The wolf by GUIs de Marpaisant. This is what the old Marquis D'Arville told
us after Saint Hubert's dinner at the house of the Baron de Ravel. We
had killed a stag that day. The Marquis was the only one of the
guests who had not taken part in the chase. He never hunted. During
that long repast, we had talked about hardly anything but the slaughter of animals.
The ladies themselves were interested in bloody and exaggerated tales, and the orators
imitated the attacks and the combats. Men against beasts raised their arms romanced in
a thundering voice. Monsieur D'Arville talked well, in a certain flowery, high
sounding, but defective style. He must have told his story frequently, for
he told it fluently, never hesitated for words, choosing them with skill to
make his description vivid. Gentlemen, I have never hunted, neither did my
father, nor my grandfather, nor my great grandfather. This last was the
son of a man who hunted more than all of you put together. He
died in seventeen sixty four. I will tell you the story of his death.
His name was Jean. He was married father of that child who became
my great grandfather, and he lived with his younger brother Francois D'Arville, and
our castle in Lorraine, in the midst of the forest. Francois D'Arville had
remained a bachelor for love of the chase. They both hunted from one end
of the year to the other, without stopping, and seemingly without fatigue.
They loved hunting, understood nothing else, talked only of that lived only for
that they had at heart. That one passion, which was terrible and inexorable.
It consumed them, had completely absorbed them, leaving room for no other
thought. They had given orders that they should not be interrupted in the chase
for any reason whatever. My great grandfather was born while his father was following
a fox, and Jean D'Arville did not stop the chase, but exclaimed the
deuce. The rascal might have waited till after the view halloo. His brother
Francois was still more infatuated. On rising, he went to see the dog
than the horses. Then he shot little birds about the castle, until the
time came to hunt some large game in the countryside. They recalled Monsieur le
marquis and Monsieur le Cadet, the nobles then, not being at all like
the chance nobility of our time, which wishes to establish an hereditary hierarchy in
titles. For the son of a marquis is no more account nor the son
of a viscount a baron, than a son of a general as a colonel
by birth. But the contemptible vanity of today finds profit in that arrangement.
My ancestors were unusually tall, bony, hairy, violent and vigorous. The
younger, still taller than the older, had a voice so strong that,
according to a legend of which he was proud, all the leaves of the
forest shook when he shouted. When they were both mounted to set out hunting,
it must have been a superb sight to see those two giants straddling their
huge horses. Now toward the midwinter of that year, seventeen sixty four,
the frosts were excessive, and the wolves became ferocious. They even attacked belated
peasants roamed at night outside the houses, howled from some set to sunrise,
and robbed his stables. And soon a rumor began to circulate. People talked
of a colossal wolf with gray fur almost white, who had eaten two children,
not off a woman's arms, strangled all the watchdogs in the district,
and even come without fear into the farm yards. The people in the houses
affirmed that they had felt his breath and that it made the flame of the
lights flicker, and soon a panic ran through all the province. No one
dared go out any more after nightfall. The darkness seemed haunted by the image
of the beast. The brothers Darville determined to find and kill him, and
several times they brought together all the gentlemen of the country to a great hunt.
They beat the forests and searched the coverts in vain. They never met
him. They killed wolves, but not that one, And every night after
a battu the beast, as if to avenge himself, attacked some traveler or
killed someone's cattle, always far from the place where they had looked for him.
Finally, one night he stole into the pig pin of the Chateau Darvay
and ate the two fattest pigs. The brothers were roused to anger. Considering
this attack as a direct insult and a defiance, they took their strong bloodhounds
used to pursue dangerous animals, and they set off to hunt, their hearts
filled with rage, from dawn until the hour when the unpurpled sun descended behind
the great naked trees. They beat the woods without finding anything. At last,
furious and disgusted, both were returning, walking their horses along the lane
border with hedges, and they marveled that their skill as huntsmen should be baffled
by this wolf, and they were suddenly seized with a mysterious fear. The
elder said that beast is not an ordinary one. You would say it had
a mind like a man. The younger answered, perhaps we should have a
bullet blessed by our cousin the bishop, or pray some priests to pronounce the
words which are needed. Then they were silent. Jean continued, look,
how red the sun is. The great wolf will do some harm to night.
He had hardly finished speaking when his horse reared that of Francois began to
kick. A large thicket covered with dead leaves opened before them, and a
mammoth beast entirely gray, jumped up and ran off through the wood. Both
uttered a kind of grunt of joy, and bending over the necks of their
heavy horses. They threw them forward with an impulse from all their body,
hurling them on at such a pace, urging them, hurrying them away,
exciting them so with voice and with gesture and with spur that the experienced strider
seemed to be carrying the heavy beasts between their thighs, and to bear them
off as if they were flying. Thus they went plunging through the thickets,
dashing across the beds of streams, climbing the hillsides, descending the gorges,
and blowing the horn as loud as they could to attract their people and the
dogs. And now suddenly, in that mad race, my ancestor struck his
forehead against an enormous branch, which split his skull, and he fell dead
on the ground, while his frightened horse took himself off, disappearing in the
gloom which enveloped the woods. The younger Darville stopped quickly feet to the earth,
seized his brother in his arms, and saw that the brains were escaping
from the wound with the blood. Then he sat down beside the body,
rested, the head disfigured and red on his knees, and waited regarding the
immobile face of his elder brother. Little by little, a fear possessed him,
a strange fear which he had never felt before, the fear of the
dark, the fear of loneliness, the fear of the deserted wood, and
the fear also of the weird wolf, who which just killed his brother,
to avenge himself upon them. Both the gloom thickened, the acute cold made
the trees crack. Francois got up, shivering, unable to remain there longer,
feeling himself growing faint. Nothing was to be heard, neither the voice
of the dogs nor the sound of the horns. All was silent along the
invisible horizon. And this mournful silence of the frozen knight had something about it
terrific and strange. He seized in his immense hands the great body of Jean,
straightened it, laid it across the saddle to carry it back to the
chateau. Then he went on his way softly, his mind troubled as if
he were in a stupor, pursued by horrible and fear giving images. And
all at once, in the growing darkness, a great shape crossed his path.
It was the beast. A shock of terror took the hunter, something
cold like a drop of water, seeming to glide down his back, and
like a monk haunted of the devil, he made a great sign of the
cross, dismayed at this abrupt return of the horrible prowler, but his eyes
fell again on the inert body before him, and, passing abruptly from fear
to anger, he shook with an indescribable rage. Then he spurred his horse
and rushed after the wolf. He followed it through the copses of the ravines
and the tall trees traversing woods which he no longer recognized, His eyes fixed
on the white speck which fled before him through the night. His horse also
seemed animated by a force and strength hitherto unknown. It galloped straight ahead,
and with outstretched neck, striking against trees and rocks. The head and the
feet of the dead man thrown across the saddle. The limbs tore out his
hair, the brow beating the huge trunks spattered them with blood. The spurs
tore their ragged coats of bark. Suddenly, the beast and the horsemen issued
from the forest and rushed into a valley, just as the moon appeared above
the mountains. The valley here was stony, enclosed by enormous rocks. Francois
then uttered a yell of joy, which the echoes repeated like a peal of
thunder, and he leaped from his horses, cutlass in hand. The beast,
with bristling hair the back, arched awaited him, its eyes gleaming like
two stars. But before beginning battle, the strong hunter, seizing his brother,
seated him on a rock and placing stones under his head, which was
no more than a mass of blood. He shouted in the ears as if
he was talking to a deaf man. Look, Jean, look at this.
Then he attacked the monster. He felt himself strong enough enough to overturn
a mountain to bruise stones in his hands. The beast tried to bite him,
aiming for his stomach, but he had seized the fierce animal by the
neck without even using his weapon, and he strangled it gently, listening to
the cessation of breathing in his throat and the beatings of his heart. He
laughed wild with joy, pressing closer and closer his formidable embrace, crying in
a delirium of joy, look, Jean, look, All resistance ceased.
The body of the wolf became limp. He was dead. Francois took him
up in his arms and carried him to the feet of the elder brother,
where he laid him, repeating in a tender voice, there there, there,
my little Jean, see him. Then he replaced on the saddle the
two bodies, one upon the other, and rode away. He returned to
the chateau, laughing and crying like Gargantua at the birth of Pantoic rule,
uttering shouts of triumph and boisterous with joy as he related the death of the
beast, and grieving and tearing his beard, and telling of that of his
brother. And often, when he talked again of that day, he would
say, with tears in his eyes, if only poor Jean could have seen
me strangle that beast, he would have died content that. I am sure
the widow of my ancestor spired her orphaned son with that horror of the chase,
which has transmitted itself from father to son as far down as myself.
The Marquis D'Arville was silent. Some one asked that story is a legend,
isn't it, And the story teller answered, I swear to you that it
is true from beginning to end. Then a lady declared, in a little
soft voice, all the same, it is fine to have passions like that.
End of the Wolf