Certainly a sadist and probably afflicted with religious mania as
well, Gilles de Retz or Rais, who was a comrade-hi arms of Jeanne D'Are's, was hanged and burned at Nantes in 1440 for the alleged murder of some 140 children who fell victims to his unnatural lusts and soreeries. That is, in brief, the story round which Mr. Tennille Dix, an American, has written his Black Baron (Nash and Grayson, 18s.), eking it
out with a prodigious quantity of padding mainly in the shape of imaginary conversation. It is an unsatisfactory volume. If the author intenlled it for fiction, as large parts of it obviously are, it would have been better to have said so. If it is meant as a serious historical study, then we ask for some account of its provenance an'd for a bibliography. Also we should have expected the author to note that the whole story is, historically speaking, suspect. For the rest, the book is written in a style alternately flat, or frothy and turgid, and it contains flagrant illiteracies and many verbal horrors: A single specimen of its style will suffice. One of the Baron's confederates, who has been helping to cremate the bodies of the child victims, is described as breathing the hot air of the incinerating ehainber in avid gulps." The publishers call special attention to the "high and austere art " of the book, but tastes differ.
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