They form a pitiful group at the foot of a huge tree. The bravest of them is Poucet. He looks around to find a way out.

‘I’m going to climb up the tree,’ he says at last. ‘Help me. From up there I might see a light.’

His brothers help him to climb up. Soon he has a view over the darkening forest, which rolls on to infinity. Yet very far, on the horizon, he can just see the dark, massive outline of a fortress. There is a light in one of the windows. It is the Château de Tiffauges. Poucet scrambles down among his brothers.

‘We are saved,’ he announces, ‘over there there’s a big castle that’s lit up. Let’s go there!’

The group plunges into the forest led by Poucet. Soon they arrive at the castle entrance. They knock on a postern. The gate opens as if by magic. They go in one by one. The gate shuts behind them.


Some time later, Blanchet was disturbed in his priory by a smell of burning flesh that infested the atmosphere. He went out and saw that a torrent of black smoke was gushing out of the castle’s biggest chimney and was being blown back over the outbuildings by an east wind, which was fairly rare in that region. This stink of burning flesh consorted so well with his fears that he decided to seek out Gilles and without further delay demand an explanation. For a long time he looked for him in the innumerable halls and chambers of the castle. Eventually he found him up on a small terrace quite close to the incriminating chimney. Gilles was standing there and, in his terrifying exaltation, he resembled a man possessed by some dark obsession.

As soon as he saw Blanchet, he rushed up to him and laid his hands on his shoulders.

‘Father, father, that smell? What is that smell?’ he asked him, shaking him. ‘Doesn’t it remind you of something? Ah, you weren’t at Rouen, were you? But, tell me, is it a savour of heresy or an odour of sanctity?’

Then he shut his eyes and started repeating in a voice that changed more and more, finally breaking into a sob: ‘Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!’

                           

Next day Blanchet took to the road with three mules led by a servant. With some relief he had accepted a mission that Gilles had given him after a particularly delirious night. Word had reached the farthest reaches of the Vendée of the marvels that were taking place far away to the south, in Tuscany. Scientists, artists and philosophers, it seemed, had combined their forces and intelligence to create a new golden age that would soon spread to the whole of mankind. So he was to go and investigate these novelties on the spot! Perhaps he would bring back to the Vendée some teaching, some object, even perhaps some man capable of tearing the Seigneur de Rais from his dark chimeras?


The former little seminarist from Saint-Malo was dazzled and scandalized by the spectacle of that midquattrocento Tuscany. He had, of course, known wealth. The Sire de Rais, whom he had served as chaplain for four years, was one of the richest lords in the kingdom of France. But the Vendée displayed a poverty that was all the starker in that its lord was obviously squeezing it quite shamelessly to pay for his infernal way of life. Florence could not have looked more different in the year 1439. There the crowd seemed rich, even the ordinary people seemed to juggle with florins. Gold circulated in every street. What astonished Blanchet above all were the craftsmen, who seemed to work only for luxury and beauty.