when they strayed in the woods, had torn them with his teeth, and
killed them, after which he seems calmly to have dressed their flesh
as ordinary meat, and to have eaten it with great relish. The number
of little innocents whom he destroyed is unknown. A whole cask full of
bones was discovered in his house. The man was perfectly hardened, and
the details of his trial were so full of horrors and abominations of
all kinds, that the judges ordered the documents to be burned.

Again in 1598, a year memorable in the annals of lycanthropy, a trial
took place in Angers, the details of which are very terrible.

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.

This is one of the most puzzling and peculiar cases which come under
our notice.

The wretched man, whose name was Roulet, of his own accord stated that
he had fallen upon the lad and had killed him by smothering him, and
that he had been prevented from devouring the body completely by the
arrival of men on the spot.

Roulet proved on investigation to be a beggar from house to house, in