e moment he feels something
seize him by the neck. Panic-stricken, he vacillates, supplicating Our
Lady to save him. The evocator, furious, throws him out of the circle.
Gilles precipitates himself through the door, de Sille jumps out of the
window, they meet below and stand aghast. Howls are heard in the chamber
where the magician is operating. There is "a sound as of sword strokes
raining on a wooden billet," then groans, cries of distress, the appeals
of a man being assassinated.

They stand rooted to the spot. When the clamour ceases they venture to
open the door and find the sorcerer lying; in pools of blood, his
forehead caved in, his body horribly mangled.

They carry him out. Gilles, smitten with remorse, gives the man his own
bed, bandages him, and has him confessed. For several days the sorcerer
hovers between life and death but finally recovers and flees from the
castle.

Gilles was despairing of obtaining from the Devil the recipe for the
sovereign magisterium, when Eustache Blanchet's return from Italy was
announced. Eustache brought the master of Florentine magic, the
irresistible evoker of demons and larvae, Francesco Prelati.

This man struck awe into Gilles. Barely twenty-three years old, he was
one of the wittiest, the most erudite, and the most polished men of the
time. What had he done before he came to install himself at Tiffauges,
there to begin, with Gilles, the most frightful series of sins against
the Holy Ghost that has ever been known? His testimony in the criminal
trial of Gilles does not furnish us any very detailed information on his
own score. He was born in the diocese of Lucca, at Pistoia, and had been
ordained a priest by the Bishop of Arezzo. Some time after his entrance
into the priesthood, he had become the pupil of a thaumaturge of
Florence, Jean de Fontenelle, and had signed a pact with a demon named
Barron. From that moment onward, this insinuating and persuasive,
learned and charming abbe, must have given himself over to the most
abominable of sacrileges and the most murderous practices of black
magic.

At any rate Gilles came completely under the influence of this man. The
extinguished furnaces were relighted, and that Stone of the Sages, which
Prelati had seen, flexible, frail, red and smelling of calcinated marine
salt, they sought together furiously, invoking Hell.

Their incantations were all in vain. Gilles, disconsolate, redoubled
them, but they finally produced a d