Long and loud laughed Gilles de Retz, a hard, evil, and relentless
laugh.

"Sybilla de Thouars an innocent maiden's sacrifice! Barran-Sathanas
himself laughs at the jest. He would have no pleasure in your death.
Soul and body you are his already. He desires only the blood and
suffering of the innocent--of those on whom he has never set his mark.
Nay, these three shall surely die, and in that bath of porphyry
hollowed out under his altar I will lave me from head to foot in the
Red Milk of innocence. I have no more need of you, Sybilla mine. You
have done your work, and for your reward you can now depart to your
own place. Out of my way, I say. Henriet, Poitou, quick! Remove this
woman from before the altar!"

Then, struggling strongly in their hands, the servitors carried the
Lady Sybilla to the farther end of the chapel, where they abode on
either side, holding her fast. And as the last grains of sand began to
swirl towards their fall and a little whirlpool to form funnel-wise in
the midst of the hour-glass, the butcher was left alone with his
victims upon the platform of the iron altar.

Gilles de Retz turned towards the image, and, lifting up his hand
solemnly, he cried in a great voice, "O Barran-Sathanas, be pleased to
behold this innocent blood spilled slowly in thine honour. As the red
fount flows and the red fire burns, restore my youth and make me
strong. Faithfully will I serve thee and thee alone, renouncing all
other. O Barran-Sathanas, great and only Lord, receive my sacrifice.
It is the hour!"

And so saying he laid hold of Maud Lindesay by the hair, and raised
the curved knife on high.

Then from the end of the chapel to which the Lady Sybilla had been
taken there came a sound. With a great despairing effort she burst
from her captors' hands and ran forward. She knelt down on the marble
slab whereon the maids had stood at their first entering, and as she
knelt she held aloft a golden crucifix.

"If there be a God in heaven, let him manifest himself now!" she
cried, "by the virtue of this cross of His son Jesus Christ, I call
upon Him!"

Then suddenly all the place was filled with a mighty rushing noise.
The last grains ran low in the hour-glass. It shifted in its stand and
turned over. A tremor like that of an earthquake shook all the castle
to its foundations. The solid keep itself rocked like a vessel in a
stormy sea. The great image overturned, and by its fall Gilles de
Retz was stricken sen