XXIV.--HUNTING DOWN THE WERE-WOLF 111 INTRODUCTION Although the introductory chapters were not signed until May 31st, 1856, _The Wolf-Leader_ is to be associated in conception with the group of romances which Dumas wrote at Brussels between the years 1852 and 1854, that is to say, after his financial failure and the consequent defection of his collaborator Maquet, and before his return to Paris to found his journal _Le Mousquetaire_. Like _Conscience l’Innocent_ and _Catherine Blum_, which date from that period of exile, the present story was inspired by reminiscences of our author’s native place--Villers-Cotterets, in the department of the Aisne. In _The Wolf-Leader_ Dumas, however, allows his imagination and fancy full play. Using a legend told to him nearly half a century before, conjuring up the scenes of his boyhood, and calling into requisition his wonderful gift of improvisation, he contrives in the happiest way to weave a romance in which are combined a weird tale of _diablerie_ and continual delightful glimpses of forest life. Terror, wood-craft, and humour could not be more felicitously intermingled. The reader, while kept under the spell of the main theme of the story, experiences all the charm of an open-air life in the great forest of Villers-Cotterets--the forest in which the little town seemed to occupy a small clearing, and into which the boy Alexandre occasionally escaped for days together from the irksome routine of the school or from the hands of relatives who wanted to make a priest of him.