ved with his younger brother, Francois
d'Arville, in our castle in Lorraine, in the midst of the forest.

Francois d'Arville had remained a bachelor for love of the chase.

They both hunted from one end of the year to the other, without stopping
and seemingly without fatigue. They loved only hunting, understood
nothing else, talked only of that, lived only for that.

They had at heart that one passion, which was terrible and inexorable. It
consumed them, had completely absorbed them, leaving room for no other
thought.

They had given orders that they should not be interrupted in the chase
for any reason whatever. My great-grandfather was born while his father
was following a fox, and Jean d'Arville did not stop the chase, but
exclaimed: "The deuce! The rascal might have waited till after the view
--halloo!"

His brother Franqois was still more infatuated. On rising he went to see
the dogs, then the horses, then he shot little birds about the castle
until the time came to hunt some large game.

In the countryside they were called M. le Marquis and M. le Cadet, the
nobles then not being at all like the chance nobility of our time, which
wishes to establish an hereditary hierarchy in titles; for the son of a
marquis is no more a count, nor the son of a viscount a baron, than a son
of a general is a colonel by birth. But the contemptible vanity of today
finds profit in that arrangement.

My ancestors were unusually tall, bony, hairy, violent and vigorous. The
younger, still taller than the older, had a voice so strong that,
according to a legend of which he was proud, all the leaves of the forest
shook when he shouted.

When they were both mounted to set out hunting, it must have been a
superb sight to see those two giants straddling their huge horses.

Now, toward the midwinter of that year, 1764, the frosts were excessive,
and the wolves became ferocious.

They even attacked belated peasants, roamed at night outside the houses,
howled from sunset to sunrise, and robbed the stables.

And soon a rumor began to circulate. People talked of a colossal wolf
with gray fur, almost white, who had eaten two children, gnawed off a
woman's arm, strangled all the watch dogs in the district, and even come
without fear into the farmyards. The people in the houses affirmed that
they had felt his breath, and that it made the flame of the lights
flicker. And soon a panic ran through all the province. No one dared go
out any mo