“Let’s see,” said Durtal, running over his notes.  “I left him at the moment when the expiation begins.  As I had written in one of my preceding chapters, the inhabitants of the region dominated by the chateaux of the Marshal know now who the inconceivable monster is who carries children off and cuts their throats.  But no one dare speak.  When, at a turn in the road, the tall figure of the butcher is seen approaching, all flee, huddle behind the hedges, or shut themselves up in the cottages.

“And Gilles passes, haughty and sombre, in the solitude of villages where no one dares venture abroad.  Impunity seems assured him, for what peasant would be mad enough to attack a master who could have him gibbeted at a word?

“Again, if the humble give up the idea of bringing Gilles de Rais to justice, his peers have no intention of combating him for the benefit of peasants whom they disdain, and his liege, the duke of Brittany, Jean V, burdens him with favours and blandishments in order to extort his lands from him at a low price.

“A single power can rise and, above feudal complicities, above earthly interest, avenge the oppressed and the weak.  The Church.  And it is the Church in fact, in the person of Jean de Malestroit, which rises up before the monster and fells him.

“Jean de Malestroit, Bishop of Nantes, belongs to an illustrious line.  He is a near kinsman of Jean V, and his incomparable piety, his infallible Christian wisdom, and his enthusiastic charity, make him venerated, even by the duke.

“The wailing of Gilles’s decimated flock reaches his ears.  In silence he begins an investigation and, setting spies upon the Marshal, waits only for an opportune moment to begin the combat.  And Gilles suddenly commits an inexplicable crime which permits the Bishop to march forthwith upon him and smite him.

“To recuperate his shattered fortune, Gilles has sold his signorie of Saint Etienne de Mer Morte to a subject of Jean V, Guillaume le Ferron, who delegates his brother, Jean le Ferron, to take possession of the domain.

“Some days later the Marshal gathers the two hundred men of his military household and at their head marches on Saint Etienne.  There, the day of Pentecost, when the assembled people are hearing mass, he precipitates himself, sword in hand, into the church, sweeps aside the faithful, throwing them into tumult, and, before the dumbfounded priest, threatens to cleave Jean le Ferron, who is praying.  The ceremony is broken off, the congregation take flight.  Gilles drags le Ferron, pleading for mercy, to the chateau, orders that the drawbridge be let down, and by force occupies the place, while his prisoner is carried away to Tiffauges and thrown into an underground dungeon.

“Gilles has, at one and the same time, violated the unwritten law of Brittany forbidding any baron to raise troops without the consent of the duke, and committed double sacrilege in profaning a chapel and seizing Jean le Ferron, who is a tonsured clerk of the Church.