mediocrity in well-and evil-doing by whitewashing the man.

Durtal's material for this study consisted of: a copy of the memorial
addressed by the heirs of Gilles de Rais to the king, notes taken from
the several true copies at Paris of the proceedings in the criminal
trial at Nantes, extracts from Vallet de Viriville's history of Charles
VII, finally the _Notice_ by Armand Guéraut and the biography of the
abbé Bossard. These sufficed to bring before Durtal's eyes the
formidable figure of that Satanic fifteenth century character who was
the most artistically, exquisitely cruel, and the most scoundrelly of
men.

No one knew of the projected study but Des Hermies, whom Durtal saw
nearly every day.

They had met in the strangest of homes, that of Chantelouve, the
Catholic historian, who boasted of receiving all classes of people. And
every week in the social season that drawing-room in the rue de Bagneux
was the scene of a heterogeneous gathering of under sacristans, café
poets, journalists, actresses, partisans of the cause of Naundorff,[1]
and dabblers in equivocal sciences.

[Footnote 1: A watchmaker who at the time of the July monarchy attempted
to pass himself off for Louis XVII.]

This salon was on the edge of the clerical world, and many religious
came here at the risk of their reputations. The dinners were
discriminately, if unconventionally, ordered. Chantelouve, rotund,
jovial, bade everyone make himself at home. Now and then through his
smoked spectacles there stole an ambiguous look which might have given