In one of his were-wolf runs, Pierre fell upon a boy of six or seven
years old, with his teeth, intending to rend and devour him, but the
lad screamed so loud that he was obliged to beat a retreat to his
clothes, and smear himself again, in order to recover his form and
escape detection. He and Michel, however, one day tore to pieces a
woman as she was gathering peas; and a M. de Chusnée, who came to her
rescue, was attacked by them and killed.
On another occasion they fell upon a little girl of four years old, and
ate her up, with the exception of one arm. Michel thought the flesh
most delicious.
Another girl was strangled by them, and her blood lapped up. Of a third
they ate merely a portion of the stomach. One evening at dusk, Pierre
leaped over a garden wall, and came upon a little maiden of nine years
old, engaged upon the weeding of the garden beds. She fell on her knees
and entreated Pierre to spare her; but he snapped the neck, and left
her a corpse, lying among her flowers. On this occasion he does not
seem to have been in his wolf’s shape. He fell upon a goat which he
found in the field of Pierre Lerugen, and bit it in the throat, but he
killed it with a knife.
Michel was transformed in his clothes into a wolf, but Pierre was
obliged to strip, and the metamorphosis could not take place with him
unless he were stark naked.
He was unable to account for the manner in which the hair vanished when
he recovered his natural condition.
The statements of Pierre Bourgot were fully corroborated by Michel
Verdung.
Towards the close of the autumn of 1573, the peasants of the
neighbourhood of Dôle, in Franche Comté, were authorized by the Court
of Parliament at Dôle, to hunt down the were-wolves which infested the
country. The authorization was as follows:— “According to the
advertisement made to the sovereign Court of Parliament at Dole, that,
in the territories of Espagny, Salvange, Courchapon, and the
neighbouring villages, has often been seen and met, for some time past,
a were-wolf, who, it is said, has already seized and carried off
several little children, so that they have not been seen since, and
since he has attacked and done injury in the country to some horsemen,
who kept him of only with great difficulty and danger to their persons:
the said Court, desiring to prevent any greater danger, has permitted,
and does permit, those who are abiding or dwelling in the said places
and others, notwithstanding all edicts concerning the chase, to
assemble with pikes, halberts, arquebuses, and sticks, to chase and to
pursue the said were-wolf in every place where they may find or seize
him; to tie and to kill, without incurring any pains or penalties. . .
. Given at the meeting of the said Court, on the thirteenth day of the
month September, 1573.” It was some time, however, before the
loup-garou was caught.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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