"A single power can rise and, above feudal complicities, above earthly interest, avenge the oppressed and the weak. The Church. And it is the Church in fact, in the person of Jean de Malestroit, which rises up before the monster and fells him.
"Jean de Malestroit, Bishop of Nantes, belongs to an illustrious line. He is a near kinsman of Jean V, and his incomparable piety, his infallible Christian wisdom, and his enthusiastic charity, make him venerated, even by the duke.
"The wailing of Gilles's decimated flock reaches his ears. In silence he begins an investigation and, setting spies upon the Marshal, waits only for an opportune moment to begin the combat. And Gilles suddenly commits an inexplicable crime which permits the Bishop to march forthwith upon him and smite him.
"To recuperate his shattered fortune, Gilles has sold his signorie of Saint Etienne de Mer Morte to a subject of Jean V, Guillaume le Ferron, who delegates his brother, Jean le Ferron, to take possession of the domain.
"Some days later the Marshal gathers the two hundred men of his military household and at their head marches on Saint Etienne. There, the day of Pentecost, when the as
sembled people are hearing mass, he precipitates himself, sword in hand, into the church, sweeps aside the faithful, throwing them into tumult, and, before the dumbfounded priest, threatens to cleave Jean le Ferron, who is praying. The ceremony is broken off, the congregation take flight. Gilles drags le Ferron, pleading for mercy, to the château, orders that the drawbridge be let down, and by force occupies the place, while his prisoner is carried away to Tiffauges and thrown into an underground dungeon.
"Gilles has, at one and the same time, violated the unwritten law of Brittany forbidding any baron to raise troops without the consent of the duke, and committed double sacrilege in profaning a chapel and seizing Jean le Ferron, who is a tonsured clerk of the Church.
"The Bishop learns of this outrage and prevails upon the reluctant Jean V to march against the rebel. Then, while one army advances on Saint Etienne, which Gilles abandons to take refuge with his little band in the fortified manor of Mâchecoul, another army lays siege to Tiffauges.
"During this time the priest hastens his redoubled investigations. He delegates commissioners and procurators in all the villages where children have disappeared. He himself quits his palace at Nantes, travels about the countryside, and takes the depositions of the bereft. The people at last speak, and on their knees beseech the Bishop to protect them. Enraged by the atrocities which they reveal, he swears that justice shall be done.
"It takes a month to hear all the reports. By letters-patent Jean de Malestroit establishes publicly the 'infamatio' of Gilles, then, when all the forms of canonic procedure have been gone through with, he launches the mandate of arrest.