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This rehabilitation school, today all-powerful, exasperated Durtal. In
writing his study of Gilles de Rais he was not going to fall into the
error of these bigoted sustainers of middle-class morality. With his
ideas of history he could not claim to give an exact likeness of
Bluebeard, but he was not going to concede to the public taste for
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 an analyst pause, but the man's bonhomie, quite ecclesiastical,
was instantly disarming. Madame was no beauty, but possessed a
certain bizarre charm and was always surrounded. She, however,
remained silent and did nothing to encourage her voluble admirers. As
void of prudery as her husband, she listened impassively, absently, with
her thoughts evidently afar, to the boldest of conversational
imprudences.
At one of these evening parties, while La Rousseil, recently converted,
howled a hymn, Durtal, sitting in a corner having a quiet smoke, had
been struck by the physiognomy and bearing of Des Hermies, who
stood out sharply from the motley throng of defrocked priests and
grubby poets packed into Chantelouve's library and drawing-room.
Among these smirking and carefully composed faces, Des Hermies,
evidently a man of forceful individuality, seemed, and probably felt,
singularly out of place. He was tall, slender, somewhat pale. His eyes,
narrowed in a frown, had the cold blue gleam of sapphires. The nose
was short and sharp, the cheeks smooth shaven. With his flaxen hair
and Vandyke he might have been a Norwegian or an Englishman in not
very good health. His garments were of London make, and the long,
tight, wasp-waisted coat, buttoned clear up to the neck, seemed to
enclose him like a box. Very careful of his person, he had a manner all
his own of drawing off his gloves, rolling them up with an almost
inaudible crackling, then seating himself, crossing his long, thin legs,
and leaning over to the right, reaching into the patch pocket on his left
side and bringing forth the embossed Japanese pouch which contained
his tobacco and cigarette papers.
He was methodic, guarded, and very cold in the presence of strangers.
His superior and somewhat bored attitude, not exactly relieved by his
curt, dry laugh, awakened, at a first meeting, a serious antipathy which

he sometimes justified by venomous words, by meaningless silences,
by unspoken innuendoes. He was respected and feared at Chantelouve's,
but when one came to know him one found, beneath his defensive shell,
great warmth of heart and a capacity for true friendship of the kind that
is not expansive but is capable of sacrifice and can always be relied
upon.
How did he live? Was he rich or just comfortable? No one knew, and
he, tight lipped, never spoke of his affairs. He was doctor of the Faculty
of Paris--Durtal had chanced to see his diploma--but he spoke of
medicine with great disdain. He said he had become convinced of the
futility of all he had been taught, and had thrown it over for
homeopathy, which in turn he had thrown over for a Bolognese system,
and this last he was now excoriating.
There were times when Durtal could not doubt that his friend was an
author, for Des Hermies spoke understandingly of tricks of the trade
which one learns only after long experience, and his literary judgment
was not that of a layman. When,