The Book of Were-Wolves | Page 2

Champigni in the afternoon, and I had started to visit the curiosity without calculating the time it would take me to reach it and to return. Suffice it to say that I discovered the venerable pile of grey stones as the sun set, and that I expended the last lights of evening in planning and sketching. I then turned my face homeward. My walk of about ten miles had wearied me, coming at the end of a long day's posting, and I had lamed myself in scrambling over some stones to the Gaulish relic.
A small hamlet was at no great distance, and I betook myself thither, in the hopes of hiring a trap to convey me to the posthouse, but I was disappointed. Few in the place could speak French, and the priest, when I applied to him, assured me that he believed there was no better conveyance in the place than a common charrue with its solid wooden wheels; nor was a riding horse to be procured. The good man offered to house me for the night; but I was obliged to decline, as my family intended starting early on the following morning.
Out spake then the mayor--"Monsieur can never go back to-night across the flats, because of the--the--" and his voice dropped; "the loups-garoux."
"He says that he must return!" replied the priest in patois. "But who will go with him?"
"Ah, ha,! M. le Cur��. It is all very well for one of us to accompany him, but think of the coming back alone!"
"Then two must go with him," said the priest, and you can take care of each other as you return."
"Picou tells me that he saw the were-wolf only this day se'nnight," said a peasant; "he was down by the hedge of his buckwheat field, and the sun had set, and he was thinking of coming home, when he heard a rustle on the far side of the hedge. He looked over, and there stood the wolf as big as a calf against the horizon, its tongue out, and its eyes glaring like marsh-fires. Mon Dieu! catch me going over the marais to-night. Why, what could two men do if they were attacked by that wolf-fiend?"
"It is tempting Providence," said one of the elders of the village;" no man must expect the help of God if he throws himself wilfully in the way of danger. Is it not so, M. le Cur��? I heard you say as much from the pulpit on the first Sunday in Lent, preaching from the Gospel."
"That is true," observed several, shaking their heads.
"His tongue hanging out, and his eyes glaring like marsh-fires!" said the confidant of Picou.
"Mon Dieu! if I met the monster, I should run," quoth another.
"I quite believe you, Cortrez; I can answer for it that you would," said the mayor.
"As big as a calf," threw in Picou's friend.
"If the loup-garou were only a natural wolf, why then, you see"--the mayor cleared his throat--"you see we should think nothing of it; but, M. le Cur��, it is a fiend, a worse than fiend, a man-fiend,--a worse than man-fiend, a man-wolf-fiend."
"But what is the young monsieur to do?" asked the priest, looking from one to another.
"Never mind," said I, who had been quietly listening to their patois, which I understood. "Never mind; I will walk back by myself, and if I meet the loup-garou I will crop his ears and tail, and send them to M. le Maire with my compliments."
A sigh of relief from the assembly, as they found themselves clear of the difficulty.
"Il est Anglais," said the mayor, shaking his head, as though he meant that an Englishman might face the devil with impunity.
A melancholy flat was the marais, looking desolate enough by day, but now, in the gloaming, tenfold as desolate. The sky was perfectly clear, and of a soft, blue-grey tinge; illumined by the new moon, a curve of light approaching its western bed. To the horizon reached a fen, blacked with pools of stagnant water, from which the frogs kept up an incessant trill through the summer night. Heath and fern covered the ground, but near the water grew dense masses of flag and bulrush, amongst which the light wind sighed wearily. Here and there stood a sandy knoll, capped with firs, looking like black splashes against the grey sky; not a sign of habitation anywhere; the only trace of men being the white, straight road extending for miles across the fen.
That this district harboured wolves is not improbable, and I confess that I armed myself with a strong stick at the first clump of trees through which the road dived.
This was my first introduction to were-wolves, and the circumstance of finding the superstition still so prevalent, first gave me the idea of investigating the history and