this place be put on record.

CHAPTER XLII

ASTARTE THE SHE-WOLF

In a dark wainscoted room overlooking that branch of the Seine which
divides the northern part of Paris from the Isle of the City, Gilles
de Retz, lately Chamberlain of the King of France, sat writing. The
hotel had recently been redecorated after the sojourn of the English.
Wooden pavements had again been placed in the rooms where the
barbarians had strewed their rushes and trampled upon their rotting
fishbones. Noble furniture from the lathes of Poitiers, decorated with
the royal ermines of Brittany, stood about the many alcoves. The table
itself whereon the famous soldier wrote was closed in with drawers and
shelves which descended to the floor and seemed to surround the
occupant like a cell.

Before de Retz stood a curious inkstand, made by some cunning jeweller
out of the upper half of a human skull of small size, cut across at
the eye-holes, inverted, and set in silver with a rim of large rubies.
This was filled with ink of a startling vermilion colour.

The document which Gilles de Retz was busy transcribing upon sheets of
noble vellum in this strange ink was of an equally mysterious
character. The upper part had the appearance of a charter engrossed by
the hand of some deft legal scribe, but the words which followed were
as startling as the vehicle by means of which they were made to stand
out from the vellum.

"Unto Barran-Sathanas; Lord most glorious and puissant in hell
beneath and in the earth above, I, his unworthy servitor Gilles de
Retz, make my vows, hereby forever renouncing God, Christ, and the
Blessed Saints."

To this appalling introduction succeeded many lines of close and
delicate script, interspersed with curious cabalistic signs, in which
that of the cross reversed could frequently be detected. Gilles de
Retz wrote rapidly, rising only at intervals to throw a fresh log of
wood across the vast iron dogs on either side of the wide fireplace,
as the rain from the northwest beat more and more fiercely upon the
small glazed panes of the window and howled among the innumerable
gargoyles and twisted roof-stacks of the Hotel de Pornic.

Within the chamber itself, in the intervals of the storm, a low
continuous growling made itself evident. At first it was disregarded
by the writer, but presently, by its sheer pertinacity, the sound so
irritated him that he rose from his seat, and, striding to a narrow
door covered with a