GILLES DE RETZ.
Blue Beard: a Contribution to History and Folklore. By T. Wilson, LL.D. (G. P. Putnam's Sons. 7s. 6d.)—Gilles de Retz, whose shameful career is sketched in Mr. Wilson's Blue Beard, was a monster, rarely paralleled in the world's history ; and since the abnormal has always an interest of its own, the lord of Tiffauges well deserves a record. But Dr. Wilson has shown a certain temerity in following the footsteps of Michelet and Huysmans, whose portraits are at once juster and more picturesque. None the less, his book is scholarly and painstaking; all the documents are collected which might throw a light upon the murderer's wickedness, and though the author spoils his material by a certain clumsiness of treatment, there is the material ready for another's use. The early life of Gilles de Retz was not without distinction. .A Marshal of France at twenty-five, he served in the army of Jeanne d'Arc which drove the English from his country. He was a man of pleasant address and profound erudition. His library was remark- able for the time when it was gathered together, and all his contemporaries knew him for a skilled Latinist and a scholar of curious lore. It is not strange, then, that no suspicion fell upon him when (in 1432) a wide district of France was possessed by a sudden fear. In Brittany, in Maine, even in Poiton, children disappeared,—children just old enough to wander from farm to farm. At first the invisible beast of prey was believed by the super- stitious country folk to be some practitioner of the black art, in the service of the Devil himself. But speculation was idle; mystery end misery enveloped the whole row:dry. and there was scarce a
village in Western France that did not mourn its vanished children. Wherever the children were stolen they were carried by the agents of Gilles de Retz to his castle of Tiffauges, in whose recesses the monster was mutilating his victims, in the hope of discovering the Elixir of Life, and of transmuting the baser metals into gold. Nor was he hampered in his horrible magic until 1440, in which year the Bishop of Nantes, relying upon public rumour, made "a declaration of infamy" against the infanticide. At last Brittany was up in arms against the monster, and a few months later Gilles de Retz lay in the castle of Nantes, charged with murder, heresy, and sacrilege. When he came before the Ecclesiastical Court he obstinately declined to recognise its jurisdiction or to answer the questions of his judges, but being threatened with excommunication, he pleaded guilty, and presently made a clear and open confession of his misdeeds. His confession is one of the strangest documents that ever were published. The murderer described his crimes with a simplicity and directness which might appear cynicism, if it were not madness. He insists that no one prompted him to the commission of his crimes : "My own imagination drove me to do so. The thought was my own, and I have nothing to which to attribute it except my own desire for knowledge of evil." Only once did he falter before his judges—when he was threatened with torture—and at his execution (he was hanged and burned alive) he dragged tears from all eyes by what seemed the nobility of his repentance. Of his career there is but one explanation : he was a madman, compelled by his mania to the slaughter of innocent children, and had he escaped the gallows and the stake there is no doubt that, despite his genuine repentance, he would have returned to the practice of his ancient crimes. But if Dr. Wilson's biography is valuable, his observations concerning the Bluebeard legend are confused and erroneous. He calls his book a " contribution to history and folklore." But to folklore it contributes nothing but blunders. The country people, he says, believe that Perrault's story of Bluebeard was founded on the story of Gilles de Retz. Now, the country people know nothing whatever of Perrault's stories, which are as pure fiction as " Pickwick " (let us say) or " Le Pere Goriot." Nor did Perrault invent the story of Bluebeard, which belongs to folklore, and is far older than Gilles de Retz. All that can be said is that the Breton folk identified the ancient legend of Bluebeard with the true history of Gilles de Retz. But Perrault, with his courtly, adroit fairly-tales, plays no part in the legends of Brittany, and Dr. Wilson has made no attempt either to trace the story in the traditions of other countries, or to separate truth from fiction in the folklore which still lives in the province devastated by Gilles de Retz.
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