heavy curtain, he threw it wide open to the wall.
Then through the black oblong so made, a huge and shaggy she-wolf
slouched slowly into the room.

The marshal kicked the brute impatiently with his slippered foot as
she entered, and, strange to relate, the wolf slunk past him with the
cowed air of a dog conscious of having deserved punishment.

"Astarte, vilest beast," he cried, "have I not a thousand times warned
you to be silent and wait outside when I am at work within my
chamber?"

The she-wolf eyed her master as he went back towards his table. Then,
seeing him lift his pen, with a sigh of content she dropped down upon
the warm hearthstone, lying with her haunches towards the blazing logs
and her bristling head couched upon her paws. Her yellow shining eyes
blinked sleepily and approvingly at him, while with her tongue she
rasped the soft pads of her feet one by one, biting away the fur from
between the toes with her long and gleaming teeth. Presently Astarte
appeared to doze off. Her eyes were shut, her attitude relaxed. But so
soon as ever her master moved even an inch to consult a marked list of
dates which hung on a hook beside him, or leaned over to dip a quill
in his scarlet ink, the flashing yellow eye and the gleam of white
teeth underneath told that Astarte was awake and intently watching
every movement of the worker.

Through the heavy boom of the storm without, the thresh of the rain
upon the lattice casement, and the irregular whipping gusts which
shook the house, the soft wheeze of the engrossing quill could be
heard, the crackle of the burning logs and the heavy regular breathing
of the couchant she-wolf being the only other sounds audible within
the apartment.

Gilles de Retz wrote on, smiling to himself as he added line after
line to his manuscript. His beard shone with a truculent blue-black
lustre. For the moment the aged look had quite gone out of his face.
His cheek appeared flushed with the hues of youth and reinvigorated
hope, yet withal of a youth without innocence or charm. Rather it
seemed as if fresh blood had been injected into the veins of some aged
demon, moribund and cruel, giving, instead of health or grace, only a
new lease of cruelty and lust.

Presently another door opened, the main entrance of the apartment this
time, not the small private portal through which Astarte the wolf had
been admitted. A girl came in, thrusting aside the curtain, and, for
the space of a moment, h