Whereupon Père Blouyn, with suave correctness of judgment, had pointed out wherein his master erred; but also cautioned him against that undue tenderness of conscience natural to one with his exalted position and high views of duty and life. Finally the marshal had received absolution.
In the late afternoon the Lord of Retz commanded the fire to be laid ready for lighting in his chamber aloft in the keep of Machecoul, and set himself down to listen to the singing of the choir, which, under the guidance of Precentor Renouf, rehearsed for him the sweetest hymns recently written for the choir of the Holy Father at Rome. For there the marshal's choir-master had been trained, and with its leader he still kept up a correspondence upon kindred interests.
Gilles de Retz, as he sat under the late blooming roses in the afternoon sunshine of the autumn of western France, appeared to the casual eye one of the most noble seigneurs and the most enlightened in the world. He affected a costume already semiecclesiastic as a token of his ultimate intention to enter holy orders. It seemed indeed as if the great soldier who had ridden into Orleans with Dunois and the Maid had begun to lay aside his earthly glories and seek the heavenly.
There, upon a chair set within the cloisters, in a place which the sunshine touched most lovingly and where it lingered longest, he sat, nodding his head to the sound of the sweet singing, and bowing low at each mention of the name of Jesus (as the custom is)—a still, meditative, almost saintly man. Upon the lap of his furred robe (for, after all, it was a sunshine with a certain shrewd wintriness in it) lay an illuminated copy of the Holy Gospels; and sometimes as he listened to the choir-boys singing, he glanced therein, and read of the little children to whom belongs the kingdom. Upon occasion he lifted the book also, and looked with pleasure at the pictured cherubs who cheered the way of the Master Jerusalemwards with strewn palm leaves and shouted hosannas.
And ever sweeter and sweeter fell the music upon his ear, till suddenly, like the silence after a thunderclap, the organ ceased to roll, the choir was silent, and out of the quiet rose a single voice—that of Laurence the Scot singing in a tenor of infinite sweetness the words of blessing:
"Suffer the little children to come unto Me,
And forbid them not;
For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."
And as the boy's voice welled out, clear and thrilling as the song of an upward pulsing lark, the tears ran down the face of Gilles de Retz.
God knows why. Perhaps it was some glint of his own innocent childhood—some half-dimmed memory of his happily dead mother. Perhaps—but enough. Gilles de Laval de Retz went up the turret stair to find Poitou and Gilles de Sillé on guard on either side the portals which closed his chamber.
"Is all ready?" he asked, though the tears were scarcely dry on his cheeks.
They bowed before him to the ground.