“Lost, at Machecoul, the son of Georget le Barbier, ’who was seen, a certain day, knocking apples from a tree behind the hotel Rondeau, and who since hath not been seen.’

“Lost, at Thonaye, the child of Mathelin Thouars, ’and he had been heard to cry and lament and the said child was about twelve years of age.’

“At Machecoul, again, the day of Pentecost, mother and father Sergent leave their eight-year-old boy at home, and when they return from the fields ’they did not find the said child of eight years of age, wherefore they marvelled and were exceeding grieved.’

“At Chantelou, it is Pierre Badieu, mercer of the parish, who says that a year or thereabouts ago, he saw, in the domain de Rais, ’two little children of the age of nine who were brothers and the children of Robin Pavot of the aforesaid place, and since that time neither have they been seen neither doth any know what hath become of them.’

“At Nantes, it is Jeanne Darel who deposes that ’on the day of the feast of the Holy Father, her true child named Olivier did stray from her, being of the age of seven and eight years, and since the day of the feast of the Holy Father neither did she see him nor hear tidings.’

“And the account of the investigation goes on, revealing hundreds of names, describing the grief of the mothers who interrogate passersby on the highway, and telling of the keening of the families from whose very homes children have been spirited away when the elders went to the fields to hoe or to sow the hemp.  These phrases, like a desolate refrain, recur again and again, at the end of every deposition:  ’They were seen complaining dolorously,’ ‘Exceedingly they did lament.’  Wherever the bloodthirsty Gilles dwells the women weep.

“At first the frantic people tell themselves that evil fairies and malicious genii are dispersing the generation, but little by little terrible suspicions are aroused.  As soon as the Marshal quits a place, as he goes from the chateau de Tiffauges to the chateau de Champtoce, and from there to the castle of La Suze or to Nantes, he leaves behind him a wake of tears.  He traverses a countryside and in the morning children are missing.  Trembling, the peasant realizes also that wherever Prelati, Roger de Bricqueville, Gilles de Sille, any of the Marshal’s intimates, have shown themselves, little boys have disappeared.  Finally, the peasant learns to look with horror upon an old woman, Perrine Martin, who wanders around, clad in grey, her face covered—­as is that of Gilles de Sille—­with a black stamin.  She accosts children, and her speech is so seductive, her face, when she raises her veil, so benign, that all follow her to the edge of a wood, where men carry them off, gagged, in sacks.  And the frightened people call this purveyor of flesh, this ogress, ‘La Mefrraye,’ from the name of a bird of prey.

“These emissaries spread out, covering all the villages and hamlets, tracking the children down at the orders of the Chief Huntsman, the sire de Bricqueville.  Not content with these beaters, Gilles takes to standing at a window of the chateau, and when young mendicants, attracted by the renown of his bounty, ask an alms, he runs an appraising eye over them, has any who excite his lust brought in and thrown into an underground prison and kept there until, being in appetite, he is pleased to order a carnal supper.