"Then you're probably familiar with his book. Yes? Well, the other," and he took up the second volume, almost as large as the Richet and bound in light buff, "is by Montague Summers, whom I call the premier demonologist of today. He's gathered all the lycanthropy-lore available."
I had read Mr. Summers' Geography of Witchcraft and his two essays on the vampire, and I made bold to say so.
"This is a companion volume to them," Judge Pursuivant told me, opening the book. "It is called The Werewolf." He scrutinized the flyleaf. "Published in 1934—thoroughly modern, you see. Here's a bit of Latin, Mr. Wills: Intrabunt lupi rapaces in vos, non parcentes gregi."
I crinkled my brow in the effort to recall my high school Latin, then began slowly to translate, a word at a time: "'Enter hungry wolves——'"
"Save that scholarship," Judge Pursuivant broke in. "It's more early Scripture, though not so early as the bit about the hairy ones—vulgate for a passage from the Acts of the Apostles, twentieth chapter, twenty-ninth verse. 'Ravenous wolves shall enter among you, not sparing the flock.' Apparently that disturbing possibility exists even today."
He leafed through the book. "Do you know," he asked, "that Summers gives literally dozens of instances of lycanthropy, things that are positively known to have happened?"
I took another sip of whisky and water. "Those are only legends, surely."
"They are nothing of the sort!" The judge's eyes protruded even more in his earnestness, and he tapped the pages with an excited forefinger. "There are four excellent cases listed in his chapter on France alone—sworn to, tried and sentenced by courts——"
"But weren't they during the Middle Ages?" I suggested.
He shook his great head. "No, during the Sixteenth Century, the peak of the Renaissance. Oh, don't smile at the age, Mr. Wills. It produced Shakespeare, Bacon, Montaigne, Galileo, Leonardo, Martin Luther; Descartes and Spinoza were its legitimate children, and Voltaire builded upon it. Yet werewolves were known, seen, convicted——"