CHAPTER XVIII - La Bas [DOWN THERE]

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The day after that on which he had spewed such furious vituperation over the Tribunal, Gilles de Rais appeared again before his judges. He presented himself with bowed head and clasped hands. He had once more jumped from one extreme to the other. A few hours had sufficed to break the spirit of the energumen, who now declared that he recognized the authority of the magistrates and begged for-giveness for having insulted them.

They affirmed that f(' the love of Our Lord they forgot his imprecations, and, at his prayer, the Bishop and the Inquisitor revoked the sentence of excommunication which they had passed on him the day before.

This hearing was, in addition, taken up with the arraign-ment of Prelati and his accomplices. Then, authorized by the ecclesiastical text which says that a confession cannot be regarded as sufficient if it is "dubia, vaga, generalis illativa, jocosa,' the Prosecutor asserted that to certify the sincerity of his confessions Gilles must be subjected to the "canonic question," that is, to torture.

The Marshal besought the Bishop to wait until the next day, and claiming the right of confessing immediately to such judges as the Tribunal were pleased to designate, he swore that he would thereafter repeat his confession before the public and the court.

Jean de Malestroit granted this request, and the Bishop of Saint Brieuc and Pierre de l'Hospital were appointed to hear Gilles in his cell. When he had finished the recital of his debauches and murders they ordered Prelati to be brought to them.

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At sight of him Gilles burst into tears and when, after the interrogatory, preparations were made to conduct the Italian back to his dungeon, Gilles embraced him, saying, "Farewell, Francis my friend, we shall never see 'each other again in this world. I pray God to give you good patience and I hope in Him that we may meet again in great joy in Paradise. Pray God for me and I shall pray for you."

And Gilles was left alone to meditate on his crimes which he was to confess publicly at the hearing next day. That day was the impressive day of the trial. The room in which the Tribunal sat was crammed, and there were multitudes sitting on the stairs, standing in the corridors, filling the neighbouring courts, blocking the streets and lanes. From twenty miles around the peasants were come to see the memorable beast whose very name, before his capture, had served to close the doors those evenings when in universal trembling the women dared not weep aloud.

This meeting of the Tribunal was to be conducted with the most minute observance of all the forms. All the assize judges, who in a long hearing generally had their places filled by proxies, were present.

The courtroom, massive, obscure, upheld by heavy Roman pillars, had been rejuvenated. The wall, ogival, threw to cathedral height the arches of its vaulted ceiling, which were joined together, like the sides of an abbatial mitre, in a point. The room was lighted by sickly daylight which was filtered through small panes between. heavy leads. The azure of the ceiling was darkened to navy blue, and the golden stars, at that height, were as the heads of. steel pins. In the shadows of the vaults appeared the ermine of the ducal arms, dimly seen in escutcheons which were like great dice with black dots.

Suddenly the trumpets blared, the room was lighted up, and the Bishops entered. Their mitres of cloth of gold flamed like the lightning. About their necks were brilliant collars with orphreys crusted, as were the robes, with car-

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buncles. In silent processional the Bishops advanced, weighted down by their rigid copes, which fell in a flare from their shoulders and were like golden bells split in the back. In their hands they carried the crozier from which hung the maniple, a sort of green veil.

At each step they glowed like coals blown upon. Them-selves were sufficient to light the room, as they reanimated with their jewels the pale sun of a rainy October day and scattered a new lustre to all parts of the room, over the mute audience.

Outshone by the shimmer of the orphreys and the stones, the costumes of the other judges appeared darker and discordant. The black vestments of secular justice, the white and black robe of Jeon Blouyn, the silk symars, the red woollen mantles, the scarlet chaperons lined with fur, seemed faded and common.

The Bishops seated themselves in the front row, surrounding Jean de Malestroit, who from a raised seat dominated the court.

Under the escort of the men-at-arms Gilles entered. He was broken and haggard and had aged twenty years in one night. His eyes burned behind seared lids. His cheeks shook. Upon injunction he began the recital of his crimes.

In a laboured voice, choked by tears, he recounted his ahductions of children, his hideous tactics, his infernal stimulatioris, his impetuous murders, his implacable violations. Obsessed by the vision of his victims, he described their agonies drawn out or hastened, their cries, the rattle in their throats. He confessed to having wallowed in the elastic warmth of their intestines. He confessed that he had ripped out their hearts through wounds enlarged and opening like ripe fruit. And with the eyes of a somnambulist he looked down at his fingers and shook them as if blood were dripping from them.

The thunder-struck audience kept a mournful silence

which was lacerated suddenly by a few short cries, and the

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attendants, at a run, carried out fainting women, mad with horror.

He seemed to see nothing, to hear nothing. He continued to tell off the frightful rosary of his crimes. Then his voice became raucous. He was coming to the sepulchral violations, and now to the torture of the little children whom he had cajoled in order to cut their throats as he kissed them.

He divulged every detail. The account was so formidable, so atrocious, that beneath their golden caps the bishops blanched. These priests, tempered in the fires of confessional, these judges who in that time of demonomania and murder had never heard more terrifying confessions, these prelates whom no depravity had ever astonished, made the sign of the Cross, and Jean de Malestroit rose and for very shame veiled the face of the Christ.

Then all lowered their heads, and without a word they listened. The Marshal, bathed in sweat, his face down-cast, looked now at the crucifix whose invisible head and bristling crown of thorns gave their shapes to the veil..

He finished his narrative and broke down completely. Till now he had stood erect, speaking as if in a daze, recounting to himself, aloud, the memory of his ineradicable crimes. But at the end of the story his forces abandoned him. He fell on his knees and, shaken by terrific sobs, he cried, "0 God, 0 my Redeemer, 'I beseech mercy and pardon I" Then the ferocious and haughty baron, the first of his caste no doubt, humiliated himself. He turned toward the people and said, weeping, "Ye, the parents of those whom I have so cruelly put to death, give, ah give me, the succour of your pious prayers !"

Then in its white splendour the soul of the Middle Ages burst forth radiant.

Jean de Malestroit left his seat and raised the accused, who was beating the flagstones with his despairing fore-head. The judge in de Malestroit disappeared, the priest alone remained. He embraced the sinner who was repent-ing and lamenting his fault.

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A shudder overran the audience when Jean de Malestroit, with Gilles's head on his breast, said to him, "Pray that the just and rightful wrath. of the Most High be averted, weep that your tears may wash out the blood lust from your being!"

And with one accord everybody in the room knelt down and prayed for the assassin. When the orisons were hushed there was an instant of wild terror and commotion. Driven beyond human limits of horror and pity, the crowd tossed and surged. The judges of the Tribunal, silent, enervated, reconquered themselves.

With a gesture, brushing away his tears, the Prosecutor arrested the proceedings. He said that the crimes were "clear and, apparent," that the proofs were manifest, that the court would now in its conscience and soul'' chastise the culprit, and he demanded that the day of passing judgment be fixed. The Tribunal designated the day after the next.

And that day the Official of the church of Nantes, Jacques de Pentcoetdic, read in succession the two sentences. The first, passed by the Bishop and the Inquisitor for the acts coming under their common jurisdiction, began thus:

"The Holy Name of Christ invoked, we, Jean, Bishop of Nantes, and Brother Jean Blouyn, bachelor in our Holy Scriptures, of the order of the preaching friars of Nantes, and delegate of the Inquisitor of heresies for the city and diocese of Nantes, in session of the Tribunal and having before our eyes God alone ---"

And after enumerating the crimes it concluded:

"We pronounce, decide, and declare, that thou, Gilles de Rais, cited unto our Tribunal, art heinously guilty of heresy, apostasy, and , evocation of demons; that for these crimes thou hast incurred the sentence of excommunication and all other penalties determined by the law."

The second judgment, rendered by the Bishop alone, on the crimes of sodomy, sacrilege, and violation of the immunities of the Church, which more particularly concerned

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his authority, ended in the same conclusions and in the Pronunciation, in almost identical form, of the same penalty.

Gilles listened with bowed head to the reading of these judgments. When it was over the Bishop and the Inquisitor said to him, "Will you, now that you detest your errors, your evocations, and your crimes, be reincorporated into the Church our Mother?"

And upon the ardent prayers of the Marshal they relieved him of all excommunication and admitted him to Participate in the sacraments. The justice of God was satisfied, the crime was recognized, punished, but effaced by contrition and Penitence. Only human justice remained.

The Bishop and the Inquisitor remanded the culprit to the secular court, which, holding against him the abductions and the murders, pronounced the penalty of death and at-tainder. Prelati and the other accomplices were at the same time condemned to be hanged and burned alive.

"Cry to God mercy," said Pierre de l'Hospitaj, who presided over the civil hearings, "and dispose yourself to die in good state with a great repentance for having committed such crimes.

The recommendation was unnecessary. Gilles now faced death without fear. He hoped, humbly, avidly, in the mercy of the Saviour. He cried out fervently for the ter-restrial expiation, the stake, to redeem him from the eternal flames after his death.

Far from his chateaux, in his durigeon, alone, he had opened himself and viewed the cloaca which had so long been fed by the residual waters escaped from the abattoirs of Tiffauges and Machecoul. He had sobbed in despair of ever draining this stagnant pool. And thunder smitten by grace, in a cry of horror and joy, he had suddenly Seen his soul overflow and Sweep away the dank fen before a torrential current of Prayer and ecstasy. The butcher of Sodom had destroyed himself, the companion of Jeanne d'Arc had reappeared, the mystic whose soul poured out to God, in bursts of adoration, in floods of tears.

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Then he thought of his friends and wished that they also might die in a state of grace. He asked the Bishop of Nantes that they might be executed not before nor after him, but at the same time. He carried his point that he was the most guilty and that he must instruct them in saving their souls and assist them at the moment when they should mount the scaffold. Jean de Malestroit granted the supplication.

"What is curious," said Durtal, interrupting his writing to light a cigarette, "is that----"

A gentle ring. Mme. Chantelouve entered.

She declared that she could stay only two minutes. She had a carriage waiting below. "Tonight," she said, "I will call for you at nine. First write me a letter in practically these terms," and she handed him a paper. He unfolded it and read this declaration:

"I certify that all that I have said and written I about the Black Mass, about the priest who celebrated it, about the place where I claimed to have witnessed it, about the persons alleged to have been there, is pure invention. I affirm that I imagined all these incidents, that, in consequence, all that I have narrated is false."

"Docre's?" he asked, studying the handwriting, minute, pointed, twisted, aggressive.

"Yes, and he wants this declaration, not dated, to be made in the form of a letter from you to a person consulting you on the subject."

"Your canon distrusts me."

"Of course. You write books."

"It doesn't please me infinitely to sign that," murmured Durtal. "What if I refuse?"

"You will not go to the Black Mass."

His curiosity overcame his reluctance. He wrote and signed the letter and Mme. Chantelouve put it in her card-case.

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"And in what street is the ceremony to take place?"

"In the rue Olivier de Serres."

\"Where is that?"

"Near the rue de Vaugirard, away up."

"Is that where Docre lives?"

"No, we are going to a private house which belongs to a lady he knows. Now, if you'll be so good, put off your cross-examination to some other time, because I am in an awful hurry. At nine o'clock. Don't forget. Be all ready."

He had hardly time to kiss her and she was gone.

"Well," said he, "I already had data on incubacy and poisoning by spells. There remained only the Black Mass, to make me thoroughly acquainted with Satanism as it is practiced in our day. And I am to see it! I'll be damned if I thought there were such undercurrents in Paris. And how circumstances hang together and lead to each other! I had to occupy myself with Gilles de Rais and the diabolism of the Middle Ages to get contemporary diabolism revealed to me." And he thought of Docre again. "What a sharper that priest is! Among the occultists who maunder today in the universal decomposition of ideas he is the only one who interests me.

"The others, the mages, the theosophists, the cabalists, the spiritists, the hermetics, the Rosicrucians, remind me, when they are not mere thieves, of children playing and scuffling in a cellar. And if one descend lower yet, into the hole-in-the-wall places of the pythonesses, clairvoyants, and mediums, what does one find except agencies of prostitution and gambling? All these pretended peddlers of the future are extremely nasty; that's the only thing in the occult of which one can be sure."

Des Hermies interrupted the course of these reflections by ringing and walking in. He came to announce that Gevingey had returned and that they were all to dine at Carhaix's the night after next.

"Is Carhaix's bronchitis cured?"

"Yes, completely."

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Preoccupied with the idea of the Black Mass, Durtal could not keep silent. He let out the fact that he was to witness the ceremony-and, confronted by Des Hermies's stare of stupefaction, he added that he had promised secrecy and that he could not, for the present, tell him more.

"You're the lucky one I" said Des Hermies. "Is it too much to ask you the name of the abb who is to officiate?"

"Not at all. Canon Docre. "

"Ah!" and the other was silent. He was evidently trying to divine by what manipulations his friend had been able to get in touch with the renegade.

"Some time ago you told me," Durtal said, "that in the Middle Ages the Black Mass was said on the naked buttocks of a woman; that in the seventeenth century it was celebrated on the abdomen, and now?"

"I believe that it takes place before an altar as in church. Indeed it was sometimes celebrated thus at the end of the fifteenth century in Biscay. It is true that the Devil then officiated in person. Clothed in rent and soiled episcopal habits, he gave communion with round pieces of shoe leather for hosts, saying, 'This is my body. And he gave these disgusting wafers to the faithful to eat after they had kissed his left hand and his breech. I hope that you will not be obliged to render such base homage to your canon."

Durtal laughed. "No, I don't think he requires a pretend like that. But look here, aren't you of the decided opinion that the creatures who so piously, infamously, follow these offices are a bit mad?"

"Mad? Why? The cult of the Demon is no more insane than that of God. One is rotten and the other resplendent, that is all. By your reckoning all people who worship any god whatever would de demented. No. The affiliates of Satanism are mystics of a vile order, but they are mystics. Now, it is highly probable that their exaltations into the extraterrestrial of Evil coincide with the rages of their frenzied senses, for lechery is the wet nurse of Domonism.

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Medicine classes, rightly or wrongly, the hunger for ordure in the unknown categories of neurosis, and well it may, for nobody knows anything about neuroses. except that everybody has them. It is quite certain that, in this, more than in any previous century, the nerves quiver at the least shock. For instance, recall the. newspaper accounts of executions of criminals. We learn that the executioner goes about his work timidly, that he is on the point of fainting, that he has nervous prostration when he decapitates a man. Then compare this nervous wreck with the invincible tor-turers of the olden time. They would thrust your arm into a sleeve of moistened parchment which when set on fire would draw up and in a leisurely fashion reduce your flesh to dust. Or they would drive wedges into your thighs and split the bones. They would crush your thumbs in the thumbscrew. Or they would singe all the hair off your epidermis with a poker, or roll up the skin from your ab-domen and leave you with a kind of apron. They would drag you at the cart's tail, give you the strappado, roast you, drench you with ignited alcohol, and through it all pre-serve an impassive countenance and tranquil nerves not to be shaken by any cry or plaint. Only, as these exercises were somewhat fatiguing, the torturers, after the operation, were ravenously hungry and required a deal of drink. They were sanguinaries of a mental stability not to be shaken, while now I But to return to your companions in sacrilege. This evening, if they are not maniacs, you will find them -- doubt it not -- repulsive lechers. Observe them closely. I am sure that to them the invocation of Beelzebub is a prelibation of carnality. Don't be afraid, because, Lord tin this group there won't be any to make you imitate 'the martyr of whom Jacques de Voragine speaks in his history of Saint Paul the Eremite. You know that legend?"

"Well, to refresh your soul I will tell you. This martyr, who was very young, was stretched out, his hands and feet

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bound, on a bed, then a superb specimen of femininity was brought in, who tried to force him. As he was burning and was about to sin, he bit off his tongue and spat it in the face of the woman, "and thus pain drove out temptation," says the good de Voragine."

"My heroism would not carry me so far as that, I con-fess. But must you go so soon?"

"Yes, I have a pressing engagement."

"What a queer age, said Durtal, conducting him to the door. "It is just at the moment when positivism is at its zenith that mysticism rises again and the follies of the occult begin."

"Oh, but it's always been that way. The tail ends of all centuries are alike. They're always periods of vacillation and uncertainty. When materialism is rotten - ripe magic takes root. This phenomenon reappears every hundred years. Not to go further back, look at the decline of the last century. Alongside of the rationalists and atheists you find Saint-Germain, Cagliostro, Saint-Martin, Gabalis, Cazotte, the Rosicrucian societies, the infernal circles, as now. With that, good-bye and good' luck."

"Yes?" said Durtal, closing the door, "but Cagliostro and his ilk had a certain audacity, and perhaps a little knowledge, while the mages of our time-what inept fakes !"

"I had to occupy myself with Gilles de Rais and the diabolism of the
Middle Ages to get contemporary diabolism revealed to me." j-k h
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