“After public curiosity had been satisfied, the viscount sent her to a shepherd to be tamed. The latter found this no easy matter, and her wildness and animal nature were exhibited in so marked a manner that she became known as the shepherd’s beast.
“She sometimes escaped. Once she was missing over night, when there came a terrible snow-storm, and the poor shepherd wandered in search of her. He discovered her at last housed just as she had been in childhood, in the branches of a tree. The wind blew and the snow drifted around her, but she was loth to return. She had learned that trouble dwells in houses, and here in the tree-top, if she was cold, she was free. I wonder if she thought of her sister in whose arms she had doubtless slept in the trees, in her childhood.
“Her agility was marvellous. She would outrun the swiftest animals, even the rabbits and hares. The Queen of Poland once took her on a hunting excursion, and much amusement she afforded to the royal party. She would discover game with the shrewdness of a bird of prey, and having outrun and captured a hare, she would bring it with great eagerness to the astonished and delighted queen.
“She was once set at the table with some people of rank, at a banquet. She seemed delighted with the bright costumes, and the wit and gay spirits of the guests. Presently she was gone. She returned at last with something very choice in her apron, and with a face beaming with happiness, she approached a fine lady, and holding up a live frog by the leg said gleefully, ‘Have some?’
“She dropped the frog into the plate of the startled guest, and passing around the table, with a liberal supply of the reptiles, said, ‘Have some? have some?’
“The ladies started back from such a dessert, and the poor girl felt a pang of disappointment at the sudden rejection of the offering.
“She had gathered the frogs from a pond near at hand.
“It was a long time before she became accustomed to the habits of civilization. She died in a convent.”
“What a strange history!” said Wyllys Wynn. “She must have found her life in the convent very different from that of her childhood. What was her name?”
“They called her Maria le Blanc.”