He liked knowingly spiced foods, ardent wines heavy with aromatics; he dreamed of unknown gems, weird stones, uncanny metals.

He was the Des Esseintes of the fifteenth century! "All this was very expensive, less so, perhaps, than the luxurious court which made Tiffauges a place like none other.
"He had a guard of two hundred men, knights, captains, squires, pages, and all these people had personal attendants who were magnificently equipped at Gilles's expense.

The luxury of his chapel and collegium was madly extravagant.

There was in residence at Tiffauges a complete metropolitan clergy, deans, vicars, treasurers, canons, clerks, deacons, scholasters, and choir boys.

There is an inventory extant of the surplices, stoles, and amices, and the fur choir hats with crowns of squirrel and linings of vair.