Who Was Bluebeard?

A genteman who saw tlie gray, forbidlinií castle of Bluebard rising above the station of Champtoce, France, tells who the IVightful hcro of tlie nursery was : Sotne reader uiay ask, " Who was this real, historical Blucbe-ird?" I answer that in Britlany he was the Sier Giles de Retz, a great feudal lord, who possessed vast estates and great power in his neighborhood in the latter part of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centimes, and was,besides, a marshal of' Kraiur. This castle wiis his stronghold, and he rulcd it and the Loire country around with a hand of ron aud sword of fire. Gifted in youth with pbysical strength and beauty, and an enoruious fortune, he imjKiired bolh by all sorts of indulgences. When too late, with a deSled and bloatcd body, ho found himself lashed by the scorpioD whip that is always sure to follow in. Instoad of growing penitent, he only beoame more bloody and reienden. S. luced by a wicked and cunning alchemist to believe that by bathing in human blood he could claim back his vau: hüalth, beauty, and spirits, be entrapped chilcrren and young persons ot'both sexes, murdered them in the dungeon9 of the castle with his own hand, and bathed i 11 tlieir warm blood. lt was belioved that more than a hundred were thus murdered. After years of impunity the matter becarne so notorious and spread so much fear through the country that the people roso in a niass against iim, made him a prisoner, and carried him to Nantes. There he was tried by his suzerin lord, the Duke of Brittany, and condemned to be burnt (alive at the stake, a judgment carried ioto execution in 1440 on what is now called the Chausee de la ladeline, on the Glorlette Island, in front of where the great hospital now stands.