Gilles de Sille, any of the Marshal's
intimates, have shown themselves, little boys have disappeared. Finally,
the peasant learns to look with horror upon an old woman, Perrine
Martin, who wanders around, clad in grey, her face covered--as is that
of Gilles de Sille--with a black stamin. She accosts children, and her
speech is so seductive, her face, when she raises her veil, so benign,
that all follow her to the edge of a wood, where men carry them off,
gagged, in sacks. And the frightened people call this purveyor of flesh,
this ogress, 'La Mefrraye,' from the name of a bird of prey.

"These emissaries spread out, covering all the villages and hamlets,
tracking the children down at the orders of the Chief Huntsman, the sire
de Bricqueville. Not content with these beaters, Gilles takes to
standing at a window of the chateau, and when young mendicants,
attracted by the renown of his bounty, ask an alms, he runs an
appraising eye over them, has any who excite his lust brought in and
thrown into an underground prison and kept there until, being in
appetite, he is pleased to order a carnal supper.

"How many children did he disembowel after deflowering them? He himself
did not know, so many were the rapes he had consummated and the murders
he had committed. The texts of the times enumerate between, seven and
eight hundred, but the estimate is inaccurate and seems
overconservative. Entire regions were devastated. The hamlet of
Tiffauges had no more young men. La Suze was without male posterity. At
Champtoce the whole foundation room of a tower was filled with corpses.
A witness cited in the inquest, Guillaume Hylairet, declared also, "that
one hight Du Jardin hath heard say that there was found in the said
castle a wine pipe full of dead little children.'

"Even today traces of these assassinations linger. Two years ago at
Tiffauges a physician discovered an oubliette and brought forth piles of
skulls and bones.

"Gilles confessed to frightful holocausts, and his friends confirmed the
atrocious details.

"At dusk, when their senses are phosphorescent, enkindled by
inflammatory spiced beverages and by 'high' venison, Gilles and his
friends retire to a distant chamber of the chateau. The little boys are
brought from their cellar prisons to this room. They are disrobed and
gagged. The Marshal fondles them and forces them. Then he hacks them to
pieces with a dagger, taking great pleasure in slowly dismembering them.
At o