The _Mémoire des Héritiers_, setting forth the extravagant and ruinous expenditures by which the principal of the estate was being dissipated, was duly presented to the King and the necessary proof offered to establish its allegations. The date is not given, but it should have been about 1432–33. In 1435–36, the King, having become satisfied of the truth of the matters alleged, through his Council of State and by letters patent, issued his decree of prohibition against the alienation or incumbrance by Gilles de Retz of any of his lands or seigniories. This decree has been preserved to us in Guepin’s _Histoire de Nantes_, pp. 131–133. The Decree of Interdiction by the King, against the sale and incumbrance of his property commences with a description of the various noble families from which Gilles de Retz had descended; his titles, his property, baronies, châteaux, seigniories, his marriage, the properties of his wife--that is to say, Pouzauges, Tiffauges, Chabenais, Confolens, Château-Morant, Savenay, Lombert, Grez-sur-Maine, and other beautiful properties, the rental value of which amounted to six or seven thousand livres (pounds, about three hundred thousand francs, actual value); that from his said marriage, he derived also personal property of the value of one hundred thousand golden crowns; that he held in Grosses Baronies thirty thousand livres of true domains; that from his office of Marshal of France he received grand salary and pension from the King, with numerous gratuities; so that he had a yearly income of forty or fifty thousand livres or more. The said Gilles, after the decease of his father, took the administration of his estate to himself and used it according to his pleasure; he established himself in an estate grander than that to which he really belonged; kept two hundred horsemen, maintained a chapel of singers in his château numbering twenty-five or thirty persons, chaplain, clerks, children, and others; these were taken with him when he travelled; and in all things he managed his affairs so as to have in his château, because of the said chapel, more than fifty men or persons at his expense, and as many horses; he had also in said chapel a great quantity or number of ornaments, cloth of gold, silk, chandeliers and _censoirs_, crosses, plates, dishes, etc.; these were of such sumptuosity that they cost three times more than their value; he had several organs, one of which, carried by six men, was taken with him wherever he went; he often purchased cloth-of-gold at sixty or eighty crowns per _aune_ (ell) when it was not worth more than twenty-five, and a pair of “orfrays” (embroidered cloth of gold) at three or four hundred crowns, when they were not worth more than one hundred; he kept in the said chapel a dean, choir-leader, or singing-master, an archdeacon, vicar, schoolmaster, etc., as in the cathedral, and one of these priests or officers he undertook to establish and treat as a