of mud, and shallow and stagnant waters, a striking picture of the fertility of nature. These are covered with vegetation, and present the botanist with a remarkable variety of curious plants. Near it an ancient ruin, concealed among the thickets, and scarcely distinguishable from the rocks on which it is raised, recalls to our memory a character, remarkable for the same rank growth, and which, although now forgotten, or buried in poetry and fable, excited, at one time, the interest of all inquirers into the mysteries of the human mind.

"These ruins are all that remain of the abode of Gilles de Retz, the veritable Blue Beard, the hero of the celebrated tale of Perrault. He was the Lord, also, of Ingrande, Chantocé, Machecore, Bourgnœuf, Pornic, Princé, and many other places each of which claim the distinction of having been the principal theatre of his crimes. Without entering into this controversy, however, all that we can do at the present moment is, to offer a very slight historical account of the Marechal de Retz, who flourished-if the Upas-tree can be said to flourish in the reign of Jean V. Duke of Brittany, in the early part of the fifteenth century.

"Born of one of the most illustrious houses of Brittany, he found himself an orphan at twenty years of age, and the possessor of enormous wealth. He was of course immediately surrounded by parasites, who, by flattering the weaknesses, and cherishing the evil passions of his nature, and introducing new ones, contrived to turn both his follies and crimes to their own advantage. He was a man of extraordinary bravery; and, while yet in his youth, acquired, by his services in war, the honourable title of Marshal. This, however, although high enough for his ambition, did not suffice for his vanity. He would be known to the world, not only as a brave soldier, but as a man of illustrious birth, immense fortune, and boundless generosity. The world, he knew, can only distinguish characters by their outward manifestations, and he therefore assumed a state befitting the exalted personage whom he imagined himself to be.

"When he went abroad, he was followed by two hundred men of his house, well mounted, and magnificently equipped; and, on returning to the chateau, he was joined, at some distance from the house, by his almoner, attended by a dean, a chanter, two archdeacons, four vicars, a schoolmaster, twelve chaplains, and eight choristers, each handsomely mounted, and followed, like his body-guard, by valets. The clothing of this ecclesiastical company was splendid in the extreme, consisting of scarlet robes trimmed with precious furs. In religious pomp, in fact, he was scarcely surpassed by the wealthiest churches. His travelling chapel dazzled every eye by the numbers it displayed of crosses, chandeliers, censers, vases of gold and silver, and other ornaments. The procession was closed by six organs, each carried by six men.

"All this state, however, which might have well satisfied a monarch, was vanity and vexation of spirit to Gilles de Retz, on account of one little desideratum. He wished that the priest of his chapel should have the privilege of wearing a bishop's mitre; and this, in

spite of his entreaties, his ambassadors, and his gifts, the Pope had the insolence to refuse. The chateau in which he deigned to reside, emulated the splendour of one of those fairy fabrics which cost a poor author only a page or two of words. The roofs were painted in imitation of azure skies, sprinkled with stars; the gilded cornices were carved so as to resemble foliage, and the walls were tapestried with cloth of gold, which cost six hundred francs the ell. Often, however, he forsook this palace of the genii, in order to dazzle the wondering citizens, accompanied by a train of flatterers, dancing and singing boys, musicians and stage-players. He betook himself to some great town, where he not only treated the people to gratis representations of mysteries-the only sort of drama then knownbut distributed refreshments to all who were polite enough to look on. "It is hardly necessary to say, that a very few years were sufficient to exhaust a fortune subject to such demands, and pillaged, at the same time, by the owner's friends. Gilles was by no means alarmed at this consummation. His estates were so numerous that he could hardly repeat their names without book; and he looked upon them as possessing the same kind of inexhaustibility which he had attributed to his vanished millions. He began to sell. First went one Lordship and then another, till at last, his relations, taking the alarm, petitioned the king to forbid the further alienation of the family property; which, after many disturbances, threatening a poli-tical convulsion, was at length done in due form, and the proclamation published by sound of trumpet.

"This was a blow which almost upset the brain of Gilles de Retz, enfeebled by continual debauchery. Was he to sink at once into the station of a private individual, and drag through an ignominious life, the remembrance of his past glories converted into prosent shame? Money, it seemed, was the one thing needful—the bauble which he was accustomed to play with and throw away. Were there not other means of obtaining it than by the sale of estates? Could it not be dragged from the mine, or the deep, by other methods than the employment of capital and the working of machinery? His thoughts darted themselves into every hole and corner of human and superhuman speculation; and he gave to things possible and impossible, the same eager and devout attention. The following is the result, as it is related by a Breton historian:

"God not having listened to the impious desires of the Marshal, this warrior resolved to obtain, by other ways, the power and riches of which he was ambitious.

"He had heard that there existed on the earth, men whofor certain considerations, and by means of great intrepidity-had been able to overstep the bounds of the known world, and to tear away the veil which separates finite beings from forms of incorporeal air; and that the spirits subjected to their power, were compelled to minister to their smallest wishes. On the instant, his emissaries set out to traverse Italy and Germany, to penetrate into distant solitudes, and the depths of primeval forests, and to sound the gloomy caverns, where report had placed the servants of the Prince of darkness.

Soon malefactors, rogues, and vagabonds of all orders, formed the court of Gilles de Retz. He saw apparitions; he heard voices; sounds of terrible import were muttered from the bosom of the earth, and in a little while the subterranean vaults of the chateau resounded to the cries of victims.

"The most odious ideas that ever entered into the depraved brain of the alchemist were put into practice, to effect the transmutation of metals, and obtain that philosopher's stone which was to confer on them riches and immortality. Mysterious furnaces were burning night and day; but the real treasures which disappeared in them were not sufficient to satisfy the cupidity of the adepts by whom he was surrounded. They presented to him, at length, an Indian sage, who, as they informed him, had travelled over the whole earth, and from whom Nature had been unable to preserve a single secret.

"An imposing and severe countenance, eyes that dazzled those on whom they shone, and a beard as white as snow, distinguished the man of the East; while his simple, but elegant manners, announced that he had lived habitually with the great ones of the earth. Nothing appeared new or strange to him; no name, no person, no event. He was almost always buried in profound silence; but when he did condescend to speak, his discourse was of things so extraordinary, so wonderful, or so terrible, and all occurring in his own presence, that Gilles de Retz became fascinated while he listened, and delivered himself up, with all the remains of his fortune, to this remarkable stranger.

"It was then that the dungeons of his chateau echoed with groans, and were watered with tears. It became necessary to call up the Prince of the Fallen Angels, the contemner of God, the devil, Satan himself, and the only cuirass which could preserve the invoker from the first effects of his indignation must be cemented with human blood. Nay, the Marshal himself must plunge the poniard into the heart of the victim, and count the quick convulsions that preceded and accompanied the instant of death.

"At a short distance from the chateau there was a forest as ancient as the world, in the centre of which a little spring, bursting from a rock, was absorbed and disappeared in the ground. A thousand fearful tales were told of this solitary spot; phantoms glided shrieking through the trees; and, if any of the neighbours, attracted either by pity or curiosity, approached the unhallowed precincts, they were never more seen. Their bodies, it was supposed, were buried round the spring. It was here that the Indian proposed to subdue the rebel angels, and to bring the most powerful among them under the dominion of the Marshal.

"One night, at the mid-hour, the sage proceeded to this spot, armed at all points, protected by the cuirass cemented by human blood, and furnished with the seal of Gilles de Retz, who followed him alone. He first dug a grave, round which he traced various circles, and these he intermingled with strange figures, in which he deposited some odd or hideous objects. He then built an altar with the earth taken out of the graye, and some flat stones that he had set

carefully apart, placing upon it, when ready, the bones of the victims buried round the spring.

"A new crime was then committed. The blood of an infant flowed into the grave; and responding to its death-cries the voice of an owl was heard, which the stranger a few days before had set at liberty in the forest. Up to this moment, the theatre of the dreadful sacrifice had received no light except from some rays of the moon darting fitfully through the foliage; but when the Indian had pronounced certain barbarous and impious words, a thick smoke appeared round the altar, and was followed by a bluish light, so brilliant that the eye could scarcely endure it. The Magician then struck fiercely on a buckler, which resounded to the blow: and in the midst of a terrific noise which filled the forest, a being resembling an enormous leopard, whose horrible form was long imprinted on the imagination of the Marshal, advanced slowly, with seemingly articulate roars, which the Indian explained in a low and troubled voice to his wretched employer.

"It is Satan,' said he, 'he accepts your homage. But curses on my soul! I have forgotten the most important part of the incantation. He cannot speak to you. Why did I not think of this sooner?' "Can we not begin again?' cried the Marshal, trembling with hope and fear.

"Peace, in the devil's name!' whispered the Indian, appearing to listen. 'At Florence,' continued he, 'yes, in the depths of that cellar -Do you then consent to the death of '

"Just heaven!' shouted the Marshal in a fury, 'May the great God confound you! have I not already promised?' But, at the holy name of the Father of Mercies, the vision vanished; the echoes of the forest repeated a thousand wild and mournful cries, and the dazzling light expired in thick darkness.

"I recommended silence to you,' said the Magician, after according an instant to human weakness, 'but the name which escaped from your lips has lost to you for ever the power you were on the eve of acquiring over the spirit. He said enough, however, to enable me to render you the possessor of all the treasures buried in the bosom of the earth. The talisman, by means of which this must be effected, is at the bottom of an urn in a tomb near Florence; and behold,' continued he, stooping, and picking up a plate of gold which the Marshal had not before observed, 'behold the sign which will introduce me into places however deeply hidden.'

"The Marshal returned to his chateau; placed in the hands of the Indian the whole amount he was able to raise-saw him set out on his journey to Florence, and with a heart full of rage for having lost, by his own fault, the immense advantages he had expected, awaited with anxiety the expiration of the year, which the impostor had marked as the period of his return.

"Disappointed in his search after the philosopher's stone, and in his longings for dominion over the powers of the air, Gilles de Retz sought in marriage a means of replenishing his coffers. The dowry of his wife was soon exhausted or her charms palled upon his

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senses and she disappeared; a second supplied her place a third -even to the seventh wife! The cry of blood at length rose to heaven, and Jean V. Duke of Brittany, determined to arrest this gigantic criminal. After some difficulty he was taken-not in his own chateau, which was too well defended-but by means of an ambuscade, and thrown into the dungeons of Nantes.

"The Indian was next seized, who proved to be a Florentine called Prelati. He was put to the torture, and confessed everything. Gilles himself could not stand unmoved the appearance of the rack; but, forgetting the resolution he seemed to have taken to die in silence, poured forth a declaration of his crimes which filled his judges with horror. Even in the midst of such revelations, however, he endeavoured to relieve himself of a part of the blame, by complaining of a bad education, and of the arts of Prelati and his accomplices, who, working upon his infatuated predilections for forbidden studies, had led him on insensibly from horror to horror, till at length his mind became seared to the sense of guilt. It is remarkable that the audience, at this period of the trial, forgot the horror which such a monster ought to have inspired, and melted into tears of compassion.

"Gilles de Retz was then condemned to be dragged in chains to the meadow of the Madeleine, near Nantes, and there to be bound to a post, raised on a pile of fagots, and burned alive. The fathers and mothers of families who witnessed the trial fasted for three days after, according to the custom of the period, in order to obtain a hearing for their prayers in behalf of his soul. They at the same time scourged their children with great severity, to impress upon their memory the awful lesson they had received.

"The Marshal was conducted to the place of punishment, in the midst of a vast procession, formed of the monastic orders and the clergy, and secular congregations of the city. He was much cast down, and seemed to dread the sufferings he was about to undergo, but these, through the interest of his friends, were in part commuted, and when the flames rose, he was strangled, and with comparatively little pain, yielded forth his spirit to the latter judgment.

"The ruins of the chateau of La Verrière, and the whole scene around them, have an air of melancholy and desolation that disposes the mind to reverie. A stair cut in the rock leads to a little hall tapestried with ivy, and round this are planted seven funereal trees, as monuments to the manes of the seven murdered wives. At some distance from the chateau, there were found, in 1810, a number of slate coffins. Near the Verrière, the ruins of an old bridge are seen under the surface of the Erdre; but the date of this construction is altogether unknown.

6

"None of those associations,' says M. Richer, which connect the epochs of history, are attached to the banks of the Erdre. This tranquil river is the image of oblivion; and on its shores, as on those of Lethe, we seem to lose the memory of the past.' 999 *

*"Wanderings by the Loire." By the Author of "The Magician."