They were clad in scarlet garments lined with
pearl grey and vair. There was one whom they called archdeacon, and
another whom they called bishop, and the Pope was asked to allow them to
wear mitres like canons, for this chapel was the chapel, and this castle
one of the castles of Gilles de Laval, lord of Rouci, of Montmorency, of
Retz and of Craon, lieutenant-general of the Duke of Brittany and
field-marshal of France, who was burned at Nantes on the 25th of October,
1440, in the Pree de la Madeleine for being a counterfeiter, a murderer,
a magician, an atheist and a Sodomite.
He possessed more than one hundred thousand crowns' worth of furniture;
an income of thirty thousand pounds a year, the profits of his fiefs and
his salary as field-marshal; fifty magnificently appointed horsemen
escorted him. He kept open house, served the rarest viands and the
oldest wines at his board, and gave representations of mysteries, as
cities used to do when a king was within their gates. When his money
gave out, he sold his estates; when those were gone, he looked around
for more gold, and when he had destroyed his furnaces, he called on the
devil.
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