On the ground he traces a great circle and commands his two companions to step inside it.  Sille refuses.  Gripped by a terror which he cannot explain, he begins to tremble all over.  He goes to the window, opens it, and stands ready for flight, murmuring exorcisms under his breath.  Gilles, bolder, stands in the middle of the circle, but at the first conjurgations he too trembles and tries to make the sign of the cross.  The sorcerer orders him not to budge.  At one moment he feels something seize him by the neck.  Panic-stricken, he vacillates, supplicating Our Lady to save him.  The evocator, furious, throws him out of the circle.  Gilles precipitates himself through the door, de Sille jumps out of the window, they meet below and stand aghast.  Howls are heard in the chamber where the magician is operating.  There is “a sound as of sword strokes raining on a wooden billet,” then groans, cries of distress, the appeals of a man being assassinated.

They stand rooted to the spot.  When the clamour ceases they venture to open the door and find the sorcerer lying; in pools of blood, his forehead caved in, his body horribly mangled.

They carry him out.  Gilles, smitten with remorse, gives the man his own bed, bandages him, and has him confessed.  For several days the sorcerer hovers between life and death but finally recovers and flees from the castle.

Gilles was despairing of obtaining from the Devil the recipe for the sovereign magisterium, when Eustache Blanchet’s return from Italy was announced.  Eustache brought the master of Florentine magic, the irresistible evoker of demons and larvae, Francesco Prelati.

This man struck awe into Gilles.  Barely twenty-three years old, he was one of the wittiest, the most erudite, and the most polished men of the time.  What had he done before he came to install himself at Tiffauges, there to begin, with Gilles, the most frightful series of sins against the Holy Ghost that has ever been known?  His testimony in the criminal trial of Gilles does not furnish us any very detailed information on his own score.  He was born in the diocese of Lucca, at Pistoia, and had been ordained a priest by the Bishop of Arezzo.  Some time after his entrance into the priesthood, he had become the pupil of a thaumaturge of Florence, Jean de Fontenelle, and had signed a pact with a demon named Barron.  From that moment onward, this insinuating and persuasive, learned and charming abbe, must have given himself over to the most abominable of sacrileges and the most murderous practices of black magic.

At any rate Gilles came completely under the influence of this man.  The extinguished furnaces were relighted, and that Stone of the Sages, which Prelati had seen, flexible, frail, red and smelling of calcinated marine salt, they sought together furiously, invoking Hell.

Their incantations were all in vain.  Gilles, disconsolate, redoubled them, but they finally produced a dreadful result and Prelati narrowly escaped with his life.