Gilles de Laval
Lord of Raiz, and Marshal of France, the "Blue Beard" of our nursery legends, and a famous sorcerer, was born about the year 1420, of one of the most famous families of Brittany. His father died when he was in his twentieth year, and the impetuous lad found himself possessed of unlimited power and wealth. By birth, he was connected with the Roceys, the Craons, and the Montmorencys. Through his father's decease he became the lord of fifteen princely domains, yielding a revenue of three hundred thousand livres. He was handsome, lithe, welllimbed, but distinguished by the appendage of a beard of bluish black. His address was fascinating, his erudition extensive, his courage unimpeachable. Everything seemed to promise a splendid and illustrious career, instead of that dark and miserable history which has associated the name of Blue Beard with so many traditions of horror and legends of atrocious crimes.
At the outset he did nothing to justify an evil augury. He served with zeal and gallantry in the wars of Charles VI. against the English, and had fought under Joan of Arc in the ever memorable Siege of Orléans. His exploits procured him from a grateful king the reward of the high dignity of Marshal of France. From this point his career tended downwards. He retired to his Castle of Champtocé and indulged in the display of the most luxurious state.
Two hundred horsemen accompanied him on his travels, and his train, when he went hunting, exceeded in magnificence that of the King himself. His retainers wore the most sumptuous dresses; his horses were caparisoned with the richest trappings; his castle gates were thrown open day and night to all comers, for whom an ox was daily roasted whole, roasted whole, and sheep, and pigs, and poultry, wine, mead, provided in sufficient quantities for five hundred persons. He carried the same love of pomp into his devotion . His principal chaplain, whom he called a bishop, a dean, a chanter, two arch-deacons, four vicars, a schoolmaster, twelve assistant chaplains, and eight choristers, composed his ecclesiastical establishment. Each of these had his horse and his servant; all were dressed in robes of scarlet and furs, and had costly appointments.
Sacred vessels, crucifixes, all of gold and silver, were transported with them wherever their lord went, together with many organs, each carried by six men. He was exceedingly desirous that all the priests of his chapel should be entitled to wear the mitre, and he sent many embassies to Rome to obtain this privilege, but without success.
He maintained a choir of twenty-five young children of both Gilles sexes, and these he caused to be instructed in singing by the best masters of the day. He had also his comedians, his morris-dancers, and his jugglers, and every hour was crowned with some sensual gratification or voluptuous pleasure.
In 1443, this magnificent young seigneur wedded Catherine, the heiress of the noble House of Thouars, an event which afforded him fresh occasions of displaying his insane passion for luxurious pomp. He gave the most splendid banquets; he figured in the most chivalric tournaments. His guests, who came from all parts to share in the revels of Champtocé, knew not which to admire the most, his skill in all knightly exercises, or his profound erudition. 66
He had espoused a young woman of high birth," says Eliphas Levi, " and kept her practically shut up in his castle at Machecoul, which had a tower with the entrance walled up." A report was spread by the Marshal that it was in a ruinous state, and no one sought to penetrate therein. This, notwithstanding, Madame de Raiz, who was frequently alone during the dark hours, saw red lights moving to and fro in this tower; but she did not venture to question her husband, whose bizarre and sombre character filled her with extreme terror.
The legal state maintained by the Lord of Retz was ordered on so extensive a scale that it even exhausted his apparently inexhaustible revenues, and to procure the funds for his pleasures and his extravagance, he was compelled to sell several of his baronies. Then the Marshal attempted to dispose of his seignory of Ingrande. But his heirs-at-law, indisposed to see their valuable inheritance gradually pared away into nothing, solicited the interference of the King, and a royal edict prohibited him from selling his paternal estates. In this predicament, most men would have curtailed their profusion, and endeavoured to economize their income, but Gilles de Retz was unable to live in diminished splendour. The luxuries that surrounded him were all that for him made life. To have shorn him of his magnificence would have been to strike a death-blow at his heart. Money, therefore, became the principal object of his desires, and to obtain money it seemed to his excited imagination only necessary that he should turn alchemist.
He sent accordingly into Italy, Spain, and Germany, and invited the adepts in the great science to repair from every land to the splendours of Champtocé. Amongst those who obtained the summonses, and continued attached to him during the remainder of his career, were Prélati, an alchemist of Padua, and a physician of Poitou, whose name is not given. At their instigation he built a stately laboratory, and joined by other adepts, eagerly began the search for the Philosophers' Stone. For a twelve month the furnaces blazed away right merrily, and a thousand chemical combinations disposed of the Marshal's gold and silver. Meanwhile, the alchemists feasted on the most luxurious viands, and quaffed the rarest wines; and so admirable were their quarters that, as far as they were concerned, they would have prosecuted the quest of the elixir vitæ, or the Philosophers' Stone, until death cut short their labours.
The impetuosity of the Lord of Retz could not abide such lingering processes. He wanted wealth, and he wanted it immediately. If the grand secret could not be discovered by any quicker method, he would have none of it, nor, indeed, as his resources were fast melting away, would it avail him much if the search occupied several years. At this junction the Poitousan physician and the Paduan alchemist whispered to him of quicker and bolder methods of attaining the desired alkehest, if he had the courage to dismissed inferior adepts, and put himself in the hands of the two abler and subtler masters. These persuaded him that the Evil One could at once reveal to them the secret, and offered to summons him ex tenebris, for the Marshal to conclude with him whatever arrangement he thought best. As long as he saved his soul, the Lord of Retz professed himself willing to do anything the devil might command. In this frame of mind he went to the physician at midnight to a solitary recess in the neighbouring wood, where the physician drew the magic circle and made the customary conjurations. Gilles listened to the invocation with wonder, and expectant that every moment the Spirit of Darkness would burst upon the startled silence. After a lapse of thirty minutes, the physician manifested signs of the greatest alarm; his hair seemed to stand on end, his eyes glared with unutterable horror; he talked wildly, his knees shook, a deadly pallor overspread his countenance, and he sank to the ground. Gilles was a man of dauntless bravery, and gazed upon the strange scene unmoved.
After awhile the physician pretended to recover consciousness. He arose, and turning to his master, inquired if he had not remarked the wrathful countenance of the devil. De Retz replied that he had seen no devil. Whereupon the physician declared he had appeared in the fashion of a wild leopard, and had growled at him horribly. "You," he said to his lord, " would have been the same, and heard the same, but for your want of faith. You could not determine to give yourself up wholly to his service, and therefore he thrust a mist before your eyes." De Retz acknowledged that his resolution had somewhat faltered, but that now his choice was made, if indeed the Evil One could be coerced into speaking, and revealing the secret of the universal alkahest. The physician said that there grew certain herbs in Spain and Africa which possessed the necessary power, and offered to go in search of them himself if the Lord of Laval would supply the funds. As no one else would be able to detect the herbs so miraculously gifted, De Retz thanked the physician for his voluntary self-denial, and loaded him with all the gold he could spare. The physician then took leave of his credulous patron, who never saw him again.
De Retz, as soon as the physician had quitted Champtocé, was once more seized with the fever of unrest. His days and nights were consumed in ceaseless visions of gold; gold, without which he must abandon his gilded pomp and unholy pleasures; gold, without which he could not hope to brave his enemies or procure exemption from the just punishment of his crimes. He now turned for help to the alchemist Prélati, who agreed to undertake the enterprise it De Retz furnished him with the charms and talismans necessary in so troublesome a work. He was to sign with his blood a contract that he would obey the devil in all things, and to offer up a sacrifice of the hands, eyes, blood, heart and lungs of a young child. The madman having willingly consented to these terms, Prélati went out alone on the following night, and after an absence of three hours, returned to his impatient lord. His tale was a monstrously extravagant one, but De Retz swallowed it greedily. The devil had appeared in the shape of a comely young man of twenty, who desired to be called Barron, and had pointed out to him a store of ingots of pure gold, buried under an oak in the neighbouring wood, which was to become the property of the Lord of Laval if he fulfilled the conditions of his contract. But this bright prospect was over-clouded by the devil's injunction that the gold was not to be searched for until a period of seven times seven weeks had elapsed, or it would turn to slates and dust. De Retz was by no means willing to wait so many months for the realisation of his wishes, and desired Prélati to intimate to the devil that he should decline any further correspondence with him if matters could not be expedited. Prélati persuaded Gilles him to wait for seven times seven days, and then, the two repaired with pick-axe and shovel to dig up the treasure. After some hard work they lighted upon a load of slates inscribed with hieroglyphical characters. Prélati broke out into a fit of rage, and culuminated the Evil One as a liar, a knave, a rogue-De Retz heartily joining in his fierce denunciations. He persuaded his master, however, to give the devil a further trial, and led him on from day to day with dark oracular hints and pretended demoniac intimations, until he had obtained nearly all the valuables remaining to his unhappy dupe. He was then preparing to escape with his plunder, when a catastrophe occurred, which involved him in his lord's ruin.
On Easter Day, in the year 1440, having communicated solemnly in his chapel, and bade farewell to the lady of Machecoul, telling her that he was departing to the Holy Land, the poor creature was even then afraid to question, so much did she tremble at his presence; she was also several months in her pregnancy. The Marshal permitted her sister to come on a visit as a companion during his absence. Madame de Raiz took advantage of this indulgence, after which Gilles de Laval mounted his horse, and departed. To her sister, Madame de Raiz communicated her fears and anxieties. What went on in the castle ? Why was her lord so gloomy? What signified his repeated absences? What became of the children who disappeared day by day? What were those nocturnal lights in the walled-up tower? These and the other problems excited the curiosity of both women to the utmost degree. What, all the same, could be done? The Marshal had forbidden them expressly even to approach the tower, and before leaving he had expressed this injunction. It must assuredly have a secret entrance, for which Madame de Raiz and her Sister Anne proceeded to search through the lower rooms of the castle, corner by corner, stone after stone. At last, in the chapel, behind the altar, they came upon a copper button, hidden in a mass of sculpture. It yielded under pressure, a stone slid back, and the two curiosity-seekers, now all in a tremble, distinguished the lowermost steps of a staircase, which led them to the condemned tower.
At the top of the first flight there was a kind of chapel, with a cross upside down and black candles; on the altar stood a hideous figure, no doubt representing the demon. On the second floor, they came upon furnaces, retorts, alembics, charcoal-in a word, all the apparatus of alchemy. The third flight led to a dark chamber where the heavy and fetid atmosphere compelled the young women to retreat. Madame de Raiz came into collision with a vase, which fell over, and she was conscious that her robe and feet were soaked by some thick and unknown liquid. On returning to the light at the head of the stairs, she found that she was bathed in blood.
Sister Anne would have fled from the place, but in Madame de Raiz curiosity was even stronger than disgust or fear. She descended the stairs, took a lamp from the infernal chapel and returned to the third floor, where a frightful spectacle awaited her. Copper vessels filled with blood were ranged the whole length of the walls, bearing labels with a date on each, and in the middle of the room there was a black marble table, on which lay the body of a child, murdered quite recently. It was one of those basins which had fallen, and black blood had spread far and wide over the grimy and worm-eaten wooden floor. The two women were now half-dead with terror. Madame de Raiz endeavoured at all costs to efface the evidence of her indiscretion. She went in search of a sponge and water, to wash the boards, but she only extended the stain, and that which at first seemed black, became all scarlet in hue. Suddenly a loud commotion echoed through the castle, mixed with the cries of people calling to Madame de Raiz. She distinguished the awe-stricken words: "Here is Monseigneur come back." "The two women made for the staircase, but at the same moment they were aware of the trampling of steps and the sound of other voices in the devil's chapel. Sister Anne fled upwards to the battlement of the tower; Madame de Raiz went down trembling, and found herself face to face with her husband, in the act of ascending, accompanied by the apostate priest and Prélati. 66 66 Gilles de Laval seized his wife by the arm, and without speaking, dragged her into the infernal chapel. It was then that Prélati observed to the Marshal: It is needs must, as you see, and the victim has come of her own accord.... "Be it so," answered his master. Begin the Black Mass...." The apostate priest went to the altar, while Gilles de Laval opened a little cupboard fixed therein, and drew out a large knife, after which he sat down close to his spouse, who was now almost in a swoon, and lying in a heap on a bench against the wall. The sacrilegious ceremonies began. It must be explained that the Marshal, so far from taking the road to Jerusalem, had proceeded only to Nantes, where Prélati lived; he attacked this miserable wretch with the uttermost fury, and threatened to slay him if he did not furnish the means of extracting from the devil that which he had been demanding for so long a time. With the object of obtaining delay, Prélati declared that terrible conditions were required by the infernal master, first among which would be the sacrifice of the Marshal's unborn child, after tearing it forcibly from the mother's womb. Gilles de Laval made no reply, but returned at once to Machecoul, the Florentine sorcerer and his accomplice, the priest, being in his train. With the rest we are acquainted.
Meanwhile, Sister Anne, left to her own devices on the roof of the tower, and not daring to come down, had removed her veil, to make signs of distress at chance. They were answered by two cavaliers, accompanied by a posse of armed men, who were riding towards the castle; they proved to be her two brothers, who, on learning the spurious departure of the Marshal for Palestine, had come to visit and console Madame de Raiz. Soon after they arrived with a clatter in the court of the castle, whereupon Gilles de Laval suspended the hideous ceremony, and said to his wife: "Madame, I forgive you, and the matter is at an end between us if you do now as I tell you. Return to your apartment, change your garments, and join me in the guest-room, whither I am going to receive your brothers. But if you say one word, or cause them the slightest suspicion, I will bring you hither on their departure; we shall proceed with the Black Mass at the point where it is now broken off, and at the consecration you will die. Mark where I place this knife.
He rose up and led his wife to the door of her chamber, and subsequently received her relations and their suite, saying that this lady was preparing herself to come and salute her brothers. Madame de Raiz appeared almost immediately, pale as a spectre. Gilles de Laval never took eyes off her, seeking to control her by his glance. When her brother suggested that she was ill, she answered that it was the fatigue of pregnancy, but added in an undertone: 66 Save me, he seeks to kill me." At the same moment, Sister Anne rushed into the hall, crying: "Take us away; save us, my brothers, this man is an assassin," and she pointed to Gilles de Laval. While the Marshal summoned This people, the escort of the two visitors surrounded the women with drawn swords, and the Marshal's people disarmed instead of obeying him. Madame de Raiz, with her sister and brothers, gained the drawbridge, and left the castle.
Terrible rumours were now bruited through all the Gilles country-side. It was noticed that many young girls and boys had disappeared. Some had been traced to the Castle of Champtocé, and not beyond. The public voice accused him of murder, and of crimes even worse than murder of lust in its foulest and most disgusting shapes. It was true that no one dared openly accuse a baron so powerful as the Lord of Retz. It was true that whenever the circumstances of the disappearance of so many children were alluded to in his presence, he always manifested the greatest astonishment. But the suspicions of the people once aroused are not easily allayed; and the Castle of Champtocé and its lord soon acquired a fearful reputation, and were surrounded with an appalling mystery.
The continued disappearance of young boys and girls had caused so bitter a feeling in the neighbourhood that the Church had felt constrained to intervene, and on the earnest representations of the Bishop of Nantes, the Duke of Brittany ordered De Retz and his accomplice to be arrested. Their trial took place before a commission composed of the Bishop of Nantes, Chancellor of Brittany, the Vicar of the Inquisition, and Pierre l'Hôpital, the President of the Provincial Parliament. De Retz was accused of sorcery, sodomy, and murder. At first he displayed the most consummate coolness, denounced his judges as worthless and impure, and declared that rather than plead before such shameless knaves he would be hung like a dog, without trial. But the overwhelming evidence brought against him-the terrible revelations made by Prélati and his servants of his abandoned lust, of his sacrifices of young children for the supposed gratification of the devil, and the ferocious pleasure with which he gloated over the throbbing limbs and glazing eyes of those who were equally the victims of his sensuality and his cruelty-this horrible tale, as it unfolded day by day the black record of his enormities, shook even his imperturable courage, and he confessed everything. The bloodstained chronicle showed that nearly one hundred children had fallen victims to this madman and his insane greed of the Philosophers' Stone. Both De Retz and Prélati were doomed to be burned alive, but in consideration of his rank the punishment of the Marshal was somewhat mitigated. He was strangled before he was given over to the flames. On the scaffold, he exclaimed to Prélati, with a hideous assumption of religious confidence: Farewell, friend Francis. In this world we shall never meet again, but let us rest our hopes in God-we shall see each other in Paradise." The sentence was executed at Nantes, on the 23rd of February, 1440. Notwithstanding his many and atrocious cruelties," says the old chronicler, Monstrelet, "he made a very devout end, full of penitence, most humbly imploring his Creator to have mercy on his manifold sins and wickedness. When his body was partly burned, some ladies and damsels of his family requested his remains of the Duke of Brittany, that they might be interred in holy ground, which was granted. The greater part of the nobles of Brittany, more especially those of his kindred, were in the utmost grief and confusion at his shameful death." 66 66
The Castle of Champtocé still stands in its beautiful valley, and many a romantic legend flowers about its gray old walls. "The hideous, half-burnt body of the monster himself," says Trollope, "circled in flames, pale, indeed, and faint in colour, but more lasting than those the hangman kindled around his mortal form in the meadow under the walls of Nantes-is seen on bright moonlight nights, standing now on one topmost point of craggy wall, now on another, and is heard mingling his moan with the sough of the night-wind. Pale, bloodless forms, too, of youthful growth and mien, the restless, unsepulchred ghosts of the unfortunates who perished in these dungeons unassoiled, may at similar times be seen flitting backwards and forwards in numerous groups across the space enclosed by the ruined walls, with more than mortal speed, or glancing hurriedly from window to window of the fabric, as still seeking to escape from its hateful confinement."
Girard, Jean-Baptiste : A Jesuit born at Pôle in 1680, much persecuted by the Jansenists. They accused him of having seduced a girl named Catherine Cadière, who showed symptoms of possession, and had to be sent to a convent of Ursulines at Brest. His enemies found it impossible to implicate him in the affair, and the parliament of Aix, before which he was tried, were forced to acquit him. Gladen, The Root of: Regarded as a remedy for a disease called the "Elf cake," which causes a hardness of the side. The following is the prescription given in A Thousand Notable Things for the making up of the medicine :-" Take a root of gladen, and make powder thereof, and give the diseased party half a spoonful thereof, to drink in white wine, and let him eat thereof so much in his pottage at one time, and it will help him within awhile."