"Were you dressed as a wolf?"
"I was dressed as I am now. I had my hands and my face bloody, because I had been eating the flesh of the said child."
"Do your hands and feet become paws of a wolf?"
"Yes, they do."
"Does your head become like that of a wolf—your mouth become larger?"
"I do not know how my head was at the time; I used my teeth; my head was as it is to-day. I have wounded and eaten many other little children; I have also been to the sabbath."
The lieutenant criminel sentenced Roulet to death. He, however, appealed to the Parliament at Paris; and this decided that as there was more folly in the poor idiot than malice and witchcraft, his sentence of death should be commuted to two years' imprisonment in a madhouse, that he might be instructed in the knowledge of God, whom he had forgotten in his utter poverty.[1]
- ↑ "La cour du Parliament, par arrêt, mist l'appellation et la sentence dont il avoit esté appel au néant, et, néanmoins, ordonna que le dit Roulet serait mis à l'hospital Saint Germain des Prés, où on a accoustumé de mettre les folz, pour y demeurer l'espace de deux ans, afin d'y estre instruit et redressé tant de son esprit, que ramené à la cognoissance de Dieu, que l'extrême pauvreté lui avoit fait mescognoistre."