VIII

WERWOLVES AND VAMPIRES AND GHOULS

Throughout the Middle Ages, and even in the seventeenth century, trials
for lycanthropy were of common occurrence in France. Among the most
famous were those of the Grandillon family in the Jura, in 1598; that of
the tailor of Chalons; of Roulet, in Angers; of Gilles Garnier, in Dole,
in 1573; and of Jean Garnier, at Bordeaux, in 1603. The last case was,
perhaps, the most remarkable of all. Garnier, who was only fourteen
years of age, was employed in looking after cattle. He was a handsome
lad, with dark, flashing eyes and very white teeth. As soon as it was
time for the metamorphosis to take place he used to go into some lonely
spot, and then, in the guise of a wolf, return, and run to earth
isolated women and children. One of his favourite haunts was a thicket
close to a pool of water. Here he used to lie and watch for hours at a
time. Once he surprised two girls bathing. One escaped, and fled home
naked, but the other he flung on the ground, and having shaken her into
submission, devoured a portion of her one day, and the rest of her the
next. He confessed to having eaten over fifty children. Nor did he
always confine himself to attacking the solitary few and defenceless;
for on several occasions, when hard pressed by hunger, he assailed a
whole crowd, and was once severely handled by a pack of young girls who
successfully drove him off with sharply pointed stakes. Far from wishing
to conceal his guilt, Jean Garnier was most eager to tell everything,
and to a court thronged with eager, attentive people, he related in the
most graphic manner possible his sanguinary experiences. One old woman,
he said, whom he found alone in a cottage, showed extraordinary agility
in trying to escape. She raced round tables, clambered over chairs,
crawled under a bed, and finally hid in a cupboard and held the door so
fast that he had to exert all his force to open it. "And then," he
added, "in spite of all my trouble she proved to be as tough as
leather----" and he made a grimace that provoked much laughter.

He complained bitterly of one child. "It made such a dreadful noise,"
he said, "when I lifted it out of its crib, and when I got ready for my
first bite it shrieked so loud it almost deafened me."

The name Grenier, like that of Garnier, was closely associated with
lycanthropy, and in Blois, where there were more instances of
lycanthropy than in any other part of France, every one ca