“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 chateaux, 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 Machecoul.  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.