The Brussels Gazette of May records a new phase in the history of the beast. Of eighteen persons whom it had bitten, thirteen are stated to have died raving mad. One patient began to howl like a dog, on which he was bled copiously, and chained hand and foot. Endued with terrible strength, he burst his bonds, and raved about in wild frenzy, destroying everything that came in his way, until he was shot down by an officer with a double-barrelled gun, when attempting, with a crowbar, to break into a country-house near Broine, where thirty persons had taken refuge from him.
About six in the evening of the 1st of May, the Sieur Martel de la Chaumette, whose château was at St. Alban's, in the bishopric of Mende, perceived, from a window, an animal which he was certain could be no other than the wild beast of Gévaudan. It was in a grass meadow, seated on its hind legs, and was gazing steadfastly at a lad, about fifteen years of age, who was herding some horned cattle, and was all unaware of its vicinity and ulterior views. The Sieur de la Chaumette summoned his two brothers, and armed with guns they issued forth in pursuit of the animal, which fled at their approach.
The youngest overtook it in the forest, and put a ball into it at sixty-seven paces; it rolled over three times, which enabled the elder Chaumette to put in another ball at fifty-two paces, on which it fled, and escaped, losing blood in great quantities. Night came on, and the pursuit was abandoned; but next day the Chaumettes were joined by the Sieurs d'Ennival, father and son, and a band of hunters. Its trail and traces of blood were found, and followed for a great distance, but they tracked it in vain.
The Sieur de la Chaumette, who had slain a great many wolves, declared that the animal he had seen in the meadow was not one; but his description of its appearance coincided exactly with that given by the Sieur Duhamel of the 10th Light Horse, and with the sketch made by the military hermit of St. Privat. The Chaumettes were in great hopes that the two bullets had slain the monster; but on the day following, at five in the evening, at a spot five leagues distant from the château, it devoured a girl fourteen years of age, and the terror of the people increased, as the beast seemed to have a charmed life, and to be almost bullet-proof.
The picked marksmen of fifty parishes now joined in the chase. Two remarkably fine dogs of the Sieur d'Ennival were so eager in the pursuit, that they left the hunt far behind, and, as they were never seen again, were supposed to have been killed and eaten. The society of the knights of St. Hubert, in the city of Puy, composed of forty men, joined in the crusade against this denizen of the wilds of Languedoc; but it was not until the end of September, 1765, that it was ultimately vanquished and slain by a game-keeper and the Sieur Antoine de Bauterne, a gentleman of Paris, who set out for Gévaudan on purpose to encounter it.
After a long, arduous, and exciting chase, through forest and over fell, on bringing it to bay at fifty yards, he shot it in the eye. Mad with pain and fury, it was crouching prior to springing upon him, when his companion, M. Rheinchard, gamekeeper to Louis, Duke of Orleans (son of Philip, so long regent of France), by a single bullet, in a vital spot, shot it dead.
It was then measured, and found to be five feet seven inches long, thirty-two inches high, and only one hundred and thirty pounds in weight. On the 4th of October, the Sieur de Bauterne, who was extolled as if he had been the victor of another Steenkirk or Fontenoy, arrived triumphantly in Paris, and had the honour to present it to the king; and then great was the astonishment and the disappointment of all who saw this animal—the terrible wild beast of Gévaudan, whose sanguinary career had for so many months excited such dismay there and wonder elsewhere—and found that it was only a wolf after all, and not a very large one! Horace Walpole, fourth Earl of Orford—the brilliant and witty Walpole of Strawberry Hill—saw the carcass as it lay in the queen's antechamber at Versailles, and asserts that it was simply a common wolf. Its nature accounted for some of the peculiarities it exhibited during its ravages, as the wolf, according to Weissenborn, destroys every other creature it can master, and, on a moderate calculation, consumes during the year about thirty times its own weight of animal substance; and to increase the list of its crimes, it has, he adds, in many instances, communicated hydrophobia to man.
CHAPTER III.
"THERE WERE GIANTS IN THOSE DAYS."
Among many other strange things, our unlettered ancestors believed in the past existence of those tall fellows, giants (individually, or even collectively as nations), quite as implicitly as they, worthy folks, did in the pranks and appearances of contemporary witches and ghosts; but even among the learned a more than tacit belief in a defunct class of beings, whose bulk and stature far exceeded those of common humanity, found full sway until the beginning of the present century.