The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-07-29

| Though his fortune was immense ms expenditures greatly exceeded his in- come. Foremost in rank among the nobles of his province, he considered 1t necessary to outshine all rivals.
 At the same time he took up many fads that were as costly as they were
 bizarre. About the year 14S2 he be- came infatuated with the theater, and maintained out of his own purse an en- | tire troupe of actors, who performed on such occasions as he pleased at Or leans, at Nantes, at Vannes, or at | Rennes. He besought the Pope to per- init the establishment of a priest with the authority of bishop in his chateau. This petition was denied; nevertheless he maintained chapel with all the paraphernalia of a bishop. Religious superstition was firmly grounded in the l mans character, as will be seen later on. It was at about this period that he l became enamored of the science of l chemistry, through the aid of which he hoped to discover a means of convert ing base metals into gold. Success in the enterprise, he expected, would re- lieve him of his financial embarrass- ments.
 l from Italy two unfrocked priests who had gained fame as alchemists. The more renowned of the pair was one Francois Prelati. Over the credulous and superstition haunted mind of De ERetz these clever charlatans gained complete influence, and doubtless they egged him on to the crimes which were 1 to make his name a byword of horror l to generations yet unborn. They made him believe that they had intimate re- lations with the devil, and among the l papers preserved in the archives at Nantes are a number of written agree 1 ments with his Satanic Majesty signed | in their own blood by Giles and his in- ] genious advisers At length they in- l duced him to think that he was inde- | pendent of all law, human or divine, | and in this notion he was persuaded to ! enter upon a veritable saturnalia of crime.
 | The clerical fakirs assured him that indispensable ingredients of the chemi-
 cal mixture required were the blood ! and heart of a human being who had 1 never had an impure thought. It was | to satisfy this requirement. that regu- ] lar system of abduction was inaugura- ted, agents being employed to steal children in the neighborhood and fetch them to the castle. Those were days when the disappearance of child did not make such a disturbance as now. TheTe was no police system; robbers and cut-throats roamed abroad, and l there were wolves in the forests No- | body was likely to suspect the first mo-
 bleman in Brittany of such crimes. Thus it is not so very surprising that the business of kidnapping and murder should have been carried on by De Retz and his associates for period of eight l years.
 ! As subsequently, appeared from the confessions of the guilty men, the chill dren were killed in every way that inn agination could suggest. Shut up in stone walled rooms, where their ap peals for mercy and cries of agony could be heard by nobody save their I dtabolical captors, they were subjected to inconceivable tortures. Some of ! them, finally, were torn limb from limb | and burned Their entrails were gloat- l ingly inspected by the fiends-but it is l impossible to go further; many of the acts to which de Retz and his confede- | rates afterwards confessed are wholly l indescribable in print. They merely afford an illustration of the possibilities of perversion of the human moral sense the conditions under which man is 1 transformed into a beast infinitely more ferocious and pitiless than any wild animal.
 l The time came at length when cer- 1 tain rIlmors induced the bishop of Nantes to set on foot an investigation, 1 which traced the mysterious abduc l tions to the chateau of de RetZ. He was arrested, in September, LAO, and l thrown into prison at Nantes, together
 with the two priests. An ecclesiastical
 court was organized to try him,
 charges being preferred on forty-one | articles of information. He was ac-
 cused of practicing magic and of other offenses. including murder. The &C.,
 cused refused to plead, declaring that I the tribunal had no jurisdiction in his l case. This attitude he steadfastly pre- served until a decree of excommunica-
 tion was issued against him. Then he | broke down utterly: for while careless
 as to the safety of his body, he believed that the decree would consign his soul
 to eternal perdition.
 A civil trial followed, the prosecutor alleging against the defendant no fewer than one hundred and forty abductions and murders within eight years. Con- viction and sentence promptly followed. De Retz confessed, as did also the two priests. When pressed for minute de-
 tails. he said: "You torment me need lessly. I have already owned to
 enough crimes to send a thousand men
 to. the scaffold. Why trouble me more?" He was condemned to be
 burned alive, with two of his criminal
 assistants These, however, were not
 the priests, both of whom escaped pun
 ishment through clerical influence.
 De Retz sent three last requests to
 the bishop of Nantes. The first of
 these was that the decree of excommu-
 nication issued against him might be
 revoked. The second was that he
 might be killed before being burned;
 and the third petition was that his
 ashes might be gathered and inferred
 in holy ground. All these prayers were
 granted. His neck was broken by
 hanging in time enough to save him
 '