s was obstinate. The poor
man gave him a few kicks in the belly with his wooden shoe, and the ass
fell. Gilliatt ran to raise the unlucky beast, but he was dead. Upon
this Gilliatt administered to the poor man a sound thrashing.

Another day, Gilliatt seeing a boy come down from a tree with a brood of
little birds, newly hatched and unfledged, he took the brood away from
the boy, and carried his malevolence so far as even to take them back
and replace them in the tree.

Some passers-by took up the boy's complaint; but Gilliatt made no reply,
except to point to the old birds, who were hovering and crying
plaintively over the tree, as they looked for their nest. He had a
weakness for birds--another sign by which the people recognise a
magician.

Children take a pleasure in robbing the nests of birds along the cliff.
They bring home quantities of yellow, blue, and green eggs, with which
they make rosaries for mantelpiece ornaments. As the cliffs are peaked,
they sometimes slip and are killed. Nothing is prettier than shutters
decorated with sea-birds' eggs. Gilliatt's mischievous ingenuity had no
end. He would climb, at the peril of his own life, into the steep places
of the sea rocks, and hang up bundles of hay, old hats, and all kinds of
scarecrows, to deter the birds from building there, and, as a
consequence, to prevent the children from visiting those spots.

These are some of the reasons why Gilliatt was disliked throughout the
country. Perhaps nothing less could have been expected.

V

MORE SUSPICIOUS FACTS ABOUT GILLIATT

Public opinion was not yet quite settled with regard to Gilliatt.

In general he was regarded as a _Marcou_: some went so far as to believe
him to be a _Cambion_. A cambion is the child of a woman begotten by a
devil.

When a woman bears to her husband seven male children consecutively, the
seventh is a marcou. But the series must not be broken by the birth of
any female child.

The marcou has a natural fleur-de-lys imprinted upon some part of his
body; for which reason he has the power of curing scrofula, exactly the
same as the King of France. Marcous are found in all parts of France,
but particularly in the Orleanais. Every village of Gatinais has its
marcou. It is sufficient for the cure of the sick that the marcou should
breathe upon their wounds, or let them touch his fleur-de-lys. The night
of Good Friday is particularly favourable to these ceremonies. Ten years
ago the