The Wolf-Leader

And as the wolves continued their melancholy howling: “Yes, my friends,” said Thibault, “yes, your howls answer to the cry of my heart… My fellow-creatures have destroyed my hut, they have cast to the winds the ashes of the tools wherewith I earned my daily bread; their hatred pursues me as it pursues you, I expect from them neither mercy nor pity. We are their enemies as they are ours; and I will have neither mercy nor compassion on them. Come then, let us go from this hut to the Castle, and carry thither the desolation which they have brought home to me.”

And then the master of the wolves, like a chief of banditti followed by his desperadoes, set off with his pack in quest of pillage and carnage.

This time it was neither red-deer, nor fallow-deer, nor any timid game of which they were in pursuit. Sheltered by the darkness of the night Thibault first directed his course to the Château of Vez, for there was lodged his chief enemy. The Baron had three farms belonging to the estate, stables filled with horses, and others filled with cows, and the park was full of sheep. All these places were attacked the first night, and on the morrow two horses, four cows, and ten sheep were found killed.

The Baron was doubtful at first if this could be the work of the beasts against which he waged so fierce a warfare; there seemed something partaking rather of intelligence and revenge in it than of the mere unreasoning attacks of a pack of wild animals. Still it seemed manifest that the wolves must have been the aggressors, judging by the marks of teeth on the carcases and the footprints left on the ground. Next night the Baron set watchers to lie in wait, but Thibault and his wolves were at work on the farther side of the forest. This time it was the stables and parks of Soucy and of Vivierès which were decimated, and the following night those of Boursonnes and Yvors. The work of annihilation, once begun, must be carried out with desperate determination, and the master never left his wolves now; he slept with them in their dens, and lived in the midst of them, stimulating their thirst for blood.

Many a woodman, many a heath-gatherer, came face to face in the thickets with the menacing white teeth of a wolf, and was either carried off and eaten, or just saved his life by the aid of his courage and his bill-hook. Guided by a human intelligence, the wolves had become organised and disciplined, and were far more formidable than a band of discontented soldiery let loose in a conquered country.

The terror of them became general; no one dared go beyond the towns and villages unarmed; horses and cattle were all fed inside the stables, and the men themselves, their work done, waited for one another, so as not to go about singly. The Bishop of Soissons ordered public prayer to be made, asking God to send a thaw, for the unusual ferocity of the wolves was attributed to the great quantity of snow that had fallen. But the report also went about that the wolves were incited to their work, and led about by a man; that this man was more indefatigable, more cruel and insatiable than the wolves themselves; that in imitation of his companions he ate raw flesh and quenched his thirst in blood. And the people went further and said that this man was Thibault.

The Bishop pronounced sentence of excommunication against the former shoe-maker. The Lord of Vez, however, had little faith in the thunders of the Church being of much effect, unless supported by some well-conducted hunting. He was somewhat cast down at so much blood being spilt, and his pride was sorely hurt that his, the Grand Master’s, own cattle should have suffered so heavily from the very wolves he was especially appointed to destroy.

At the same time, he could not but feel a secret delight, at the thought of the triumphant view-halloos in store for him, and of the fame which he could not fail to win among all sportsmen of repute. His passion for the chase, excited by the way in which his adversaries the wolves had so openly entered upon the struggle, became absolutely overpowering; he allowed neither respite nor repose; he took no sleep himself and ate his meals in the saddle. All night long he scoured the country in company with l’Eveillé and Engoulevent, who, in consideration of his marriage had been raised to the rank of pricker; and the dawn had no sooner appeared before he was again in the saddle, ready to start and chase the wolf until it was too dark to distinguish the hounds. But alas! all his knowledge of the art of Venery, all his courage, all his perseverance, were lost labour. He occasionally brought down some wretched cub, some miserable beast eaten with mange, some imprudent glutton which had so gorged itself with carnage that its breath would not hold out after an hour or two’s run; but the larger, well-grown wolves, with their thick dark coats, their muscles like steel springs and their long slender feet – not one of these lost a hair in the war that was being made upon them. Thanks to Thibault they met their enemies in arms on nearly equal ground.

As the Baron of Vez remained for ever with his dogs, so did Thibault with his wolves; after a night of sack and pillage, he kept the pack awake on the watch to help the one that the Baron had started. This wolf again, following Thibault’s instructions, had recourse at first to stratagem. It doubled, crossed its tracks, waded in the streams, leaped up into the bending trees so as to make it more difficult still for huntsmen and hounds to follow the scent, and finally when it felt its powers failing, it adopted bolder measures and went straight ahead. Then the other wolves and their master intervened; at the least sign of hesitation on the part of the hounds, they managed so cleverly to put them on the wrong scent, that it required an experienced eye to detect that the dogs were not all following up the same track, and nothing less than the Baron’s profound knowledge could decide which was the right one. Even he sometimes was mistaken.

Again, the wolves in their turn followed the huntsmen; it was a pack hunting a pack; only the one hunted in silence, which made it far the more formidable of the two. Did a tired hound fall behind, or another get separated from the main body, it was seized and killed in an instant, and Engoulevent, whom we have had occasion to mention several times before and who had taken poor Marcotte’s place, having hastened one day to the help of one of his hounds that was uttering cries of distress, was himself attacked and only owed his life to the swiftness of his horse.

It was not long before the Baron’s pack was decimated; his best hounds were nearly dead with fatigue, and his more second-rate ones had perished by the wolves’ teeth. The stable was in no better condition than the kennel; Bayard was foundered, Tancred had sprained a tendon leaping over a ditch, and a strained fetlock had placed Valourous on the list of invalids. Sultan, luckier than his three companions had fallen honourably on the field of battle, having succumbed to a sixteen hours’ run under the weight of his gigantic master, who never for a moment lost courage notwithstanding the fact that the dead bodies of his finest and most faithful servitors lay heaped around him.

The Baron, following the example of the noble-hearted Romans who exhausted the resources of military art against the Carthaginians who were for ever re-appearing as enemies, the Baron, I repeat, changed his tactics and tried what battues could accomplish. He called on all available men among the peasants, and beat up the game throughout the forest with such a formidable number of men, that not so much as a hare was left in its form near any spot which they had passed.

But Thibault made it his business to find out beforehand where these battues were going to take place, and if he ascertained that the beaters were on the side of the forest towards Viviers or Soucy, he and his wolves made an excursion to Boursonnes or Yvors; and if the Baron and his men were busy near Haramont or Longpré, the people of Corcy and Vertefeuille were made painfully aware of Thibault and his wolves.

In vain the Lord of Vez drew his cordon at night round the suspected enclosures, so as to begin the attack with daylight; never once did his men succeed in starting a wolf, for not once did Thibault make a mistake in his calculations. If by chance he had not been well informed, and was uncertain in what direction the Baron and his men were going, he called all his wolves together, sending express couriers after them as the night set in; he then led them unobserved down the wooded lane leading to Lessart-l’Abbesse, which at that time ran between the forest of Compiègne and the forest of Villers-Cotterets, and so was able to pass from one to the other. This state of things went on for several months. Both the Baron and Thibault carried out the task each had set before himself, with equally passionate energy; the latter, like his adversary, seemed to have required some supernatural power, whereby he was able to resist fatigue and excitement; and this was the more remarkable seeing that during the short intervals of respite accorded by the Lord of Vez, the Wolf-leader was by no means at peace in himself.

It was not that the terrible deeds in which he was an active agent, and at which he presided, filled him exactly with horror, for he thought them justifiable; he threw the responsibility of them, he said, on to those who had forced him to commit them; but there were moments of failing spirit, for which he could not account, when he went about in the midst of his ferocious companions, feeling gloomy, morose and heavy hearted. Again the image of Agnelette would rise before him, seeming to him like the personification of his own past life, honest and laborious, peaceful and innocent. And more than that, he felt he loved her more than he had ever thought it possible for him to love anybody. At times he would weep at the thought of all his lost happiness, at others he was seized with a wild fit of jealousy against the one to whom she now belonged, – she, who at one time, might if he had liked, have been his.

One day, the Baron in order to prepare some fresh means of destruction, had been forced for the while to leave the wolves in peace. Thibault, who was in one of the moods we have just described, wandered forth from the den where he lived in company with the wolves. It was a splendid summer’s night, and he began to rove about the woodlands, where the moon was lighting up the trunks of the trees, dreaming of the time when he trod the mossy carpet underfoot free from trouble and anxiety, until at last the only happiness which was now left him, forgetfulness of the present, stole over his senses. Lost in this sweet dream of his earlier life, he was all of a sudden aroused by a cry of distress from somewhere near at hand. He was now so accustomed to such sounds, that, ordinarily, he would have paid no attention to it, but his heart was for the moment softened by the recollection of Agnelette, and he felt more disposed than usual to pity; as it happened also he was near the place where he had first seen the gentle child, and this helped to awaken his kinder nature.

He ran to the spot whence the cry had come, and as he leaped from the underwood into the deep forest-lane near Ham, he saw a woman struggling with an immense wolf which had thrown her on the ground. Thibault could not have said why he was so agitated at this sight, nor why his heart beat more violently than usual; he rushed forward and seizing the animal by the throat hurled it away from its victim, and then lifting the woman in his arms, he carried her to the side of the lane and laid her on the slope. Here a ray of moonlight, breaking through the clouds, fell on the face of the woman he had saved, and Thibault saw that it was Agnelette. Near to the spot was the spring in which Thibault had once gazed at himself, and had seen the first red hair; he ran to it, took up water in his hands, and threw it into the woman’s face. Agnelette opened her eyes, gave a cry of terror, and tried to rise and flee.

“What!” cried the Wolf-leader, as if he were still Thibault the shoe-maker, “you do not know me again, Agnelette?”

“Ah! yes indeed, I know you, Thibault; and it is because I know who you are,” cried the young woman, “that I am afraid!”

Then throwing herself on her knees, and clasping her hands: “Oh do not kill me, Thibault!” she cried, “do not kill me! it would be such dreadful trouble for the poor old grandmother! Thibault, do not kill me!”

The Wolf-leader stood overcome with consternation; up to this hour he had not fully realised the hideous renown which he had gained; but the terror which the sight of him inspired in the woman who had loved him and whom he still loved, filled him with a horror of himself.

“I, kill you, Agnelette!” he said, “just when I have snatched you from death! Oh! how you must hate and despise me for such a thought to enter your head.”

“I do not hate you, Thibault,” said the young woman, “but I hear such things about you, that I feel afraid of you.”

“And do they say nothing of the infidelity which has led Thibault to commit such crimes?”

“I do not understand you,” said Agnelette looking at Thibault with her large eyes, blue as the heavens.

“What!” exclaimed Thibault, “you do not understand that I loved you – that I adored you Agnelette, and that the loss of you sent me out of my mind?”

“If you loved me, if you adored me, Thibault, what prevented you from marrying me?”

“The spirit of evil,” muttered Thibault.

“I too loved you,” continued the young woman, “and I suffered cruelly waiting for you.”

Thibault heaved a sigh.

“You loved me, Agnelette?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied the young woman with her soft voice and gentle eyes.

“But now, all is over,” said Thibault, “and you love me no more.”

“Thibault,” answered Agnelette, “I no longer love you, because it is no longer right to love you; but one cannot always forget one’s first love as one would wish.”

“Agnelette!” cried Thibault, trembling all over, “be careful what you say!”

“Why should I be careful what I say, since it is the truth,” said the girl with an innocent shake of the head. “The day you told me that you wished to make me your wife, I believed you, Thibault; for why should I think that you would lie to me when I had just done you a service? Then, later I met you, but I did not go in search of you; you came to me, you spoke words of love to me, you were the first to refer to the promise that you had made me. And it was not my fault either, Thibault, that I was afraid of that ring which you wore, which was large enough for you and yet, oh, it was horrible! not big enough for one of my fingers.”

“Would you like me not to wear this ring any more?” said Thibault. “Would you like me to throw it away?” And he began trying to pull it off his finger, but as it had been too small to go on Agnelette’s finger, so now it was too small to be taken off Thibault’s. In vain he struggled with it, and tried to move it with his teeth; the ring seemed rivetted to his finger for all eternity.

Thibault saw that it was no use trying to get rid of it; it was a token of compact between himself and the black wolf, and with a sigh he let his arms fall hopelessly to his sides.

“That day,” went on Agnelette, “I ran away; I know that I was wrong to do so, but I was no longer mistress of myself after seeing that ring and more still…” She lifted her eyes as she spoke, looking timidly up at Thibault’s hair. Thibault was bare-headed, and, by the light of the moon Agnelette could see that it was no longer a single hair that shone red as the flames of hell, but that half the hair on Thibault’s head was now of this devil’s colour.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, drawing back, “Thibault! Thibault! What has happened to you since I last saw you?”

“Agnelette!” cried Thibault throwing himself down with his face to the ground, and holding his head between his hands, “I could not tell any human creature, not even a priest what has happened to me since then; but to Agnelette, all I can say is: Agnelette! Agnelette! have pity on me, for I have been most unhappy!”

Agnelette went up to him and took his hands in hers.

“You did love me then? You did love me?” he cried.

“What can I do, Thibault!” said the girl with the same sweetness and innocence as before. “I took you at your word, and every time I heard someone knocking at our hut door, I thought it was you come to say to the old grandmother, ‘Mother, I love Agnelette, Agnelette loves me; will you give her to me for my wife?’ ”

“Then when I went and opened the door, and found that it was not you, I used to go into a corner and cry.”

“And now, Agnelette, now?”

“Now,” she answered. “Now, Thibault, it may seem strange, but in spite of all the terrible tales that are told about you, I have not been really frightened; I was sure that you could not wish any harm to me, and I was walking boldly through the forest, when that dreadful beast from which you saved me, suddenly sprang upon me.”

“But how is it that you are near your old home? do you not live with your husband?”

“We lived together for a while at Vez, but there was no room there for the grandmother; and so I said to my husband, ‘the grandmother must be thought of first; I must go back to her; when you wish to see me you will come.’ ”

“And he consented to that arrangement?”

“Not at first, but I pointed out to him that the grandmother is seventy years of age; that if she were only to live another two or three years, God grant it may be more! it would only be two or three years of some extra trouble for us, whereas, in all probability we had long years of life before us. Then he understood that it was right to give to those that had least.”

But all the while that Agnelette was giving this explanation, Thibault could think of nothing but that the love she once had for him was not yet dead.

“So,” said Thibault, “you loved me? and so, Agnelette you could love me again…?”

“That is impossible now because I belong to another.”

“Agnelette, Agnelette! only say that you love me!”

“No, Thibault, if I loved you, I should do everything in the world to hide it from you.”

“And why?” cried Thibault. “Why? you do not know my power. I know that I have only a wish or two left, but with your help, by combining these wishes together, I could make you as rich as a queen… We could leave the country, leave France, Europe; there are large countries, of which you do not even know the names, Agnelette, called America and India. They are paradises, with blue skies, tall trees and birds of every kind. Agnelette, say that you will come with me; nobody will know that we have gone off together, nobody will know where we are, nobody will know that we love one another, nobody will know even that we are alive.”

“Fly with you, Thibault!” said Agnelette, looking at the wolf-leader as if she had but half understood what he said, “do you forget that I no longer belong to myself? do you not know that I am married?”

“What does that matter,” said Thibault, “if it is I whom you love, and if we can live happily together!”

“Oh! Thibault! Thibault! what are you saying!”

“Listen,” went on Thibault, “I am going to speak to you in the name of this world and the next. Do you wish to save me, Agnelette, body and soul? If so, do not resist my pleading, have pity on me, come with me; let us go somewhere together, where we shall no longer hear these howlings, or breathe this atmosphere of reeking flesh; and, if it scares you to think of being a rich, grand lady, somewhere then where I can again be Thibault the workman, Thibault, poor but beloved, and, therefore, Thibault happy in his hard work, some place where Agnelette will have no other husband but me.”

“Ah! Thibault! I was ready to become your wife, and you scorned me!”

“Do not remember my sins, Agnelette, which have been so cruelly punished.”

“Thibault, another has done what you were not willing to do. He took the poor young girl; he burdened himself with the poor old blind woman; he gave a name to the one and bread to the other; he had no ambition beyond that of gaining my love; he desired no dowry beyond my marriage vow; can you think of asking me to return evil for good? Do you dare to suggest that I should leave the one who has given me such proof of his love for the one who has given me proof only of his indifference?”

“But what matter still, Agnelette, since you do not love him and since you do love me?”

“Thibault, do not turn and twist my words to make them appear to say what they do not. I said that I still preserved my friendship for you, I never said that I did not love my husband. I should like to see you happy, my friend; above all I should like to see you abjure your evil ways and repent of your sins; and last of all, I wish that God may have mercy upon you, and that you may be delivered from that spirit of evil, of which you spoke just now. For this I pray night and morning on my knees; but even that I may be able to pray for you, I must keep myself pure; if the voice that supplicates for mercy is to rise to God’s throne, it must be an innocent one; above all, I must scrupulously keep the oath which I swore at His altar.”

On hearing these decisive words from Agnelette, Thibault again became fierce and morose.

“Do you not know, Agnelette, that it is very imprudent of you to speak to me here like that?”

“And why, Thibault?” asked the young woman.

“We are alone here together; it is dark, and not a man of the open would dare to come into the forest at this hour; and know, the King is not more master in his kingdom than I am here?”

“I do not understand you, Thibault?”

“I mean that having prayed, implored, and conjured, I can now threaten.”

“You, threaten?”

“What I mean is,” continued Thibault, paying no heed to Agnelette’s words, “that every word you speak does not excite my love for you more than it rouses my hatred towards him; in short, I mean that it is imprudent of the lamb to irritate the wolf when the lamb is in the power of the wolf.”

“I told you, Thibault, before, that I started to walk through the forest without any feeling of fear at meeting you. As I was coming to, I felt a momentary terror, remembering involuntarily what I had heard said about you; but at this moment, Thibault, you will try in vain to make me turn pale.”

Thibault flung both hands up to his head.

“Do not talk like that,” he said, “you cannot think what the devil is whispering to me, and what an effort I have to make to resist his voice.”

“You may kill me if you like,” replied Agnelette, “but I will not be guilty of the cowardice which you ask of me; you may kill me, but I shall remain faithful to my husband; you may kill me, but I shall pray to God to help him as I die.”

“Do not speak his name, Agnelette; do not make me think about that man.”

“You can threaten me as much as you like, Thibault, for I am in your hands; but, happily, he is far from you, and you have no power over him.”

“And who told you that, Agnelette? do you not know that, thanks to the diabolical power I possess and which I can hardly fight against, I am able to strike as well far as near?”

“And if I should become a widow, Thibault, do you imagine that I should be vile enough to accept your hand when it was stained with the blood of the one whose name I bear?”

“Agnelette,” said Thibault falling on his knees, “Agnelette, save me from committing a further crime.”

“It is you, not I, who will be responsible for the crime. I can give you my life, Thibault, but not my honour.”

“Oh,” roared Thibault, “love flies from the heart when hatred enters; take care, Agnelette! take heed to your husband! The devil is in me, and he will soon speak through my mouth. Instead of the consolation which I had hoped from your love, and which your love refuses, I will have vengeance. Stay my hand, Agnelette, there is yet time, stay it from cursing, from destroying; if not, understand that it is not I, but you, who strike him dead! Agnelette, you know now… Agnelette, you do not stop me from speaking? Let it be so then, and let the curse fall on all three of us, you and him and me! Agnelette, I wish your husband to die, and he will die!”

Agnelette uttered a terrible cry; then, as if her reason reasserted itself, protesting against this murder at a distance which seemed impossible to her, she exclaimed:

“No, no; you only say that to terrify me, but my prayers will prevail against your maledictions.”