The reaction was so great that Bonivon rolled off the table and went into paroxysms of ungovernable laughter.
At length, when he had sobered down, the Huguenot, laying a hand on his shoulder, said: "Do you know now where you are? Do you recognize this room? No! Well, I will explain. You are in the house of Roland Bertin, and the body lying over yonder is that of my wife, whom your crew barbarously murdered yesterday when they sacked this village. They took me with them, and it was your intention to have me tortured and then drowned as soon as you got to sea. Do you know me now?"
Bonivon nodded—he could not have spoken to save his life.
"Bien!" the minister went on. "I am a werwolf—I was bewitched some years ago by the woman Grénier, Mère Grénier, who lives in the forest at the back of our village. As soon as it was dark I metamorphosed; then the ship ran ashore, and every one leaped overboard. I saw you drowning. I saved you."
The captain again made a fruitless effort to speak, and the Huguenot continued:—
"Why did I save you?—you, who had been instrumental in murdering my wife and ruining my home! Why? I do not know! Had I preferred for you a less pleasant death than drowning, I could have taken you ashore and killed you. Yet—I did not, because it is not in my nature to destroy anything. I have never in my life killed an animal, nor, to my knowledge, an insect; I love all life—animal life and vegetable life—everything that breathes and grows. Yet I am a Huguenot!—one of the race you hate and despise and are paid to exterminate. Assassin, I have spared you. Be not ungenerous. Spare others."
The captain was moved. Still speechless, he seized the minister's hands and wrung them. And from that hour to the day of his death—which was not for many years afterwards—the Huguenots had no truer friend than André Bonivon.
Werwolves and Witches
Other instances of werwolves of a benignant nature are to be found in the "Bisclaveret" in Marie de France's poem, composed in 1200 a.d.; and in the hero of "William and the Werwolf" (translated from the French about 1350).
To inflict the evil property of werwolfery upon those against whom they—or some other—bore a grudge was, in the Middle Ages, a method of revenge frequently resorted to by witches; and countless knights and ladies were thus victimized. Nor were such practices confined to ancient times; for as late as the eighteenth century a case of this kind of witchcraft is reported to have happened in the vicinity of Blois.