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Page 2
It may be observed on this that when the nails of the fingers and toes
are cut they grow indefinitely; but if they are allowed to grow unchecked
they soon curve over the extremities, form talons or claws, and cease to
grow--answering to the Scriptural account of the effects of the mental
disorder of Nebuchadnezzar.
Of course for every case of real malady many were imputed or charged upon
poor creatures, who were driven to madness by groundless charges of
witchcraft and sorcery, and being _loups-garous_ in secret. Many innocent
people were in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries burnt at the stake
as wolves in human form.
A correspondent has kindly supplied the following information:--"When in
Oude in India, twenty-six years ago, we heard of several instances of
native babies being carried off out of the villages by she-wolves, and
placed with their whelps, and brought up wild there; there was one about
when we were there, partially reclaimed, but retaining much of the savage
nature imbibed with the wolf's milk, and having been accustomed to go on
all-fours--_i.e._, knees and elbows; but I conclude these were not
affected with 'Lycanthropy.'"
With a few touches of his magic pencil the Laureate has drawn a powerful
picture of such a state of things in ancient Britain, of which we can
scarcely deny the literal faithfulness. It is not a poetic conception; it
is historic truth:--
"And ever and anon the wolf would steal
The children and devour; but now and then,
Her own brood lost or dead, lent her fierce teat
To human sucklings; and the children, housed
In her foul den, there at their meat would growl,
And mock their foster-mother on four feet,
Till, straightened, they grew up to wolf-like men,
Worse than the wolves."
_Coming of Arthur_.
The following tale, in which the lycanthropy is far from being altogether
a mere effort of the imagination, appears to be founded upon the belief
in the continued existence of this rare species of madness down to our
own day--or near it--for the story seems to belong to the year 1832.
The English reader will not fail to notice the correspondence between the
title and the well-known designation of the illustrious head of the noble
house of Grosvenor. Whatever connection there may or may not be between
that German Hugh Lupus of a thousand years ago and the truly British Hugh
Lupus of our day, all the base qualities of his supposed progenitor have
disappeared in him who is adorned with all the qualities which make the
English nobility rank as the pride and the flower of our land.
F. A. M.
_The Vicaraqe,
Broughton-in-Furness_.
THE MAN-WOLF.
CHAPTER I.
About Christmas time in the year 18--, as I was lying fast asleep at the
Cygne at Fribourg, my old friend Gideon Sperver broke abruptly into my
room, crying--
"Fritz, I have good news for you; I am going to take you to Nideck, two
leagues from this place. You know Nideck, the finest baronial castle in
the country, a grand monument of the glory of our forefathers?"
Now I had not seen Sperver, who was my foster-father, for sixteen years;
he had grown a full beard in that time, a huge fox-skin cap covered his
head, and he was holding his lantern close under my nose. It was,
therefore, only natural that I should answer--
"In the first place let us do things in order. Tell me who you are."
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