The judges and those present and in authority were much moved by these scenes, and they declared that such crimes should not go unpunished, however high the rank of the accused, and they directed the bailiff to notify Gilles to appear before their tribunal the 8th of October to respond in their presence to the accusations against him. On that day more witnesses were introduced, but their depositions were not written out, or at least are not in the record.
The court was opened in the great audience chamber in due form and solemnity, at about nine o’clock in the morning. The audience was public, and the hall was crowded. Gilles was brought to the bar as a criminal, and required to plead. He carried a high head, looking around him disdainfully, as in the days of his power and strength. The bailiff recited that in accordance with the orders given to him, he had the possession of the body of Gilles de Retz, which he now presented before the court. Immediately the prosecutor arose, and proceeded verbally with the arraignment of the prisoner. It is to be remembered that the methods of procedure in the courts of that country are now, and were then, quite different from that of the common law courts.
After the oral statement of the crimes of which he was accused, the prosecutor called upon Gilles to plead, to which Gilles (also orally) declared his refusal, and demanded an appeal from the Bishop of Nantes and the Vice-Inquisitor,—supposed to be an appeal to the Archbishop at Tours or to the Pope himself. His appeal was refused immediately, and his plea demanded. Michelet (Histoire de France, vol. v., p. 210) justifies Gilles in his refusal to plead and his demand for an appeal. “For,” he says, “one cannot deny that the judges before whom Gilles was to be tried were his enemies.” Gilles seems, in making these demands, to have intended to use the law’s delay more than to have had any special hope of being sustained by the higher courts.
It is remarkable, though, to consider the value attached by the court to Gilles’s plea. It was evident that when he did plead, it would be a plea of “not guilty”; but this seemed to have had no effect upon the judges or upon their course of procedure. They appeared quite willing to permit the plea of “not guilty,” but were determined to have a plea of some kind entered. It would be curious to trace the causes of this solicitude on the part of the judges. The filing of the plea may have been required for some purpose deeper than the appearance would indicate; possibly it stood in the stead of the present rule of law that requires the criminal to be arrested and brought before the court in order to give it jurisdiction. True, the party can, in France, be tried in his absence and convicted in contumacion; but this can only be done after the party shall have been arrested and filed his plea. In murder trials, no conviction can be had in the court of any civilised country until the proof shall be made of the corpus delicti. It would appear as though the importance of this plea was that it should be an evidence of the presence of the prisoner before the court. It may have been, in the eye of the law, a synecdoche, wherein a part stood for the whole,—a plea standing for the evidence of arrest and presence of the prisoner before the court,—which was necessary to give it jurisdiction over the case. However this may have been, the court manifested great determination to obtain the plea from Gilles. They gave him some days to consider the matter, but he replied at once that
“none of the articles which you have presented against me are true except two things therein charged; the baptism that I have received, and the renunciation which I have sworn against the demon, his pomp and his works. I am now, and always have been, a true Christian.”
Upon the receipt of this answer and defiance, the prosecutor became indignant. He offered his oath to support each and every one of the articles he had presented. Turning to Gilles, he demanded that he make the same oath, and in the same manner, that is, between the hands of the Bishop and the Vice-Inquisitor (“entre les mains de l’évêque et du Vice-inquisiteur”). This was demanded of him four different times—he was begged, pleaded with, implored, threatened, menaced with excommunication, but he remained strong in his refusal. What a strange thing is human nature! This man had committed the most fearful, inhuman, and base crimes,—crimes against the innocent and defenceless,—and yet, when brought to the bar of trial, he insisted he was a true Christian, and whatever else he might do or have done, he stood firm in his resolve not to take a false oath. He could commit murder times without number, and he seemed to consider the punishment for this relating only to the body. A false oath taken before God seemed to him to carry its punishment into the next world and to imperil his soul through eternity. He was willing to commit murder, but he was afraid to commit perjury.
The hearing was postponed until the 11th of October, to give the prosecutor time to prepare the information which should serve as an indictment and which had not yet been formally presented nor made a matter of record.
In the meantime, public attention must have been greatly attracted to the proceedings as they were progressing, and invitations went out to all persons who had lost children by abduction within the specified time and who had reason to suppose that the crime could be laid to Gilles, or his accomplices, to present themselves before the court and make their complaints.
Lemire relates (p. 39) this incident:
“On the 10th of October, a herald-at-arms of the Duke of Brittany, bearing his livery, sounded the trumpet three times before the château and then, in a loud voice, demanded that any person having knowledge of the affair of Gilles de Retz was summoned to appear before the court and tell what he knew under pain of fine and imprisonment. No person responded to this appeal.”