The Sire do Retz, on hearing that his servants had made such explicit avowals of their acts, remained motionless, as though thunderstruck. He saw that it was in vain for him to equivocate, and that he would have to confess all.
“What have you to say?” asked the president, when the confessions of Henriet and Pontou had been read.
“Say what befits you, my lord,” interrupted the lieutenant du procureur, as though to indicate to the accused the line he was to take: “are not these abominable lies and calumnies trumped up to ruin you?”
“Alas, no!” replied the Sire do Retz; and his face was pale as death: “Henriet and Pontou have spoken the truth. God has loosened their tongues.”
“My lord! relieve yourself of the burden of your crimes by acknowledging them at once,” said M. do l’Hospital earnestly.
“Messires!” said the prisoner, after a moment’s silence: “it is quite true that I have robbed mothers of their little ones; and that I have killed their children, or caused them to be killed, either by cutting their throats with daggers or knives, or by chopping off their heads with cleavers; or else I have had their skulls broken by hammers or sticks; sometimes I had their limbs hewn off one after another; at other times I have ripped them open, that I might examine their entrails and hearts; I have occasionally strangled them or put them to a slow death; and when the children were dead I had their bodies burned and reduced to ashes.”
“When did you begin your execrable practices?” asked Pierre de l’Hospital, staggered by the frankness of these horrible avowals: “the evil one must have possessed you.”
“It came to me from myself,—no doubt at the instigation of the devil: but still these acts of cruelty afforded me incomparable delight. The desire to commit these atrocities came upon me eight years ago. I left court to go to Chantoncé, that I might claim the property of my grandfather, deceased. In the library of the castle I found a Latin book—Suetonius, I believe—full of accounts of the cruelties of the Roman Emperors. I read the charming history of Tiberius, Caracalla, and other Cæsars, and the pleasure they took in watching the agonies of tortured children. Thereupon I resolved to imitate and surpass these same Cæsars, and that very night I began to do so. For some while I confided my secret to no one, but afterwards I communicated it to my cousin, Gilles de Sillé, then to Master Roger de Briqueville, next in succession to Henriet, Pontou, Rossignol, and Robin.” He then confirmed all the accounts given by his two servants. He confessed to about one hundred and twenty murders in a single year.
“An average of eight hundred in less than seven years!” exclaimed Pierre de l’Hospital, with a cry of pain: “Ah! messire, you were possessed! “
His confession was too explicit and circumstantial for the Lieutenant du Procureur to say another word in his defence; but he pleaded that the case should be made over to the ecclesiastical court, as there were confessions of invocations of the devil and of witchcraft mixed up with those of murder. Pierre de l’Hospital saw that the object of the lieutenant was to gain time for Mme. de Retz to make a fresh attempt to obtain a pardon; however he was unable to resist, so he consented that the case should be transferred to the bishop’s court.