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Updated: May 11, 2025
"However," muttered the old man, and it was some comfort to the vague aching in his breast to formulate one fact as solid as the heights around, "it is certain that there are loups-garous." August night air, sweet with a half salt breath from the St.
Everybody knew that the island of Orleans had been from the time of its discovery the abode of loups-garous, sorcerers, and all those uncanny cattle that run in the twilights of the world. The western point of its wooded ridge, which parts the St. Lawrence for twenty-two miles, from Beauport to Beaupré, lay opposite Gaspard's door. "Oh, you were born on the island of Orleans?"
Gaspard clapped the house door to behind him and put up the bar. He was not afraid of Phips and the fleet, of battle or night attack, but the terror which walked in the darkness of sorcerers' times abjectly bowed his old legs. "O good Ste. Anne, pray for us!" he whispered, using an invocation familiar to his lips. "If loups-garous are abroad, also, what is to become of this unhappy land?"
"This terrible affliction began to manifest itself in France in the 15th century, and the name of 'loups-garous' has been given to the sufferers. These unhappy beings fly from the society of mankind and live in the woods, the cemeteries, or old ruins, prowling about the open country only by night, howling as they go.
They are the loups-garous; in their bodies ride the spirits of devils, and there they will ride until the bodies die. For the wolves that go mad in the deep snows always die, m'sieu. That is the strange part of it.
After that he remained quiet, and as the wolves drew nearer his body grew tense, his muscles hardened, and in his throat there was the low whispering of a snarl instead of a howl. He sensed danger. He had caught, in the voice of the wolves, the ravening note that had made Pierrot cross himself and mutter of the loups-garous, and he crouched down on his belly at the top of the rocky mound.
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.
Gaspard experienced with us all this paradox: that the older we grow, the more visible becomes the unseen. In childhood the external senses are sharp; but maturity fuses flesh and spirit. He wished for a priest, desiring to feel the arm of the Church around him. It was late October, a time which might be called the yearly Sabbath of loups-garous.
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