470 SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS. Latinity of his speech. He delighted in rich bindings and illumi- nations. On one occasion he is described, but a few months before his arrest, as engaged in his study in ornamenting with enamels the cover of a book of ceremonies for his chapel. Of music and the drama he was also passionately fond. In these pursuits he was a fit comrade for the good King Rene, as in the field he was the mate of Dunois and La Hire.* Yet the fife which promised so much in camp and court was blighted by the fatal errors of his training. The death of his father while he was a child of eleven left him to the care of a weak and indulgent grandfather, Jean de Craon, whose authority he soon shook off. His fiery nature ran riot, and he grew up de- voured with the wildest ambition, abandoned to sensual excesses of every kind, and with passions unrestrained and untamable. When on trial he repeatedly addressed the wondering crowd, urg- ing all parents to train their children rigidly in the ways of virtue, for it was his unbridled youth that had led him to crime and a shameful death. f Although, in the charges preferred against him, his aberra- tions are said to have commenced in 1426, he himself asserted that the fatal plunge was not made until 1432, after the death of his grandfather. About that time he began to withdraw from active fife, and after 1433 he is no longer heard of in the field, although the war of liberation offered its prizes as abundantly as ever 4 Then commenced a strange and unexampled dual existence. To the outward world he was the magnificent seigneur, intent only on display and frivolity. His immeasurable ambition, di- verted from its natural career, found unworthy gratification in making the vulgar stare with his gorgeous splendor. He affected a state almost royal. A military household of over two hundred horsemen accompanied him wherever he went. He founded a chapter of canons, with service and choir fit for a cathedral, and this was his private chapel, likewise attached to his person, cost- ing him immense sums, including portable organs carried on the
- Bossard et Maulde, Gilles de Rais, dit Barbe-bleue, Paris, 1886, Pr. pp. liii.,
lxxvii., clii. f Ibid. p. 21 ; Pr. pp. xlix., lviii.
lb. pp. 48-51 ; Pr. pp. xxi.-xxvi., xlvi., xlix.
