s God he had served loyally his
king. At the siege of Orleans, Charles VII rewarded him with the title and
position of Marechal de France. It was lofty, but not more so than he.
Meanwhile, during the progress of the war, for which he furnished troops;
subsequently, in extravagant leisures at court; later, at Tiffauges, where
he resided in a manner entirely princely, he exhausted his resources.

The one modern avenue to wealth then open was matrimony. Gilles followed
it. But insufficiently. The dower of one lady, then of others, however
large, was not enough. He needed more. To get it he took a different
route. Contiguous to the avenue was a wider highway which, descending from
the remotest past, had at the time narrowed into a blind alley. In it was
a cluster of alchemists. They were hunting the golden chimera which Hermes
was believed to have found, and whose escaping memories, first satraps,
then emperors, had tried vainly to detain.

These memories Bacon sought in alembics, Thomas Aquinas in ink.
Experiments, not similar but cognate, had resulted in the theory that, at
that later day, success was impossible without the direct assistance of
the Very Low. The secret had escaped too far, memories of it had been too
long ablated to be rebeckoned by natural means. For the recovery of the
evaporated arcana it was necessary that Satan should be invoked. Satan
then was very real. The atmosphere was so charged with his legions, that
spitting was an act of worship. In the cathedrals, through shudders of
song, his voice had been heard inviting maidens to swell the red
quadrilles of hell. From encountering him at every turn man had become
used to his ways, and had imagined a pact whereby, in exchange for the
soul, Satan agrees to furnish whatever is wanted.

To get gold, Gilles de Retz prepared to enter into that pact. What were
the preliminary steps, more exactly, what were the preliminary thoughts,
that led this man, who had been devout and a poet, into the infamies which
then ensued, is problematic. It is the opinion of psychologists that the
most poignant excesses are induced by aspirations for superterrestrial
felicities, by a desire, human, and therefore pitiable, to clutch some
fringe of the mantle of stars. Psychologists may be correct, but
pathologists give these yearnings certain names, among which is
haematomania, or blood-madness. Caligula, Caracalla, Attila, Tamerlane,
Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Philip II