows anything about neurosesexcept that e
verybody has them. It is quite certain that in this, morethan in any previous century, the nerves quiver at the least shock. Forinstance, recall the newspaper accounts of executions of criminals. Welearn that the executioner goes about his work timidly, that he is onthe point of fainting, that he has nervous prostration when hedecapitates a man. Then compare this nervous wreck with the invincibletorturers of the olden time. They would thrust your arm into a sleeve ofmoistened parchment which when set on fire would draw up and in aleisurely fashion reduce your flesh to dust. Or they would drive wedgesinto your thighs and split the bones. They would crush your thumbs inthe thumbscrew. Or they would singe all the hair off your epidermis witha poker, or roll up the skin from your abdomen and leave you with a kindof apron. They would drag you at the cart's tail, give you thestrappado, roast you, drench you with ignited alcohol, and through itall preserve an impassive countenance and tranquil nerves not to beshaken by any cry or plaint. Only, as these exercises were somewhatfatiguing, the torturers, after the operation, were ravenously hungryand required a deal of drink. They were sanguinaries of a mentalstability not to be shaken, while now! But to return to your companionsin sacrilege. This evening, if they are not maniacs, you will findthem--doubt it not--repulsive lechers. Observe them closely. I am surethat 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 makeyou imitate the martyr of whom Jacques de Voragine speaks in his historyof Saint Paul the Eremite. You know that legend?"
"No."
"Well, to refresh your soul I will tell you. This martyr, who was veryyoung, was stretched out, his hands and feet bound, on a bed, then asuperb specimen of femininity was brought in, who tried to force him. Ashe was burning and was about to sin, he bit off his tongue and spat itin the face of the woman, "and thus pain drove out temptation," says thegood de Voragine."
"My heroism would not carry me so far as that, I confess. But must yougo so soon?"
"Yes, I have a pressing engagement."
"What a queer age," said Durtal, conducting him to the door. "It is justat the moment when positivism is at its zenith that mysticism risesagain and the follies of the occult begin."
"Oh, but it's always been that way. The tail ends of all centuries arealike. They're always periods of vacillation and uncertainty. Whenmaterialism is rotten-ripe magic takes root. This phenomenon reappearsevery hundred years. Not to go further back, look at the decline of thelast century. Alongside of the rationalists and atheists you findSaint-Germain, Cagliostro, Saint-Martin, Gabalis, Cazotte, theRosicrucian societies, the infernal circles, as now. With that, good-byeand good luck."
"Yes," said Durtal, closing the door, "but Cagliostro and his ilk had acertain audacity, and perhaps a little knowledge, while the mages of ourtime--what inept fakes!"
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