The Book of Were-Wolves, Sabine Baring-Gould [chapter books to read to 5 year olds txt] 📗

hands dyed in blood. His nails were long as claws, and were

clotted with fresh gore, and shreds of human flesh.

 

This is one of the most puzzling and peculiar cases which come under

our notice.

 

The wretched man, whose name was Roulet, of his own accord stated that

he had fallen upon the lad and had killed him by smothering him, and

that he had been prevented from devouring the body completely by the

arrival of men on the spot.

 

Roulet proved on investigation to be a beggar from house to house, in

the most abject state of poverty. His companions in mendicity were his

brother John and his cousin Julien. He had been given lodging out of

charity in a neighbouring village, but before his apprehension he had

been absent for eight days.

 

Before the judges, Roulet acknowledged that he was able to transform

himself into a wolf by means of a salve which his parents had given

him. When questioned about the two wolves which had been seen leaving

the corpse, he said that he knew perfectly well who they were, for

they were his companions, Jean and Julian, who possessed the same

secret as himself. He was shown the clothes he had worn on the day of

his seizure, and he recognized them immediately; he described the boy

whom he had murdered, gave the date correctly, indicated the precise

spot where the deed had been done, and recognized the father of the

boy as the man who had first run up when the screams of the lad had

been heard. In prison, Roulet behaved like an idiot. When seized, his

belly was distended and hard; in prison he drank one evening a whole

pailful of water, and from that moment refused to eat or drink.

 

His parents, on inquiry, proved to be respectable and pious people,

and they proved that his brother John and his cousin Julien had been

engaged at a distance on the day of Roulet’s apprehension.

 

“What is your name, and what your estate?” asked the judge, Pierre

Hérault.

 

“My name is Jacques Roulet, my age thirty-five; I am poor, and a

mendicant.”

 

“What are you accused of having done?”

 

“Of being a thief—of having offended God. My parents gave me an

ointment; I do not know its composition.”

 

“When rubbed with this ointment do you become a wolf?”

 

“No; but for all that, I killed and ate the child Cornier: I was a

wolf.”

 

“Were you dressed as a wolf?”

 

“I was dressed as I am now. I had my hands and my face bloody, because

I had been eating the flesh of the said child.”

 

“Do your hands and feet become paws of a wolf?”

 

“Yes, they do.”

 

“Does your head become like that of a wolf-your mouth become larger?”

 

“I do not know how my head was at the time; I used my teeth; my head

was as it is to-day. I have wounded and eaten many other little

children; I have also been to the sabbath.”

 

The lieutenant criminel sentenced Roulet to death. He, however,

appealed to the Parliament at Paris; and this decided that as there

was more folly in the poor idiot than malice and witchcraft, his

sentence of death should be commuted to two years’ imprisonment in a

madhouse, that he might be instructed in the knowledge of God, whom he

had forgotten in his utter poverty. [1]

 

[1. “La cour du Parliament, par arrêt, mist l’appellation et la

sentence dont il avoit esté appel au néant, et, néanmoins, ordonna que

le dit Roulet serait mis à l’hospital Saint Germain des Prés, où on a

accoustumé de mettre les folz, pour y demeurer l’espace de deux ans,

afin d’y estre instruit et redressé tant de son esprit, que ramené à

la cognoissance de Dieu, que l’extrême pauvreté lui avoit fait

mescognoistre.”]

 

CHAPTER VII.

 

JEAN GRENIER

 

On the Sand-dunes—A Wolf attacks Marguerite Poirier—Jean Grenier

brought to Trial—His Confessions—Charges of Cannibalism proved—His

Sentence—Behaviour in the Monastery—Visit of Del’ancre.

 

One fine afternoon in the spring, some village girls were tending

their sheep on the sand-dunes which intervene between the vast forests

of pine covering the greater portion of the present department of

Landes in the south of France, and the sea.

 

The brightness of the sky, the freshness of the air puffing up off the

blue twinkling Bay of Biscay, the hum or song of the wind as it made

rich music among the pines which stood like a green uplifted wave on

the East, the beauty of the sand-hills speckled with golden cistus, or

patched with gentian-blue, by the low growing Gremille couchée, the

charm of the forest-skirts, tinted variously with the foliage of

cork-trees, pines, and acacia, the latter in full bloom, a pile of

rose-coloured or snowy flowers,—all conspired to fill the peasant

maidens with joy, and to make their voices rise in song and laughter,

which rung merrily over the hills, and through the dark avenues of

evergreen trees.

 

Now a gorgeous butterfly attracted their attention, then a flight of

quails skimming the surface.

 

“Ah!” exclaimed Jacquiline Auzun,” ah, if I had my stilts and bats, I

would strike the little birds down, and we should have a fine supper.”

 

“Now, if they would fly ready cooked into one’s mouth, as they do in

foreign parts!” said another girl.

 

“Have you got any new clothes for the S. Jean?” asked a third; “my

mother has laid by to purchase me a smart cap with gold lace.”

 

“You will turn the head of Etienne altogether, Annette!” said Jeanne

Gaboriant. “But what is the matter with the sheep?”

 

She asked because the sheep which had been quietly browsing before

her, on reaching a small depression in the dune, had started away as

though frightened at something. At the same time one of the dogs began

to growl and show his fangs.

 

The girls ran to the spot, and saw a little fall in the ground, in

which, seated on a log of fir, was a boy of thirteen. The appearance

of the lad was peculiar. His hair was of a tawny red and thickly

matted, falling over his shoulders and completely covering his narrow

brow. His small pale-grey eyes twinkled with an expression of horrible

ferocity and cunning, from deep sunken hollows. The complexion was of

a dark olive colour; the teeth were strong and white, and the canine

teeth protruded over the lower lip when the mouth was closed. The

boy’s hands were large and powerful, the nails black and pointed like

bird’s talons. He was ill clothed, and seemed to be in the most abject

poverty. The few garments he had on him were in tatters, and through

the rents the emaciation of his limbs was plainly visible.

 

The girls stood round him, half frightened and much surprised, but the

boy showed no symptoms of astonishment. His face relaxed into a

ghastly leer, which showed the whole range of his glittering white

fangs.

 

“Well, my maidens,” said he in a harsh voice, “which of you is the

prettiest, I should like to know; can you decide among you?”

 

“What do you want to know for?” asked Jeanne Gaboriant, the eldest of

the girls, aged eighteen, who took upon herself to be spokesman for

the rest.

 

“Because I shall marry the prettiest,” was the answer.

 

“Ah!” said Jeanne jokingly; “that is if she will have you, which is

not very likely, as we none of us know you, or anything about you.”

 

“I am the son of a priest,” replied the boy curtly.

 

“Is that why you look so dingy and black?”

 

“No, I am dark-coloured, because I wear a wolfskin sometimes.”

 

“A wolfskin!” echoed the girl; “and pray who gave it you?”

 

“One called Pierre Labourant.”

 

“There is no man of that name hereabouts. Where does he live?”

 

A scream of laughter mingled with howls, and breaking into strange

gulping bursts of fiendlike merriment from the strange boy.

 

The little girls recoiled, and the youngest took refuge behind Jeanne.

 

“Do you want to know Pierre Labourant, lass? Hey, he is a man with an

iron chain about his neck, which he is ever engaged in gnawing. Do you

want to know where he lives, lass? Ha., in a place of gloom and fire,

where there are many companions, some seated on iron chairs, burning,

burning; others stretched on glowing beds, burning too. Some cast men

upon blazing coals, others roast men before fierce flames, others

again plunge them into caldrons of liquid fire.”

 

The girls trembled and looked at each other with scared faces, and

then again at the hideous being which crouched before them.

 

“You want to know about the wolfskin cape?” continued he. “Pierre

Labourant gave me that; he wraps it round me, and every Monday,

Friday, and Sunday, and for about an hour at dusk every other day, I

am a wolf, a werewolf. I have killed dogs and drunk their blood; but

little girls taste better, their flesh is tender and sweet, their

blood rich and warm. I have eaten many a maiden, as I have been on my

raids together with my nine companions. I am a werewolf! Ah, ha! if

the sun were to set I would soon fall on one of you and make a meal of

you!” Again he burst into one of his frightful paroxysms of laughter,

and the girls unable to endure it any longer, fled with precipitation.

 

Near the village of S. Antoine de Pizon, a little girl of the name of

Marguerite Poirier, thirteen years old, was in the habit of tending

her sheep, in company with a lad of the same age, whose name was Jean

Grenier. The same lad whom Jeanne Gaboriant had questioned.

 

The little girl often complained to her parents of the conduct of the

boy: she said that he frightened her with his horrible stories; but

her father and mother thought little of her complaints, till one day

she returned home before her usual time so thoroughly alarmed that she

had deserted her flock. Her parents now took the matter up and

investigated it. Her story was as follows:—

 

Jean had often told her that he had sold himself to the devil, and

that he had acquired the power of ranging the country after dusk, and

sometimes in broad day, in the form of a wolf. He had assured her that

he had killed and devoured many dogs, but that he found their flesh

less palatable than the flesh of little girls, which he regarded as a

supreme delicacy. He had told her that this had been tasted by him not

unfrequently, but he had specified only two instances: in one he had

eaten as much as he could, and had thrown the rest to a wolf, which

had come up during the repast. In the other instance he had bitten to

death another little girl, had lapped her blood, and, being in a

famished condition at the time, had devoured every portion of her,

with the exception of the arms and shoulders.

 

The child told her parents, on the occasion of her return home in a

fit of terror, that she had been guiding her sheep as usual, but

Grenier had not been present. Hearing a rustle in the bushes she had

looked round, and a wild beast bad leaped upon her, and torn her

clothes on her left side with its sharp fangs. She added that she had

defended herself lustily with her shepherd’s staff, and had beaten the

creature off. It had then retreated a few paces, had seated itself on