JEAN GRENIER
On the Sand-dunes—A Wolf attacks Marguerite Poirier—Jean Grenier
brought to Trial—His Confessions—Charges of Cannibalism proved—His
Sentence—Behaviour in the Monastery—Visit of Del’ancre.
One fine afternoon in the spring, some village girls were tending their
sheep on the sand-dunes which intervene between the vast forests of
pine covering the greater portion of the present department of _Landes_
in the south of France, and the sea.
The brightness of the sky, the freshness of the air puffing up off the
blue twinkling Bay of Biscay, the hum or song of the wind as it made
rich music among the pines which stood like a green uplifted wave on
the East, the beauty of the sand-hills speckled with golden cistus, or
patched with gentian-blue, by the low growing _Gremille couchée_, the
charm of the forest-skirts, tinted variously with the foliage of
cork-trees, pines, and acacia, the latter in full bloom, a pile of
rose-coloured or snowy flowers,—all conspired to fill the peasant
maidens with joy, and to make their voices rise in song and laughter,
which rung merrily over the hills, and through the dark avenues of
evergreen trees.
Now a gorgeous butterfly attracted their attention, then a flight of
quails skimming the surface.
“Ah!” exclaimed Jacquiline Auzun,” ah, if I had my stilts and bats, I
would strike the little birds down, and we should have a fine supper.”
“Now, if they would fly ready cooked into one’s mouth, as they do in
foreign parts!” said another girl.
“Have you got any new clothes for the S. Jean?” asked a third; “my
mother has laid by to purchase me a smart cap with gold lace.”
“You will turn the head of Etienne altogether, Annette!” said Jeanne
Gaboriant. “But what is the matter with the sheep?”
She asked because the sheep which had been quietly browsing before her,
on reaching a small depression in the dune, had started away as though
frightened at something. At the same time one of the dogs began to
growl and show his fangs.
The girls ran to the spot, and saw a little fall in the ground, in
which, seated on a log of fir, was a boy of thirteen. The appearance of
the lad was peculiar. His hair was of a tawny red and thickly matted,
falling over his shoulders and completely covering his narrow brow. His
small pale-grey eyes twinkled with an expression of horrible ferocity
and cunning, from deep sunken hollows. The complexion was of a dark
olive colour; the teeth were strong and white, and the canine teeth
protruded over the lower lip when the mouth was closed. The boy’s hands
were large and powerful, the nails black and pointed like bird’s
talons. He was ill clothed, and seemed to be in the most abject
poverty. The few garments he had on him were in tatters, and through
the rents the emaciation of his limbs was plainly visible.
The girls stood round him, half frightened and much surprised, but the
boy showed no symptoms of astonishment. His face relaxed into a ghastly
leer, which showed the whole range of his glittering white fangs.
“Well, my maidens,” said he in a harsh voice, “which of you is the
prettiest, I should like to know; can you decide among you?”
“What do you want to know for?” asked Jeanne Gaboriant, the eldest of
the girls, aged eighteen, who took upon herself to be spokesman for the
rest.
“Because I shall marry the prettiest,” was the answer.
“Ah!” said Jeanne jokingly; “that is if she will have you, which is not
very likely, as we none of us know you, or anything about you.”
“I am the son of a priest,” replied the boy curtly.
“Is that why you look so dingy and black?”
“No, I am dark-coloured, because I wear a wolf-skin sometimes.”
“A wolf-skin!” echoed the girl; “and pray who gave it you?”
“One called Pierre Labourant.”
“There is no man of that name hereabouts. Where does he live?”
A scream of laughter mingled with howls, and breaking into strange
gulping bursts of fiendlike merriment from the strange boy.
The little girls recoiled, and the youngest took refuge behind Jeanne.
“Do you want to know Pierre Labourant, lass? Hey, he is a man with an
iron chain about his neck, which he is ever engaged in gnawing. Do you
want to know where he lives, lass? Ha., in a place of gloom and fire,
where there are many companions, some seated on iron chairs, burning,
burning; others stretched on glowing beds, burning too. Some cast men
upon blazing coals, others roast men before fierce flames, others again
plunge them into caldrons of liquid fire.”
The girls trembled and looked at each other with scared faces, and then
again at the hideous being which crouched before them.
“You want to know about the wolf-skin cape?” continued he. “Pierre
Labourant gave me that; he wraps it round me, and every Monday, Friday,
and Sunday, and for about an hour at dusk every other day, I am a wolf,
a were-wolf. I have killed dogs and drunk their blood; but little girls
taste better, their flesh is tender and sweet, their blood rich and
warm. I have eaten many a maiden, as I have been on my raids together
with my nine companions. I am a were-wolf! Ah, ha! if the sun were to
set I would soon fall on one of you and make a meal of you!” Again he
burst into one of his frightful paroxysms of laughter, and the girls
unable to endure it any longer, fled with precipitation.
Near the village of S. Antoine de Pizon, a little girl of the name of
Marguerite Poirier, thirteen years old, was in the habit of tending her
sheep, in company with a lad of the same age, whose name was Jean
Grenier. The same lad whom Jeanne Gaboriant had questioned.
The little girl often complained to her parents of the conduct of the
boy: she said that he frightened her with his horrible stories; but her
father and mother thought little of her complaints, till one day she
returned home before her usual time so thoroughly alarmed that she had
deserted her flock. Her parents now took the matter up and investigated
it. Her story was as follows:—
Jean had often told her that he had sold himself to the devil, and that
he had acquired the power of ranging the country after dusk, and
sometimes in broad day, in the form of a wolf. He had assured her that
he had killed and devoured many dogs, but that he found their flesh
less palatable than the flesh of little girls, which he regarded as a
supreme delicacy. He had told her that this had been tasted by him not
unfrequently, but he had specified only two instances: in one he had
eaten as much as he could, and had thrown the rest to a wolf, which had
come up during the repast. In the other instance he had bitten to death
another little girl, had lapped her blood, and, being in a famished
condition at the time, had devoured every portion of her, with the
exception of the arms and shoulders.
The child told her parents, on the occasion of her return home in a fit
of terror, that she had been guiding her sheep as usual, but Grenier
had not been present. Hearing a rustle in the bushes she had looked
round, and a wild beast bad leaped upon her, and torn her clothes on
her left side with its sharp fangs. She added that she had defended
herself lustily with her shepherd’s staff, and had beaten the creature
off. It had then retreated a few paces, had seated itself on its hind
legs like a dog when it is begging, and had regarded her with such a
look of rage, that she had fled in terror. She described the animal as
resembling a wolf, but as being shorter and stouter; its hair was red,
its tail stumpy, and the head smaller than that of a genuine wolf.
The statement of the child produced general consternation in the
parish. It was well known that several little girls had vanished in a
most mysterious way of late, and the parents of these little ones were
thrown into an agony of terror lest their children had become the prey
of the wretched boy accused by Marguerite Poirier. The case was now
taken up by the authorities and brought before the parliament of
Bordeaux.
The investigation which followed was as complete as could be desired.
Jean Grenier was the son of a poor labourer in the village of S.
Antoine do Pizon, and not the son of a priest, as he had asserted.
Three months before his seizure he had left home, and had been with
several masters doing odd work, or wandering about the country begging.
He had been engaged several times to take charge of the flocks
belonging to farmers, and had as often been discharged for 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.
Jean said that he had the wolf-skin in his possession, and that he went
out hunting for children, at the command of his master, the Lord of the
Forest. Before transformation he smeared himself with the salve, which
be preserved in a small pot, and hid his clothes in the thicket.
He usually ran his courses from one to two hours in the day, when the
moon was at the wane, but very often he made his expeditions at night.
On one occasion he had accompanied Duthillaire, but they had killed no
one.
He accused his father of having assisted him, and of possessing a
wolf-skin; he charged him also with having accompanied him on one
occasion, when he attacked and ate a girl in the village of Grilland,
whom he had found tending a flock of geese. He said that his stepmother
was separated from his father. He believed the reason to be, because
she had seen him once vomit the paws of a dog and the fingers of a
child. He added that the Lord of the Forest had strictly forbidden him
to bite the thumb-nail of his left hand, which nail was thicker and
longer than the others, and had warned him never to lose sight of it,
as long as he was in his were-wolf disguise.
Duthillaire was apprehended, and the father of Jean Grenier himself
claimed to be heard by examination.
The account given by the father and stepmother of Jean coincided in
many particulars with the statements made by their son.
The localities where Grenier declared he had fallen on children were
identified, the times when he said the deeds had been done accorded
with the dates given by the parents of the missing little ones, when
their losses had occurred.
The wounds which Jean affirmed that he had made, and the manner in
which he had dealt them, coincided with the descriptions given by the
children he had assaulted.
He was confronted with Marguerite Poirier, and he singled her out from
among five other girls, pointed to the still open gashes in her body,
and stated that he had made them with his teeth, when he attacked her
in wolf-form, and she had beaten him off with a stick. He described an
attack he had made on a little boy whom he would have slain, had not a
man come to the rescue, and exclaimed, “I’ll have you presently.”
The man who saved the child was found, and proved to be the uncle of
the rescued lad, and he corroborated the statement of Grenier, that he
had used the words mentioned above.
Jean was then confronted with his father. He now began to falter in his
story, and to change his statements. The examination had lasted long,
and it was seen that the feeble intellect of the boy was wearied out,
so the case was adjourned. When next confronted with the elder Grenier,
Jean told his story as at first, without changing it in any important
particular.
The fact of Jean Grenier having killed and eaten several children, and
of his having attacked and wounded others, with intent to take their
life, were fully established; but there was no proof whatever of the
father having had the least hand in any of the murders, so that he was
dismissed the court without a shadow of guilt upon him.
The only witness who corroborated the assertion of Jean that he changed
his shape into that of a wolf was Marguerite Poirier.
Before the court gave judgment, the first president of assize, in an
eloquent speech, put on one side all questions of witchcraft and
diabolical compact, and bestial transformation, and boldly stated that
the court had only to consider the age and the imbecility of the child,
who was so dull and idiotic—that children of seven or eight years old
have usually a larger amount of reason than he. The president went on
to say that Lycanthropy and Kuanthropy were mere hallucinations, and
that the change of shape existed only in the disorganized brain of the
insane, consequently it was not a crime which could be punished. The
tender age of the boy must be taken into consideration, and the utter
neglect of his education and moral development. The court sentenced
Grenier to perpetual imprisonment within the walls of a monastery at
Bordeaux, where he might be instructed in his Christian and moral
obligations; but any attempt to escape would be punished with death.
A pleasant companion for the monks! a promising pupil for them to
instruct! No sooner was he admitted into the precincts of the religious
house, than he ran frantically about the cloister and gardens upon all
fours, and finding a heap of bloody and raw offal, fell upon it and
devoured it in an incredibly short space of time.
Delancre visited him seven years after, and found him diminutive in
stature, very shy, and unwilling to look any one in the face. His eyes
were deep set and restless; his teeth long and protruding; his nails
black, and in places worn away; his mind was completely barren; he
seemed unable to comprehend the smallest things. He related his story
to Delancre, and told him how he had run about formerly in the woods as
a wolf, and he said that he still felt a craving for raw flesh,
especially for that of little girls, which he said was delicious, and
he added that but for his confinement it would not be long before he
tasted it again. He said that the Lord of the Forest had visited him
twice in the prison, but that he had driven him off with the sign of
the cross. The account be then gave of his murders coincided exactly
with what had come out in his trial; and beside this, his story of the
compact he had made with the Black One, and the manner in which his
transformation was effected, also coincided with his former statements.
He died at the age of twenty, after an imprisonment of seven years,
shortly after Delancre’s visit.[1]
[1] DELANCRE: _Tableau de l’Inconstance_, p 305.
In the two cases of Roulet and Grenier the courts referred the whole
matter of Lycanthropy, or animal transformation, to its true and
legitimate cause, an aberration of the brain. From this time medical
men seem to have regarded it as a form of mental malady to be brought
under their treatment, rather than as a crime to be punished by law.
But it is very fearful to contemplate that there may still exist
persons in the world filled with a morbid craving for human blood,
which is ready to impel them to commit the most horrible atrocities,
should they escape the vigilante of their guards, or break the bars of
the madhouse which restrains them.