“Listen to me,” he said; “you are a game lad enough, but you do not know where you are going, nor yet what may happen to you there.  We will fight you if you come back safe, but meantime you are one of ourselves, and we of the choir have sworn to stand by one another.  Can you keep a pea in your mouth without swallowing it?”

“Why, of course I can,” said Laurence, wondering what was to come next.  “I can keep a dozen and shoot them through a bore of alder tree at a penny without missing once, which I wot is more than any Frenchman ever—­”

“Well, then,” whispered the lad Renouf, breaking in on his boast with a white countenance, “hearken well to me.  When you enter the chamber of the marshal, put this in your mouth.  And if nothing happens keep it there, but be careful neither to swallow it nor yet to bite upon it.  But if it should chance that either Henriet or Poitou or Gilles de Sille seize hold of your arms, bite hard upon the pellet till you feel a bitter taste and then swallow.  That is all.  You are indeed a cock whose comb wants cutting, and if all be well, we will incise it for your soul’s good.  But in the meanwhile you are of our company and fellowship.  So for God’s sake and your own do as you are bid.  Fare you well.”

As he followed Clerk Henriet, Laurence looked at the round pellet in his hand.  It was white, soft like ripe fruit, of an elastic consistency, and of the largeness of a pea.

As Laurence ascended the stairs, he heard the practice of the choir beginning in the chapel.  Precentor Renouf, the father of Blaise, had summoned the youths from the cloisters with a long mellow whistle upon his Italian pitch-pipe, running up and down the scale and ending with a flourished “A-a-men.”

The open windows and the pierced stone railing of the great staircase of Machecoul brought up the sound of that sweet singing from the chapel to the ear of the adventurous Scot as through a funnel.  They were beginning the practice for the Christmas services, though the time was not yet near.

“Unto God be the glory
In the Highest;
Peace be on the earth,
On the earth,
Unto men who have good-will.”

So they chanted in their white robes in the Chapel of the Holy Innocents in the Castle of Machecoul near by the Atlantic shore.

The chamber of Gilles de Retz testified to the extraordinary advancement of that great man in knowledge which has been claimed as peculiar to much later centuries.  The window casements were so arranged that in a moment the place could either be made as dark as midnight or flooded with bright light.  The walls were always freshly whitewashed, and the lime was constantly renewed.  The stone floor was stained a deep brick red, and that, too, would often be applied freshly during the night.  At a time when the very word “sanitation” was unknown, Gilles had properly constructed conduits leading from an adjoining apartment to the castle ditch.  The chimney was wide as a peasant’s whole house, and the vast fireplace could hold on its iron dogs an entire waggon-load of faggots.  Indeed, that amount was regularly consumed every day when the marshal deigned to abide at Machecoul for his health and in pursuance of his wonderful studies into the deep things of the universe.