Finally the marshal had received absolution.
In the late afternoon the Lord of Retz commanded the fire to be laid ready for lighting in his chamber aloft in the keep of Machecoul, and set himself down to listen to the singing of the choir, which, under the guidance of Precentor Renouf, rehearsed for him the sweetest hymns recently written for the choir of the Holy Father at Rome.

For there the marshal's choir-master had been trained, and with its leader he still kept up a correspondence upon kindred interests.
Gilles de Retz, as he sat under the late blooming roses in the afternoon sunshine of the autumn of western France, appeared to the casual eye one of the most noble seigneurs and the most enlightened in the world.

He affected a costume already semiecclesiastic as a token of his ultimate intention to enter holy orders.

It seemed indeed as if the great soldier who had ridden into Orleans with Dunois and the Maid had begun to lay aside his earthly glories and seek the heavenly.
There, upon a chair set within the cloisters, in a place which the sunshine touched most lovingly and where it lingered longest, he sat, nodding his head to the sound of the sweet singing, and bowing low at each mention of the name of Jesus (as the custom is)--a still, meditative, almost saintly man.

Upon the lap of his furred robe (for, after all, it was a sunshine with a certain shrewd wintriness in it) lay an illuminated copy of the Holy Gospels; and sometimes as he listened to the choir-boys singing, he glanced therein, and read of the little children to whom belongs the kingdom.