THE ANNIVERSARY
As soon as Thibault ceased to hear the furious cries of his pursuers
behind him, he slackened his pace, and the usual silence again reigning
throughout the forest, he paused and sat down on a heap of stones. He
was in such a troubled state of mind that he did not recognise where he
was, until he began to notice that some of the stones were blackened, as
if they had been licked by flames; they were the stones of his own
former hearth.
Chance had led him to the spot where a few months previously his hut had
stood.
The shoe-maker evidently felt the bitterness of the comparison between
that peaceful past and this terrible present, for large tears rolled
down his cheeks and fell upon the cinders at his feet. He heard midnight
strike from the Oigny church clock, then one after the other from the
other neighbouring village towers. At this moment the priest was
listening to Agnelette’s dying prayers.
“Cursed be the day!” cried Thibault, “when I first wished for anything
beyond what God chooses to put within the reach of a poor workman!
Cursed be the day when the black wolf gave me the power to do evil, for
the ill that I have done, instead of adding to my happiness, has
destroyed it for ever!”
A loud laugh was heard behind Thibault’s back.
He turned; there was the black wolf himself, creeping noiselessly along,
like a dog coming to rejoin its master. The wolf would have been
invisible in the gloom but for the flames shot forth from his eyes,
which illuminated the darkness; he went round the hearth and sat down
facing the shoe-maker.
“What is this!” he said. “Master Thibault not satisfied? It seems that
Master Thibault is difficult to please.”
“How can I feel satisfied,” said Thibault. “I, who since I first met
you, have known nothing but vain aspirations and endless regrets? I
wished for riches, and here I am in despair at having lost the humble
roof of bracken under shelter of which I could sleep in peace without
anxiety as to the morrow, without troubling myself about the rain or the
wind beating against the branches of the giant oaks.
“I wished for position, and here I am, stoned and hunted down by the
lowest peasants, whom formerly I despised. I asked for love, and the
only woman who loved me and whom I loved became the wife of another, and
she is at this moment cursing me as she lies dying, while I,
notwithstanding all the power you have given me, can do nothing to help
her!”
“Leave off loving anybody but yourself, Thibault.”
“Oh! yes, laugh at me, do!”
“I am not laughing at you. But did you not cast envious eyes on other
people’s property before you had set eyes on me?”
“Yes, for a wretched buck, of which there are hundreds just as good
browsing in the forest!”
“You thought your wishes were going to stop at the buck, Thibault; but
wishes lead on to one another, as the night to the day, and the day to
night. When you wished for the buck, you also wished for the silver dish
on which it would be served; the silver dish led you on to wish for the
servant who carries it and for the carver who cuts up its contents.
Ambition is like the vault of heaven; it appears to be bounded by the
horizon, but it covers the whole earth. You disdained Agnelette’s
innocence, and went after Madame Poulet’s mill; if you had gained the
mill, you would immediately have wanted the house of the Bailiff
Magloire; and his house would have had no further attraction for you
when once you had seen the Castle of Mont-Gobert.
“You are one in your envious disposition with the fallen Angel, your
master and mine; only, as you were not clever enough to reap the benefit
that might have accrued to you from your power of inflicting evil, it
would perhaps have been more to your interest to continue to lead an
honest life.”
“Yes, indeed,” replied the shoe-maker, “I feel the truth of the proverb,
‘Evil to him who evil wishes’” But, he continued, “can I not become an
honest man again?”
The wolf gave a mocking chuckle.
“My good fellow, the devil can drag a man to hell,” he said, “by a
single hair. Have you ever counted how many of yours now belong to him?”
“No.”
“I cannot tell you that exactly either, but I know how many you have
which are still your own. You have one left! You see it is long past the
time for repentance.”
“But if a man is lost when but one of his hairs belongs to the devil,”
said Thibault, “why cannot God likewise save a man in virtue of a single
hair?”
“Well, try if that is so!”
“And, besides, when I concluded that unhappy bargain with you, I did not
understand that it was to be a compact of this kind.”
“Oh, yes! I know all about the bad faith of you men! Was it no compact
then to consent to give me your hairs, you stupid fool? Since men
invented baptism, we do not know how to get hold of them, and so, in
return for any concessions we make them, we are bound to insist on their
relinquishing to us some part of their body on which we can lay hands.
You gave us the hairs of your head; they are firmly rooted, as you have
proved yourself and will not come away in our grasp.... No, no,
Thibault, you have belonged to us ever since, standing on the threshold
of the door that was once there, you cherished within you thoughts of
deceit and violence.”
“And so,” cried Thibault passionately, rising and stamping his foot,
“and so I am lost as regards the next world without having enjoyed the
pleasures of this!”
“You can yet enjoy these.”
“And how, I pray.”
“By boldly following the path that you have struck by chance, and
resolutely determining on a course of conduct which you have adopted as
yet only in a halfhearted way; in short, by frankly owning yourself to
be one of us.”
“And how am I to do this?”
“Take my place.”
“And what then?”
“You will then acquire my power, and you will have nothing left to wish
for.”
“If your power is so great, if it can give you all the riches that I
long for, why do you give it up?”
“Do not trouble yourself about me. The master for whom I shall have won
a retainer will liberally reward me.”
“And if I take your place, shall I also have to take your form?”
“Yes, in the night-time; by day you will be a man again.”
“The nights are long, dark, full of snares; I may be brought down by a
bullet from a keeper, or be caught in a trap, and then good-bye riches,
good-bye position and pleasure.”
“Not so; for this skin that covers me is impenetrable by iron, lead or
steel. As long as it protects your body, you will be not only
invulnerable, but immortal; once a year, like all were-wolves, you will
become a wolf again for four and twenty hours, and during that interval,
you will be in danger of death like any other animal. I had just reached
that dangerous time a year ago to-day, when we first met.”
“Ah!” said Thibault, “that explains why you feared my Lord Baron’s
dogs.”
“When we have dealings with men, we are forbidden to speak anything but
the truth, and the whole truth; it is for them to accept or refuse.”
“You have boasted to me of the power that I should acquire; tell me,
now, in what that power will consist?”
“It will be such that even the most powerful king will not be able to
withstand it, since his power is limited by the human and the possible.”
“Shall I be rich?”
“So rich, that you will come in time to despise riches, since, by the
mere force of your will, you will obtain not only what men can only
acquire with gold and silver, but also all that superior beings get by
their conjurations.”
“Shall I be able to revenge myself on my enemies?”
“You will have unlimited power over everything which is connected with
evil.”
“If I love a woman, will there again be a possibility of my losing her?”
“As you will have dominion over all your fellow creatures, you will be
able to do with them what you like.”
“There will be no power to enable them to escape from the trammels of my
will?”
“Nothing, except death, which is stronger than all.”
“And I shall only run the risk of death myself on one day out of the
three hundred and sixty-five?”
“On one day only; during the remaining days nothing can harm you,
neither iron, lead, nor steel, neither water, nor fire.”
“And there is no deceit, no trap to catch me, in your words?”
“None, on my honour as a wolf!”
“Good,” said Thibault, “then let it be so; a wolf for four and twenty
hours, for the rest of the time the monarch of creation! What am I to
do? I am ready.”
“Pick a holly-leaf, tear it in three pieces with your teeth, and throw
it away from you, as far as you can.”
Thibault did as he was commanded.
Having torn the leaf in three pieces, he scattered them on the air, and
although the night till then had been a peaceful one, there was
immediately heard a loud peal of thunder, while a tempestuous whirlwind
arose, which caught up the fragments and carried them whirling away with
it.
“And now, brother Thibault,” said the wolf, “take my place, and good
luck be with you! As was my case just a year ago, so you will have to
become a wolf for four and twenty hours; you must endeavour to come out
of the ordeal as happily as I did, thanks to you, and then you will see
realised all that I have promised you. Meanwhile, I will pray the lord
of the cloven hoof that he will protect you from the teeth of the
Baron’s hounds, for, by the devil himself, I take a genuine interest in
you, friend Thibault.”
And then it seemed to Thibault that he saw the black wolf grow larger
and taller, that it stood up on its hind legs and finally walked away in
the form of a man, who made a sign to him with his hand as he
disappeared.
We say _it seemed to him_, for Thibault’s ideas, for a second or two,
became very indistinct. A feeling of torpor passed over him, paralysing
his power of thought. When he came to himself, he was alone. His limbs
were imprisoned in a new and unusual form; he had, in short, become in
every respect the counterpart of the black wolf that a few minutes
before had been speaking to him. One single white hair on his head alone
shone in contrast to the remainder of the sombre coloured fur; this one
white hair of the wolf was the one black hair which had remained to the
man.
Thibault had scarcely had time to recover himself when he fancied he
heard a rustling among the bushes, and the sound of a low, muffled
bark.... He thought of the Baron and his hounds, and trembled. Thus
metamorphosed into the black wolf, he decided that he would not do what
his predecessor had done, and wait till the dogs were upon him. It was
probably a bloodhound he had heard, and he would get away before the
hounds were uncoupled. He made off, striking straight ahead, as is the
manner of wolves, and it was a profound satisfaction to him to find that
in his new form he had tenfold his former strength and elasticity of
limb.
“By the devil and his horns!” the voice of the Lord of Vez was now heard
to say to his new huntsman a few paces off, “you hold the leash too
slack, my lad; you have let the bloodhound give tongue, and we shall
never head the wolf back now.”
“I was in fault, I do not deny it, my Lord; but as I saw it go by last
evening only a few yards from this spot, I never guessed that it would
take up its quarters for the night in this part of the wood and that it
was so close to us as all that.”
“Are you sure it is the same one that has got away from us so often?”
“May the bread I eat in your service choke me, my lord, if it is not the
same black wolf that we were chasing last year when poor Marcotte was
drowned.”
“I should like finely to put the dogs on its track,” said the Baron,
with a sigh.
“My lord has but to give the order, and we will do so, but he will allow
me to observe that we have still two good hours of darkness before us,
time enough for every horse we have to break its legs.”
“That may be, but if we wait for the day, l’Eveillé, the fellow will
have had time to get ten leagues away.”
“Ten leagues at least,” said l’Eveillé, shaking his head.
“I have got this cursed black wolf on my brain,” added the Baron, “and I
have such a longing to have its skin, that I feel sure I shall catch an
illness if I do not get hold of it.”
“Well then, my lord, let us have the dogs out without a moment’s loss of
time.”
“You are right, l’Eveillé; go and fetch the hounds.”
L’Eveillé went back to his horse, that he had tied to a tree outside the
wood, and went off at a gallop, and in ten minutes’ time, which seemed
like ten centuries to the Baron, he was back with the whole hunting
train. The hounds were immediately uncoupled.
“Gently, gently, my lads!” said the Lord of Vez, “you forget you are not
handling your old well-trained dogs; if you get excited with these raw
recruits, they’ll merely kick up a devil of a row, and be no more good
than so many turnspits; let ’em get warmed up by degrees.”
And, indeed, the dogs were no sooner loose, than two or three got at
once on to the scent of the were-wolf, and began to give cry, whereupon
the others joined them. The whole pack started off on Thibault’s track,
at first quietly following up the scent, and only giving cry at long
intervals, then more excitedly and of more accord, until they had so
thoroughly imbibed the odour of the wolf ahead of them, and the scent
had become so strong, that they tore along, baying furiously, and with
unparalleled eagerness in the direction of the Yvors coppice.
“Well begun, is half done!” cried the Baron. “You look after the relays,
l’Eveillé; I want them ready whenever needed! I will encourage the
dogs.... And you be on the alert, you others,” he added, addressing
himself to the younger keepers, “we have more than one defeat to avenge,
and if I lose this view halloo through the fault of anyone among you, by
the devil and his horns! he shall be the dogs’ quarry in place of the
wolf!”
After pronouncing these words of encouragement, the Baron put his horse
to the gallop, and although it was still pitch dark and the ground was
rough, he kept the animal going at top speed so as to come up with the
hounds, which could be heard giving tongue in the low lands about
Bourg-Fontaine.