The usual signs of approaching high saturnalia at Machecoul had not been wanting.

Early in the morning La Meffraye had been seen hovering like an unclean bird of prey about the playing grounds of the village children at Saint Benoit on the edges of the forest.  At nine the frightened villagers heard the howl of a day-hunting wolf, and one Louis Verger, a woodman who was cutting bark for the tanneries in the valley, saw a huge grey wolf rush out and seize his little son, Jean, a boy of five years old, who came bringing his father’s breakfast.  With a great cry he hurried back to alarm the village, but when men gathered with scythes and rude weapons of the chase, the beast’s track was lost in the depth of the forest.

Little Jean Verger of Saint Benoit was never seen again, unless it were he who, half hidden under the long black cloak of La Meffraye, was brought at noon by the private postern of the baron into the Castle of Machecoul.

So the men of Saint Benoit went not back to their work, but abode together all that day, sullen anger burning in their hearts.  And one calling himself the servant of the Bishop of Nantes went about among them, and his words were as knives, sharp and bitter beyond belief.  And ever as he spoke the men turned them about till they faced Machecoul.  Their lips moved like those of a Moslemite who says his prayers towards Mecca.  And the words they uttered were indeed prayers of solemnest import.

With his usual devotion at such seasons, Gilles de Retz had attended service thrice that day in his Chapel of the Holy Innocents.  His behaviour had been marked by intense devoutness.  An excessive tenderness of conscience had characterised his confessions to Pere Blouyn, his spiritual director-in-ordinary.  He confessed as his most flagrant sin that his thoughts were overmuch set on the vanities of the world, and that he had even sometimes been tempted of the devil to question the right of Holy Church herself to settle all questions according to the will of her priests and prelates.

Whereupon Pere Blouyn, with suave correctness of judgment, had pointed out wherein his master erred; but also cautioned him against that undue tenderness of conscience natural to one with his exalted position and high views of duty and life.  Finally the marshal had received absolution.

In the late afternoon the Lord of Retz commanded the fire to be laid ready for lighting in his chamber aloft in the keep of Machecoul, and set himself down to listen to the singing of the choir, which, under the guidance of Precentor Renouf, rehearsed for him the sweetest hymns recently written for the choir of the Holy Father at Rome.  For there the marshal’s choir-master had been trained, and with its leader he still kept up a correspondence upon kindred interests.

Gilles de Retz, as he sat under the late blooming roses in the afternoon sunshine of the autumn of western France, appeared to the casual eye one of the most noble seigneurs and the most enlightened in the world.  He affected a costume already semiecclesiastic as a token of his ultimate intention to enter holy orders.  It seemed indeed as if the great soldier who had ridden into Orleans with Dunois and the Maid had begun to lay aside his earthly glories and seek the heavenly.