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Before the parterre of gallantry budded, at an epoch when the Middle Ages were passing away, there appeared a man, known to amateurs of light opera and of fairy tales as Bluebeard, but who, everywhere, save in the nursery and the study, has been regarded as unreal.
Bluebeard was no more a creation of Perrault or of Offenbach than Don Juan was a creation of Mozart or of Moliere. Both really lived, but Bluebeard the more demoniacally. According to the documents contained in what is technically known as his _proces_, his name was Gilles de Retz and, at a period contemporaneous with the apparition of Jehanne d'Arc, he was a great Breton lord, seigneur of appreciable domains.[56]