wild beast playing with
the body of a victim. His ferocity does not remain merely carnal; it
becomes spiritual. He wishes to make the child suffer both in body and
soul. By a thoroughly Satanic cheat he deceives gratitude, dupes
affection, and desecrates love. At a leap he passes the bounds of human
infamy and lands plump in the darkest depth of Evil.

"He contrives this: One of the unfortunate children is brought into his
chamber, and hanged, by Bricqueville, Prelati, and de Sille, to a hook
fixed into the wall. Just at the moment when the child is suffocating,
Gilles orders him to be taken down and the rope untied. With some
precaution, he takes the child on his knees, revives him, caresses him,
rocks him, dries his tears, and pointing to the accomplices, says,
'These men are bad, but you see they obey me. Do not be afraid. I will
save your life and take you back to your mother,' and while the little
one, wild with joy, kisses him and at that moment loves him, Gilles
gently makes an incision in the back of the neck, rendering the child
'languishing,' to follow Gilles's own expression, and when the head, not
quite detached, bows, Gilles kneads the body, turns it about, and
violates it, bellowing.

"After these abominable pastimes he may well believe that the art of the
charnalist has beneath his fingers expressed its last drop of pus, and
in a vaunting cry he says to his troop of parasites, "There is no man on
earth who dare do as I have done.'

"But if in Love and Well-doing the infinite is approachable for certain
souls, the out-of-the-world possibilities of Evil are limited. In his
excesses of stupration and murder the Marshal cannot go beyond a fixed
point. In vain he may dream of unique violations, of more ingenious slow
tortures, but human imagination has a limit and he has already reached
it--even passed it, with diabolic aid. Insatiable he seethes--there is
nothing material in which to express his ideal. He can verify that axiom
of demonographers, that the Evil One dupes all persons who give
themselves, or are willing to give themselves, to him.

"As he can descend no further, he tries returning on the way by which he
has come, but now remorse overtakes him, overwhelms him, and wrenches
him without respite. His nights are nights of expiation. Besieged by
phantoms, he howls like a wounded beast. He is found rushing along the
solitary corridors of the chateau. He weeps, throws himself on his
knees, swears to