“Hear us, O Barran-Sathanas!  Thou hast been deaf in past days, because we served thee not without drawback or withholding, without sparing and without remorse.  Because we hesitated to give thee the best, the delicatest, the most pitiful.  But now take this innocentest innocence.  Behold I, Gilles de Retz, make to thee the matchless sacrifice of the Red Milk thou lovest.

“The Red Milk I pour for thee.  The Red Milk I bring thee.  The Red Milk I drink to thee—­that thou mayest be pleased to restore vital energy and new youth to my veins, to make me strong as a young man in his strength, and wiser than the wisdom of age.  Hear me, O great master of all the evil of the universe, thou equal and coadjutor of the Master of Good, hear and manifest thy so mighty power.  Hear me and answer, O Barran-Sathanas!”

Gilles de Retz took the cup from the hands of the servitors.  He seemed so weak with his crying that he could hardly hold it between his trembling palms.

He lifted his head and again cried aloud: 

“See, I am weak, my Satan—­see how I tremble.  Strength is departed from me.  Youth is dead.  Help thy faithful servant, aid him to lift up this precious oblation to thee!”

And as the great dusky image seemed to lean over him, with a hoarse cry Gilles de Retz raised the cup and held it high above his head.  As he did so a beam, sudden as lightning, fell upon it, and with a quick, instinctive horror, Laurence saw that it was filled to the brim with blood fresh and red.

The marshal’s voice strengthened.

“It is coming!  It is coming!  Barran manifests himself!  O great lord, to thee I drain this draught!” cried Gilles de Retz.  “The Red Milk, the precious milk of innocence, to thee I drink it!”

And he set the cup to his lips and drank deep and long.

* * * * *

“It comes.  It fills me.  I am strong.  O Barran, give me yet more strength.  My limbs revive.  My pulse beats.  I am young as when I rode with Dunois.  Barran, thou art indeed mightier than God.  I will give thee yet more and more.  I swear it.  I have kept the best wine till the last—­the death vintage of a great house.  The wine of beauty and brightness—­I have kept it for thee.  Halt not to make me stronger!  Help me—­Barran, help—­I fail—!”

His voice had risen higher and higher till it was well nigh a scream of agony.  Strangely too, in spite of the fictitious youth that glowed in his veins and coloured his cheek, it sounded like a senile shriek.

But all suddenly, at the very height of his exaltation, the cup from which he had drunk slipped from his hand and rolled upon the tesselated pavement of the temple, staining it in gouts and vivid blotches of crimson.

“Hasten, ere I lose the power—­I feel it checked.  Poitou, De Sille, Henriet, go bring hither from the White Tower the Scottish maids.  Run, dogs—­or you die!  Quick, Henriet!  Good De Sille, quick!  Fail not your master now!  It ebbs, it weakens—­and it was so near completion.  Stay, O Barran, till I finish the sacrifice, and here at thy feet offer up to thee the richest, and the fairest, and the noblest!  Bring hither the maidens!  I tell you, bring them quickly!”