"Ah, there it is," said the marshal, raising his hand with gentle deprecation, "even you, who are so highly privileged, are not wholly superior to vulgar prejudice. I keep a college of priests for the service of God and the Virgin. They have done me but little good. Surely therefore I may be allowed a little service of That Other, who has afforded me such exquisite pleasure and aided me so much. The Master of Evil knows all things, and he can help whom he will to the secrets of wealth, of power, and of eternal youth."
"Have you gained any of these by the aid of that Master whom you serve?" asked the Lady Sybilla, with great quiet in her voice.
"Nay, not yet," cried the marshal, moved for the first time, "not yet—perhaps because I have sought too eagerly and hotly. But I am now at least within sight of the wondrous goal. See," he added, with genuine excitement labouring in his voice, "see—I am still a young man, yet though I, Gilles de Retz, was born to the princeliest fortune in France, and by marriage added another, they have both been spent well nigh to the last stiver in learning the hidden secrets of the universe. I am still a young man, I say, but look at my whitening hair, count the deep wrinkles on my forehead, consider my withered cheek. Have I not tasted all agonies, renounced all delights, and cast aside all scruples that I might win back my youth, and with it the knowledge of good and evil?"
Sybilla went to the door and stood again by the curtain.
"Then you swear by your own God that you will let no evil befall the Scottish maids?" she said.
"I have told you already—let that suffice!" he replied with sudden coldness; "you know that, like the Master whom I serve, I can keep my word. I will not harm them, so long as their Scottish kinsfolk come not hither meddling with my purposes. I have enough of meddlers in France without adding outlanders thereto! I cannot keep a new and permanent danger at grass within my gates."
The Lady Sybilla passed through the portal by which she had entered, without adieu or leave-taking of any kind. Gilles de Retz rose as soon as the curtain had fallen, and shook himself with a yawn, like one who has got through a troublesome necessary duty. Then he walked to the window and looked out. The woman had come back and was kneeling before the Hotel de Pornic.
A bright light as of a furnace burnt up before him, and the heat was overpowering as it rushed like a ruddy tide-race against his face.
At sight of him she cried with sudden shrillness, "My lord, my great lord, give me back my child—my little Pierre. He is my heart's heart. My lord, he never did you any harm in all his innocent life!"