he immunities of the Church, which
more particularly concerned his authority, ended in the same
conclusions and in the pronunciation, in almost identical form, of the
same penalty.

Gilles listened with bowed head to the reading of these judgments. When
it was over the Bishop and the Inquisitor said to him, "Will you, now
that you detest your errors, your evocations, and your crimes, be
reincorporated into the Church our Mother?"

And upon the ardent prayers of the Marshal they relieved him of all
excommunication and admitted him to participate in the sacraments. The
justice of God was satisfied, the crime was recognized, punished, but
effaced by contrition and penitence. Only human justice remained.

The Bishop and the Inquisitor remanded the culprit to the secular court,
which, holding against him the abductions and the murders, pronounced
the penalty of death and attainder. Prelati and the other accomplices
were at the same time condemned to be hanged and burned alive.

"Cry to God mercy," said Pierre de l'Hospital, who presided over the
civil hearings, "and dispose yourself to die in good state with a great
repentance for having committed such crimes."

The recommendation was unnecessary. Gilles now faced death without fear.
He hoped, humbly, avidly, in the mercy of the Saviour. He cried out
fervently for the terrestrial expiation, the stake, to redeem him from
the eternal flames after his death.

Far from his chateaux, in his dungeon, alone, he had opened himself and
viewed the cloaca which had so long been fed by the residual waters
escaped from the abattoirs of Tiffauges and Machecoul. He had sobbed in
despair of ever draining this stagnant pool. And thunder-smitten by
grace, in a cry of horror and joy, he had suddenly seen his soul
overflow and sweep away the dank fen before a torrential current of
prayer and ecstasy. The butcher of Sodom had destroyed himself, the
companion of Jeanne d'Arc had reappeared, the mystic whose soul poured
out to God, in bursts of adoration, in floods of tears.

Then he thought of his friends and wished that they also might die in a
state of grace. He asked the Bishop of Nantes that they might be
executed not before nor after him, but at the same time. He carried his
point that he was the most guilty and that he must instruct them in
saving their souls and assist them at the moment when they should mount
the scaffold. Jean de Malestroit granted the supplication.

"What is cu