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: