Then came the great surprise.  After the evidence of Henriet and Poitou had been read to him, the marshal was asked to plead.  To the surprise of all, the accused claimed benefit of clergy.

“I have been a great sinner,” he said, “I have indeed deserved a thousand deaths.  But now I am a man of God.  I have confessed.  I have received absolution for all my sins.  God has forgiven me, and my soul is cleansed!”

“Good!” answered Pierre de l’Hopital, “I have nothing to do with your soul.  I must leave that, as you very pertinently remark, to God.  But I am here to try your body, and if found guilty to condemn that body to suffer the penalties by law provided according to the statutes of Brittany.”

Then Clerk Henriet was brought in to testify more fully of the crimes beyond parallel in the history of mankind.

The court had been hung round with black, and the only object which appeared prominent was a beautiful ivory crucifix with a noble figure of the Redeemer of Men carved upon it.  This was suspended, according to the custom, over the head of the President of the Tribunal.

Henriet had not proceeded far with his terrible relation of well nigh inconceivable crimes when he stopped.

“I cannot go on,” he said, in a broken appealing voice; “I cannot tell what I have to tell with That Figure looking down upon me!”

So, with the whole Court standing up in reverence, the image of the Most Pitiful was solemnly veiled from sight, that such deeds of darkness might not be so much as named in that holy and gracious presence.

And during the ceremony Friar Gilles of the order of the Carmelites stood up more reverently than any, for now, seeing that no better might be, he had definitely renounced Barran-Sathanas and cast in his lot with God Almighty.

* * * * *

“The sentence of this court is that you, Gilles de Laval, Lord of Retz, Marshal of France, and you, Poitou and Henriet, be carried to the meadow of La Biesse at nine of the clock on the morning of to-morrow, and that you be there hanged and burned till you be dead.  And to God the Just One be the glory!”

The voice of Pierre de l’Hopital rang out through the silence of the hall of judgment.

“Amen!” said Friar Gilles, devoutly crossing himself.

And so in due course on the meadow of La Biesse, by the side of the blue Loire, the evil soul of Gilles de Retz went to its own place with all the paraphernalia of repentance and in the full odour of a somewhat hectic sanctity.

* * * * *

The day after the burning, a little company of riders left the city of Angers, journeying westward along the Loire.  It consisted of the maidens Margaret Douglas and Maud Lindesay, with Sholto MacKim and a dozen horsemen belonging to his Grace of Brittany.  It had been arranged that they were to be joined, upon an eminence above the river on the right bank, by the Lord James, Malise, and Laurence, with the escort which was to accompany them to the port of Saint Nazaire.  There (as was necessary in order to escape the troublesome navigation of the swift and treacherous upper reaches) they would find vessels ready to set sail for Scotland.