Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 14, 2025
Her eyes were purple-black, like the berries of the deadly nightshade seen in the twilight. Her face was pale, and the scarlet of her lips lay like twin geranium petals on new-fallen snow. Gilles de Retz followed her with a certain grim and ghastly pride, as he marked the sensation caused by her entrance. "This," he said, "is my lion tamer!"
Not having found places in the Church, where they would certainly have accepted no position beneath that of cardinal or pope, they could, in those troubled times of ignorance, but take refuge in the patronage of a great lord like Gilles. And Gilles was, indeed, the only one at that epoch who was intelligent enough and educated enough to understand them.
But Gilles de Sillé of the house of the Marshal de Retz, being left to himself in the half darkness of the garret, took up the viol and sang a curious air like that with which the charmer wiles his snakes to him, and at the end of every verse, he also laughed low to himself.
In the year 1580, one Gilles Blacre had taken the lease of a house in the suburbs of Tours, but repenting him of his bargain with the landlord, Peter Piquet, he endeavoured to prevail upon him to cancel the agreement. Peter, however, was satisfied with his tenant and his terms, and would listen to no compromise.
Gilles expressed the utmost chagrin and disappointment, and at once said that he could not wait for so long a period; if the devil were not more prompt, Prelati might tell him, that the Marechal de Rays was not to be trifled with, and would decline all further communication with him. Prelati at last persuaded him to wait seven times seven days.
God's feet, if I pommel you for this! Pommel him he did; and, having drawn blood at his ears, he turned him over his knee as if he had been a schoolboy, and lathered his rump with a chair-leg. This humiliating punishment had humiliating effects. Gilles believed himself a boy in the cloister-school again, with his smock up. 'Mea culpa, mea culpa! Hey, reverend father, have pity! he began to roar.
Gilles de Retz turned towards the image, and, lifting up his hand solemnly, he cried in a great voice, "O Barran-Sathanas, be pleased to behold this innocent blood spilled slowly in thine honour. As the red fount flows and the red fire burns, restore my youth and make me strong. Faithfully will I serve thee and thee alone, renouncing all other.
Then, whilst one of them gently drew off his boots, Rodenard, with the lanthorn close beside him, cut away the fellow's doublet, and laid bare the oozing sword-wound that gaped in his mangled side. He whispered an order to Gilles, who went swiftly off to the coach in quest of something that he had asked for; then he sat on his heels and waited, his hand upon the man's pulse, his eyes on his face.
If she had seen, as Milo saw, Gilles de Gurdun glowering at her from a corner, it might have gone hard with her. But she did not. They crowned Richard Duke of Normandy, and to him came all the barons of the duchy one by one, to do him homage. And first the Archbishop of Rouen, in whose allegiance was that same Sir Gilles.
Gurdun followed his guide speechless; but the Archduke was very vexed, and declined to see him. 'I decide to be a villain, and he makes me a vain villain, said the great man. 'Bid him go to the devil. So then Gilles with head hanging came out of the gate, and Jehane leaped from her angle to confront him.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking