Testimony of Witnesses Concerning a Missing Ten-Year-Old Boy (September 18, 1440)
Source: Georges Bataille. The Trial of Gilles de Rais (Amok Books, 2004)(pp. 253-255)(translation by Richard Robinson)
INQUEST BY COMMISSIONERS OF THE DUKE OF BRITTANY
Note: In hearings that lasted over three weeks, dozens of parents, relatives, and friends of missing boys testified before the Inquest. The text below is the report of the Inquest concerning the testimony of a missing ten-year-old-boy.
The testimony was offered by Peronne Loessart, mother of a missing ten-year-old boy, and three neighbors of the mother with the missing boy.
September 18, 1440. Inquiry and inquest with a view to proving, if possible, that the said Lord de Rais and his followers, his accomplices, conveyed away a certain number of small children, or other persons, and had them snatched, whom they struck down and killed, to have their blood, heart, liver, or other such parts, to make of them a sacrifice to the Devil, or to do other sorceries with, on which subject there are numerous complaints. This investigation was made by Jean de Touscheronde, appointed by the Duke, our Sovereign Lord.
PERONNE LOESSART, living in La Roche-Bernard, deposes under oath that two years ago this September the said Lord de Rais, returning from Vannes, came to lodge in the said place of La Roche-Bernard at the house of the said Jean Colin, and spent the night there. The witness was then living directly opposite the inn of the said Jean Colin. She had a ten-year-old child attending school, who attracted one of the servants of the said Lord de Rais, named Poitou. This Poitou came to speak with the said Peronne, requesting that she let the child live with him; he would clothe him very well and provide him with many advantages, while the child, for his part, would be the source of numerous benefits for Poitou as well. Whereupon the said Peronne told him that she had time to wait to benefit from her son, and that she was not going to take him out of school. The said Poitou assured her on this point and solemnly promised that he would take her son and send him to school, and that he would give a hundred sous to this Peronne for a dress. Confident of his promise, she permitted him to take the child away.
Not long afterwards, Poitou brought her four pounds for the dress. She told him that twenty sous were missing; he denied this, saying that he had promised her only four pounds. She told him then that she knew by this that he would have difficulty keeping his other promises because he was already short twenty sous. He told her to stop worrying so much, that he would give her and her child plenty of other gifts. Then he led the said child away, conducting him to Jean Colin's, the innkeeper of the said Lord. And so, on the following day, as Gilles de Rais was leaving the said inn, this Peronne asked him for her said child, who was with him; but Lord de Rais did not respond at all. But he turned to the said Poitou, who was there, and said that the child had been well chosen, and that he was as beautiful as an angel. The said Poitou then responded that there had been no one but himself to make the choice, and the said Lord told him that he had not failed to choose well. Not long after this, the child left with the said Poitou in the company of the said Lord, riding on a pony that the said Poitou had bought from Jean Colin. Since then, this woman has had no more news of him; she has heard no word of where her said child might be, and she did not see him in the company of the said Lord who had since come through the said place of La Roche-Bernard. And she has not seen the said Poitou in the retinue of the said Lord since then. Those of the said Lord's men whom she asked where her son was told her that he was at Tiffauges or Pouzauges.
[Signed:] De Touscheronde.
JEAN COLIN and his wife, and OLIVE, mother of the said Colin's wife, living at La Roche-Bernard, depose under oath that two years ago this September the said Lord de Rais, coming from Vannes, lodged at their inn and spent the night there. And that a fellow named Poitou, a servant of the said Lord, did so much for Peronne Loessart, who was living opposite their house then, that she entrusted him with her son, who was going to school, and who was one of the most beautiful children in the region, so that he might live with him; and the said Colin sold the said Poitou a pony he had for the sum of sixty sous, in order to take the said child away. And the said women said that, on the evening when the mother entrusted this Poitou with her son, he led him to the inn belonging to the witnesses, telling the other servants of the said Lord that this was his page; whereas these latter told him that he would not be there for him but that the said Lord, their master, would keep him for himself. And on the following day, when the said Lord came out of the said inn to get going, these women heard the mother of the child ask for him of the said Lord, in the presence of the child and Poitou; whereupon the said Lord told Poitou that the child was well chosen; Poitou responded that there had been no one but himself to choose, and the said Lord told him that he had not been mistaken and that the child was as beautiful as an angel. Not long afterwards, the latter left, riding on the said pony with the said Poitou in the company of the said Lord. And the said Colin declares that two or three months later in Nantes, he saw someone other than the said child mount the said pony, which shocked him. And the aforenamed witnesses say that since then, they have not seen the said child nor heard where he was, save what the said women say, that when they had inquired of the Lord's men, some of them responded that he was at Tiffauges, others that he was dead: that while he was crossing over the bridges in Nantes, the wind had blown him into the river. Since then, she had not seen the said Poitou come through the said place of La Roche-Bernard in the retinue of the said Lord, although he had himself come through. And the last time he had come through, six weeks before, returning from Vannes, they heard it said by the said Lord's servants, whom they asked where the said Poitou was, In order to find out where the said child was, that Poitou had taken off in the direction of Redon; and they imagined that this was because of the shocking complaints that the said Perrone had made on the subject of her child; which complaints the said Poitou could have learned of through the said Lord's men.
[Signed:] De Touscheronde.