in a strange and sudden manner.[202] Squin de Florian, the accuser in chief of the Order, was assassinated. In breaking the sword of the Templars it was converted into a dagger and their proscribed trowels henceforth were utilised only in the erection of tombs. Let them pass at this point into darkness, wherein they took refuge while maturing their vengeance. We shall see them reappear at the great epoch of the Revolution and we shall recognise them by their signs and by their works. The greatest magical prosecution to be found in history, after that of the Temple, was the trial of a maid who was, moreover, almost a saint. The Church, in this case, has been accused of subservience to the base resentment of a vanquished party, and it has been asked earnestly what anathemas of the Chair of St. Peter fell upon the assassins of Joan of Arc.[203] To those who are really unacquainted, it may be said at once that Pierre Cauchon, the unworthy Bishop of Beauvais, struck suddenly with death by the hand of God, was excommunicated after death by Callixtus IV, his remains being taken from consecrated ground and cast into the public sewers. It was not therefore the Church which judged and condemned the Maid of Orléans, but a bad priest and an apostate. Charles VII, who gave up this noble girl to her destroyers, fell afterwards into the hands of an avenging providence; he died of self-starvation, through dread of being poisoned by his own son. Fear is the torment of the base. The king in question gave up his life to a courtesan, and for her he burdened with debt a kingdom which had been saved to him by a virgin. Courtesan and virgin have been celebrated by our national poets—Joan of Arc by Voltaire and Agnes Sorel by Béranger. Joan perished in her innocence, but the laws against Magic were vindicated soon after in the case of one who was chief among the guilty. The personage in question was one of the most valiant captains under Charles VII, but the services which he rendered to the state could not counterbalance the extent and enormity of his crimes. All tales of ogres and Croquemitaine were realised and surpassed by the deeds of this fantastic scoundrel, whose history has remained in the memory of children under the name of Blue Beard. Gilles de Laval, Lord of Raiz, had indeed so black a beard that it seemed to be almost blue, as shewn by his portrait in the Salle des Maréchaux, at the Museum of Versailles. A Marshal of Brittany, he was brave because he was French; being rich, he was also ostentatious; and he became a sorcerer because he was insane.[204]