The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-10-26

| college of priests and choir-singers and
| a train of lackeys followed in his wake,
| and lived at his expense. Horses, cos
| TUNES, everything was provided by him,
| and soon his heirs, becoming alarmed
at the rapid depletion of his revenues,
| availed themselves of provision of the
| law of France to present to the king a
| Memoire des Hereeiers setting forth his
| extravagances and praying his males
| ty to interdlct the spendthrift from
making further sales, transfer, or alien
alton of his property. His reckless fol-
lies, said these thrifty spectators In
| futurity, left everywhere a train Of
| devoured revenues, lands sold, seignior-
| les mortgaged works of art and valua-
bles hypothecated with considerable
| debts and unpaid loans tres onereux,
which menaced ruin and opened an
| abyss threatening to engulf every
| thing" Upon presentation of this petit
| ton the king, finding that GILES was
| acting without sense or understanding
and being fully informed of his reck-
| less encouragement of his estates, is
sued his Introduction and prohibition
| against any further alienation, trans
fer, mortgage or pledge by the said
GILES Gle Retz of any of his lands or
seignories, and this decree was pub
l1shed at the sound of the trumpet at
Orleans, Tours, Anglers, Champtoce,
Pouzauges, Tiffauges, Saint Jean d
Angely and other places concerned.
And now the man who had heretofore
been known as grand seignieur schol-
n sold ,tvAr rf
the arts, brought face to face with ruin,
entered upon the career that has left
him with the unenviable record of the
most bloodthirsty and atrScous assas-
sin of all time.
The kings Introduction rendered it
impossible for him to raise further
moneys by way of mortgage or loan,
and, driven to desperation in his rage to
obtain the wherewithal to satisfy his
taste for luxury and display he fell
back upon that curious product of the
superstition and credulity of the middle
ages, the BLACK Art Shutting him
self up alternately in his magnificent
chateauX of Tiffauges or Champtoce, or
in his castle of La Sue, he entered into
relations with magicians and alchem-
lists and with the childish simplicity of
that age of demonology and Wtchcraft
sought by means of lamentations, petit
tions to the evil one, by alchemy, and
last of all, by murder, to obtain the
elixir of eternal youth and the philoso-
piers stone that would transmute the
baser metals into gold. The most
prominent and powerful of these magi-
clans was an Italian priest Francois
A1rft l. ..,1,1 H.,
Gated, handsome, and of smooth, insin-
uating and seductive manners, and
with this man and with a number of
accomplices who played the parts of
decoys, aides-de-camp, guards, spies or
servants as occasion demanded, GILES
began the preparation of a series of
crimes that have no parallel in history
or in the realms of the widest and
most sensational fiction.
Beginning in 1882, and for period of
eight years, the inhabitants of Anjou,
Poictou and La Bretagne became af-
fected by vague and indefinable ter
ror-a dread of something that could
neither be described nor explained.
Some believed that the countryside
was ravaged by a vampire, that
through some CHASTITY process of resur-
rection preyed not upon the dead, but
on the living, choosing young children
and maidens, and timing the place and
hour so that there was means neither
for defence nor for pursuit Michelet
speaks of the dreaded thing as a beast |
of determination, unseen, unknown, UNI
natural understandable, horrible; omni-
present, possessed of powers of disap- |
cape, dissolvng into thin air 1t was
believed by many to be a physical man |
Hesitation of the evil one. The peas |
ants wandered disconsolate along the |
lamenting their lost children |
Little girls returning home from school, |
boys who played in the street or wan |
dered through the woods, mysteriously |
disappeared and were heard of no more
Soon horrible suspicion began to be
aroused Each time that GILES de !
Retz changed his quarters-when he |
went from the fortress of Tiffauges to |
the chateau of Champtoce, or from
there to the castle OF La Suze--he left |
behind him a trail of lamentation. He
crossed a countryside by night, and 10.
In the morning there was a cry of chill
dren lost. The trembling peasant re-
called the fact that whenever Prelati,
Roger de Brigue- Vile, Giles de la Sille
or any one of the baron's henchmen had
been seen children had disappeared.
the story ran that an old wo-
man. Perrine Martin, had been met
about the country, clad in
gray. and with her visage covered with
4 veil Of black. She had been seen to
accost children and it was said that
her speech was so seductive and her
face, when she raised the veil, so be-
1evolent, that the unsuspecting little
,nes would follow her without hesita-
ion to the edge of the nearest wood
here to be seized by lurking men and
carried off in sacks. And so the terri
led peasants gave to the yelled woman
he name of La Meffraye--the bird of
prey Also 1t began to be whispered
hat the children of the very poor who. |
the custom of the country and
he age, had gone to the castle to ask |
Inns had been enticed inside and no
more heard of. These facts were all
inally brought to the notice of Messire |
lean de Malestroit, the Bishop of |
Nantes, who thereupon held a secret in