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. He wrote him that he would give him all that he possessed,
excepting his life and his soul. He made sacrifices, gave alms and
instituted ceremonies in his honour. At night, the bleak walls of the
castle lighted up by the glare of the torches that flared amid bumpers
of rare wines and gipsy jugglers, and blushed hotly under the unceasing
breath of magical bellows. The inhabitants invoked the devil, joked with
death, murdered children, enjoyed frightful and atrocious pleasures;
blood flowed, instruments played, everything echoed with voluptuousness,
horror, and madness.

When he expired, four or five damsels had his body removed from the
stake, laid out, and taken to the Carmelites, who, after performing the
customary services, buried him in state.

On one of the bridges of the Loire, relates Guépin, opposite the Hôtel
de la Boule-d'Or, an expiatory monument was erected to his memory. It
was a niche containing the statue of the _Bonne Vierge de crée lait_,
who had the power of creating milk in nurses; the good people offered
her butter and similar rustic products. The niche still exists, but the
statue is gone; the same as at the town-house, where the casket which
contained the heart of Queen Anne is also empty. But we did not care to
see the casket; we did not even give it a thought. I should have
preferred gazing upon the trousers of the marshal of Retz to looking at
the heart of Madame Anne de Bretagne.