Page:Books and men.djvu/70

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BOOKS AND MEN.

wide, which wrought the transformation; the telltale hairs in the hollow of the hand which betrayed the wolfish nature; the fatality which doomed one of every seven sisters to this dreadful enchantment, and the trifling accidents which brought about the same undesirable result are so many handles by which we grasp the strange emotions that swayed the mediæval man. Jacque Roulet and Jean Grenier,[1] as mere maniacs and cannibals, fill every heart with disgust; but as were-wolves an awful mystery wraps them round, and the mind is distracted from pity for their victims to a fascinated consideration of their own tragic doom. A blood-thirsty idiot is an object that no one cares to think about; but a wolf-fiend, urged to deeds of violence by an impulse he cannot resist, is one of those ghastly creations that the folk-lore of every country has placed sharply and persistently before our startled eyes. Yet surely there is a touch of comedy in the story told by Van Hahn, of an unlucky freemason, who, having divulged the secrets of his order, was pursued across the Pyrenees by the master of his lodge in the

  1. Book of Were-Wolves. By Baring-Gould.