And as they entered the city, from behind and before, from all the windows and roofs, rose the hoarse grunting roar of the hatred and cursing of a whole people.

But the object of all this rested calm and unmoved, and his cruel grey eye had no expression in it save a certain tolerant and amused contempt.

“Bah!” he muttered.  “Would that I had slain ten millions of you!  It is my only regret that I had not the time.  It is almost unworthy to die for a few score children!”

During the journey to Nantes, Gilles de Retz kept the grand reserve with which, when he came to himself, he had treated those who had captured him.  To the Duke only would he condescend to reply, and to him he rather spoke as an equal unjustly treated than as a guilty prisoner and suppliant.

“For this, Sire of Brittany,” he said, “must you answer to your overlord, the King of France, whose minister and marshal I am!”

The Duke would have made some feeble reply, but Pierre de l’Hopital cut across the conversation with that stern irony which characterised him.

“My lord,” he said, “remember that before you were made Marshal of France you were born a subject of the Duke of Brittany!  And as such you shall be judged.”

“I decline to stand at your tribunal!” said the marshal, haughtily.

“Soit!” said the President, indifferently, “but all the same you shall be tried!”

Duke John, knowing well that while his court was being held in the capital city of his province, and especially during the trial of Gilles de Retz, Nantes was no place for young maidens who had suffered like Maud Lindesay and Margaret Douglas, sent them under escort to the Castle of Angers.

Sholto MacKim and his father were allowed to accompany them, that they might not be without some of their own country to speak with during their sojourn in France.  The Lord James, however, elected to abide with the court.  For there were many ladies there, and, having nobility of address and desiring to perfect himself in the niceties of fashionable speech (which changed daily), he had great pleasure in their society, and rode in the lists by the side of the Loire with even more than his former gallantry and success.

For, as he said, he needed some compensation for the long abstinence enforced upon him by his habit of holy palmer.  And right amply did he make himself amends, and was accounted by dames fair and free the lightsomest and properest Scot who had ever come into the land of France.

With him Laurence remained, both because his father was still angry with him on account of his desertion of them in Paris, and also because having been so long in the Castle of Machecoul, there were important matters concerning which in the forthcoming trial he alone could give evidence.

Pierre de l’Hopital would have detained the Lady Sybilla as a possible accomplice of the Sieur de Retz, but by the intercession of the Scottish maidens, as well as by the sworn evidence of Sholto and the Lord James, testifying that wholly by her means Gilles de Retz had finally been caught red-handed, she was permitted to depart whither she would.