The Wolf by guille de Marpissant. This is what the old Marquis D'Arville told
us after Saint Hubert's dinner at the house of the Baron de Ravelle. 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 met against beasts, raised their arms,
romanced in a thundering voice. Monsieur D'Arville talked well, in a certain flowery,
high sounding, but effective style. He must have told this 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 a 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 doll, then the horses. Then he shot little birds about the
castle, until the time came to hunt some large game in the countryside.
They were called monsieur le Marquis and Messier Lecadet, 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 of Baron, than a son of a
general is 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 set
to sunrise, and robbed the stables, And soon a rumor began to circulate.
People talked of a colossal wolf with gray or almost white, who had
eaten two children, not off a woman's arm, strangled all the watchdogs in
the district, and even come without fear into the farmyards. The people in
the houses affirmed that they had felt his breath and that it made the flame
of the light's flicker, and soon a panic ran through all the province.
No one dared go out anymore 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 forest and searched the coverts in vain. They never
met him. They killed wolves, but not that one, and every night
after about to the beast, as if to avenge himself, attacked some traveler,
killed someone's cattle, always far from the place where they had looked for
him. Finally, one night he stole into the pigpin of the Chateau d'arvy
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 empurpled 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
board 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 tonight.
He had hardly finished speaking when his horse reared that a 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 utter
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 quick 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 read 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 had 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 night 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 horseman 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 leapt
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
death man. Look, Jean, look at this. Then he attacked the
monster. He felt himself strong 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 sean 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 pantag 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 later, when he
talked again of that day, he would say, with tears in his eyes,
if only poor Jeanne could have seen me strangle that beast, he would
have died content that. I am sure the widow of my ancestor inspired her
orphan son with that horror of the chase, which has transmitted itself from father
to son as far down as myself. The Marquis Darville was silent. Someone
asked that story is a legend, isn't it, And the storyteller 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, and of the wolf,