of Saint Jacques de la Boucherie, describing cabalistically the
preparation of the famous stone.

The Marshal could not go to Paris because the English soldiers barred
the roads. There was only one thing to do. He wrote to the most
celebrated of the southern transmuters, and had them brought to
Tiffauges at great expense.

"From documents which we posses we can see his supervising the
construction of the athanor, or alchemists' furnace, buying pelicans,
crucibles, and retorts. He turned one of the wings of his château into a
laboratory and shut himself up in it with Antonio di Palermo, François
Lombard, and 'Jean Petit, goldsmith of Paris,' all of whom busied
themselves night and day with the concoction of the 'great work.'"

They were completely unsuccessful. At the end of their resources, these
hermetists disappeared, and there ensued at Tiffauges an incredible
coming-and-going of adepts and their helpers. They arrived from all
parts of Brittany, Poitou, and Maine, alone or escorted by promoters and
sorcerers. Gilles de Sillé and Roger de Bricqueville, cousins and
friends of the Marshal, scurried about the country, beating up the game
and driving it in to Gilles de Rais, while a priest of his chapel,
Eustache Blanchet, went to Italy where workers in metals were legion.

While waiting, Gilles de Rais, not to be discouraged, continued his
experiments, all of which missed fire. He finally came to believe that
the magicians were right after all, and that no discovery was possible
without the aid of Satan.

And one night, with a sorcerer newly arrived from Poitiers, Jean de la