Then a deep despair settled down on Sholto’s spirit.  He knew that Maud Lindesay and the fair Maid of Galloway had undoubtedly fallen into the power of the terrible Marshal de Retz, Sieur of Machecoul, ambassador of the King of France, and also many things else which need not in this place be put on record.

CHAPTER XLII

ASTARTE THE SHE-WOLF

In a dark wainscoted room overlooking that branch of the Seine which divides the northern part of Paris from the Isle of the City, Gilles de Retz, lately Chamberlain of the King of France, sat writing.  The hotel had recently been redecorated after the sojourn of the English.  Wooden pavements had again been placed in the rooms where the barbarians had strewed their rushes and trampled upon their rotting fishbones.  Noble furniture from the lathes of Poitiers, decorated with the royal ermines of Brittany, stood about the many alcoves.  The table itself whereon the famous soldier wrote was closed in with drawers and shelves which descended to the floor and seemed to surround the occupant like a cell.

Before de Retz stood a curious inkstand, made by some cunning jeweller out of the upper half of a human skull of small size, cut across at the eye-holes, inverted, and set in silver with a rim of large rubies.  This was filled with ink of a startling vermilion colour.

The document which Gilles de Retz was busy transcribing upon sheets of noble vellum in this strange ink was of an equally mysterious character.  The upper part had the appearance of a charter engrossed by the hand of some deft legal scribe, but the words which followed were as startling as the vehicle by means of which they were made to stand out from the vellum.

“Unto Barran-Sathanas; Lord most glorious and puissant in hell beneath and in the earth above, I, his unworthy servitor Gilles de Retz, make my vows, hereby forever renouncing God, Christ, and the Blessed Saints.”

To this appalling introduction succeeded many lines of close and delicate script, interspersed with curious cabalistic signs, in which that of the cross reversed could frequently be detected.  Gilles de Retz wrote rapidly, rising only at intervals to throw a fresh log of wood across the vast iron dogs on either side of the wide fireplace, as the rain from the northwest beat more and more fiercely upon the small glazed panes of the window and howled among the innumerable gargoyles and twisted roof-stacks of the Hotel de Pornic.

Within the chamber itself, in the intervals of the storm, a low continuous growling made itself evident.  At first it was disregarded by the writer, but presently, by its sheer pertinacity, the sound so irritated him that he rose from his seat, and, striding to a narrow door covered with a heavy curtain, he threw it wide open to the wall.  Then through the black oblong so made, a huge and shaggy she-wolf slouched slowly into the room.