firmly convinced that he was a wolf. Here the lycanthropy was
complete.

In the year 1598, "in a wild and unfrequented spot near Caude,
some countrymen came one day upon the corpse of a boy of
fifteen, horribly mutilated and bespattered with blood. As the
men approached, two wolves, which had been rending the body,
bounded away into the thicket. The men gave chase immediately,
following their bloody tracks till they lost them; when,
suddenly crouching among the bushes, his teeth chattering with
fear, they found a man half naked, with long hair and beard,
and with his hands dyed in blood. His nails were long as
claws, and were clotted with fresh gore and shreds of human
flesh."[80]

[80] Baring-Gould, op. cit. p. 82.

This man, Jacques Roulet, was a poor, half-witted creature
under the dominion of a cannibal appetite. He was employed in
tearing to pieces the corpse of the boy when these countrymen
came up. Whether there were any wolves in the case, except
what the excited imaginations of the men may have conjured up,
I will not presume to determine; but it is certain that Roulet
supposed himself to be a wolf, and killed and ate several
persons under the influence of the delusion. He was sentenced
to death, but the parliament of Paris reversed the sentence,
and charitably shut him up in a madhouse.

The annals of the Middle Ages furnish many cases similar to
these of Grenier and Roulet. Their share in maintaining the