They were travelling in a berlingo, drawn by four post-horses, with two postilions, and accompanied by a footman, who rode a saddle-horse, and was armed with a sabre. The first night, on approaching the dreaded district, they halted at Guimpe, and next morning at nine o'clock set forth, intending to lunch at Roteaux, a village situated in a bleak and mountainous place. The bailiff of Guimpe deemed it his duty to warn them, as strangers, "that the wild beast had been often seen lurking about the Chaussée that week, and that it would be proper to take an escort of armed men for their protection."
M. le Tivre and the councillor, being foolhardy, declined, and took the young ladies under their own protection; but they had scarcely proceeded two leagues when they perceived a post-chaise, attended by an outrider, coming down the rugged road that traversed the hill of Credi, at a frightful pace, and pursued by the wild beast!
The leading horse fell, on which the terrible pursuer made a spring towards it; but M. le Tivre's footman interposed with his drawn sabre, on which the beast pricked up its ears, stood erect, and showed its fangs and mouth full of froth, whisked round, and gave the terrified valet a blow with its tail, covering all his face with blood. The rest of the narrative is ridiculously incredible, for it states, that, on perceiving a gentleman levelling a blunderbuss (which flashed in the pan), the beast darted right through the chaise of M. le Tivre, smashing the side glasses and escaped to the wood. "The stench left in the shattered chaise was past description, and no burning of frankincense, or other method, removed it, so that it was sold for two louis, and though burned to ashes, the cinders were obliged, by order of the commissary, to be buried without the town walls!" (Advertiser, 1765).
Eluding the many armed hunters who were now in pursuit of it, in the early part of February the wild beast was seen hovering in well-frequented places, on the skirts of the forests adjoining the fields and vineyards, in the hamlets, and on the highways. In Janols, the capital of Gévaudanois, it sprang upon a child, whose cries brought his father to his aid, but ere a rescue could be effected, the poor little creature was rent asunder.
Three days afterwards, on the Feast of the Purification, five peasants, going to mass at Reintort de Randon, suddenly perceived it on the highway before them. It was crouching, and about to spring, when their shouts, and the pointed staves with which they were armed, put it to flight. On Sunday, the 3rd February, it was heard howling in the little village of St. Aman's during the celebration of high mass. All the inhabitants were in church, "but as they had taken the precaution to shut up the children in their houses, it retired without doing any mischief." On the 8th it was perceived within a hundred yards of the town of Aumont. A general chase through the snow was made by the armed huntsmen; but night came on before they came within range of the dreaded fugitive.
In February and March we find it still continuing its ravages through all the pleasant valleys of the Aisne. At Soissons it worried a woman to death and partly devoured her. Two girls were brought to the Hospital of St. Flour in a dying state from wounds it had inflicted:
"Catherine Boyer, aged twenty years, who was attacked on the 15th of January at Bastide-de-Montfort; all that part of the head on which the hair grew is torn away, with a part of the os coronæ, and the whole pericranium with the upper part of the ear is lost. The occipital bone is likewise laid bare. The other girl belongs to St. Just; the left side of her head and neck is carried away, with part of her nose and upper lip."
On the 1st of March, a man boldly charged it on horseback, but was thrown, and leaving his nag to its mercy, scrambled away and found refuge in a mill, where it besieged him for some time, till a lad of seventeen appeared, whom it lacerated with teeth and claws and left expiring outside the door. On the road near Bazoches, it tore to pieces a woman who attempted to save a girl on which it was about to spring; and four men of that place, armed with loaded guns, watched all night, near the mangled body, in the hope that it might return; but the animal was several miles distant, and after biting several sheep and cows in a farm-yard, was at last severely wounded by Antoine Savanelle, an old soldier, who assailed it with a pitchfork, which he thrust into its throat, and he was vain enough to declare that the wound was mortal and that he must have killed it.
This boast, however, was premature, for it soon reappeared, biting, tearing, and devouring, and though a man of Malzieu wounded it by a musket shot, making it roll over with a hideous cry, it was able on the 9th to drag a child for two hundred yards from a cottage door. It dropped its prey unhurt; but on the same evening, we are told that it partly devoured a young woman near the village of Miolonettes, and committed other ravages, the mere enumeration of which would weary rather than astonish, though it was stated that not less "than twenty thousand men" (a sad exaggeration surely), noblesse, hunters, woodmen, and soldiers, were in pursuit of it, under the Count de Morangies, an old maréchal de camp, who passed a whole night near the body of the half-devoured girl, in the vain hope that the monster would return within range of his musket.
Great astonishment and ridicule were excited in England by these continued details, and under date of 13th March, a pretended letter from Paris, headed "Wonderful Intelligence!" went the round of the press.