neglect of his duties. The lad exhibited no reluctance to communicate
all he knew about himself, and his statements were tested one by one,
and were often proved to be correct.

The story he related of himself before the court was as follows:--

"When I was ten or eleven years old, my neighbour, Duthillaire,
introduced me, in the depths of the forest, to a M. de la Forest, a
black man, who signed me with his nail, and then gave to me and
Duthillaire a salve and a wolf-skin. From that time have I run about
the country as a wolf.

"The charge of Marguerite Poirier is correct. My intention was to have
killed and devoured her, but she kept me off with a stick. I have only
killed one dog, a white one, and I did not drink its blood."

When questioned touching the children, whom he said he had killed and
eaten as a wolf, he allowed that he had once entered an empty house on
the way between S. Coutras and S. Anlaye, in a small village, the name
of which he did not remember, and had found a child asleep in its
cradle; and as no one was within to hinder him, he dragged the baby
out of its cradle, carried it into the garden, leaped the hedge, and
devoured as much of it as satisfied his hunger. What remained he had
given to a wolf. In the parish of S. Antoine do Pizon he had attacked
a little girl, as she was keeping sheep. She was dressed in a black
frock; he did not know her name. He tore her with his nails and teeth,
and ate her. Six weeks before his capture he had fallen upon another
child, near the stone-bridge, in the same parish. In Eparon he had
assaulted the hound of a certain M. Millon, and would have killed the
beast, had not the owner come out with his rapier in his hand.