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 abductions of
children, his hideous tactics, his infernal stimulations, 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 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 downcast, 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, "O God, O my Redeemer, I beseech mercy and pardon!" Then the