• That the animal had started to putrefy, which appeared by the smell, the fall of the hair and the skin.
• A scar to the inner face of the beginning of the right shoulder which penetrates to the muscle.
• Several scars to both wrists or the lower front part of the forelegs.
• Two holes located on the hind part of both thighs which appear to have been made by a bullet.
• A shot which pierced the right eyeball, penetrated the head, and fractured the bones at the base of the skull and resulted in the death of the animal, said blow apparently caused by a bullet.
• A scar behind the left ear.
• Another scar penetrating the flesh obliquely on the front-facing, middle part of the right shoulder.
• The skin pierced in various places by shot or buckshot especially on the left side.
• Several shots of various sizes were found in the various lower parts of this animal.
• The lumbar muscles of the neck and of the lower jaw are masses of flesh of a strength much superior to ordinary wolves; all the other proportions are also more considerable than in such animal species.
• After removing the teguments [outer covering: skin and hair], grease and the already gangrenous muscle parts I desiccated the fleshy parts with the liquor indicated by Mr. de Buffon. Then, with the spirit of turpentine I placed in the interstices [closely-set crevices] of the muscles the powders and the balms that are used in embalming, the cavities are filled with odorous powders and balsamic gum and penetrating salt, all the external parts covered with the same powder over the ordinary lignement, the whole covered with its skin …
• The skin of this animal had been so damaged that all its long hair had fallen, the part which covers the abdomen, especially between the thighs, has been stripped of skin, as well as some other parts of the skin, as a consequence of decomposition.
• All the other proportions decreased in volume through desiccation [dehydration and loss of mass], as one can notice from the following table:
Proportion (at the time I made the measurements [?]):
• Length from the tip of the nose to the end of the tail: 5 feet, 10 inches, 6 lines (after dessication: 5 feet, 9 inches, 4 lines) [190.7 cm].
• Length from the tip of the nose to the root of the tail: 4 feet, 5 inches, 1 line (after dessication: 4 feet, 4 inches) [138.62 cm].
• Length from the nose until the occiput [or occipital, back portion of the skull]: 1 foot, 1 inch (after dessication 11 inches, 10 lines) [35.18 cm].
(…)
• Length of the hind paw: 2 inches, 9 lines (after dessication: 2 inches, 6 lines) [7.2 cm].
• Length of the fore paw: 2 inches, 11 lines (after dessication: 2 inches, 9 lines) [7.6 cm].
• Length of the largest nail: 1 inch, 1 line (idem after dessication) [2.9 cm].
• Length of the fangs or defenses: 1 inch, 3 lines (idem after dessication) [3.3 cm]. In wolves up to 5 cm 2 inches.
Number of teeth:
• On the upper jaw eighteen, to wit six incisors, two defensives and ten molars, six on the right side and four on the left side, and one ready to emerge on the same side.
• On the lower jaw twenty-two, to wit six incisors, two canines or defensives, and four [read: fourteen, as the following sentence shows] molars. There are seven on each side.
This official report is sincere and true, in witness whereof I signed with the aforementioned, in Clermont-Ferrand on September 27, 1765. J.D. F.R.
(Archives departementales du Puy-de-Dôme c. 1736).
We now move on to examine the report of the Beast shot by Jean Chastel, La Ténazeyre Canid, an unusual animal that fortunately was better examined, resulting in a much more detailed autopsy. Here is the full account, again with author notes and contemporary measurements in brackets [ ].*
Autopsy from notary Roch-Étienne Marin
The Marquis d’Apcher, who lived in the Castle of Besques near Charraix, had for some time been trying to hunt the Beast, with the people of his lands. In the course of this, on 19 June 1767, Jean Chastel killed the Beast (a male specimen). A statement preserved in the French National Archives and drafted on June 20, 1767, by master Marin, royal notary of Langeac, reports as follows:
The Marquis d’Apcher, having had the animal moved to his castle at Besques, parish of Charraix, we deemed fitting to go there to verify this, and being at the Castle of Besque the Marquis d’Apcher had this animal shown to us, which seemed to us a wolf, but extraordinary and very different in shape and proportions from the wolves one can see in this area. This was certified to us by more than three hundred people from the whole neighborhood who had come to see it.
Many hunters and knowledgeable people indeed pointed to us that this animal only resembles a wolf through its tail and hindquarters. The head, as we shall see from the proportions below, is monstrous: its eyes have a strange membrane which starts at the lower part of the eye-socket, rising when the animal wishes to cover the eyeball [a nictitating membrane, or third eyelid, a translucent membrane which provides eye protection and lubrication]. Its neck is covered by a very thick, reddish gray hair crossed by a few black stripes. It has, on its chest, a great heart-shaped white mark. The feet have four toes armed with large nails that extend much longer than those of ordinary wolves. They are, as well as the legs, which are very big, especially the front ones, the color of a roe deer’s. This seemed to us a remarkable observation because, in the opinion of those same hunters [word purposefully crossed in the original] knowledgeable people and all the hunters, never have such colors been seen in wolves. It also seemed fitting to observe that its ribs do not look like a wolf’s, which gave this animal the ability to turn around easily, whereas the ribs of wolves, being set in the oblique, do not allow this faculty.
The proportions we had taken from this animal are:
• A. G. Length from the root of the tail to the tip of the head: 3 feet [97.44 cm]
• P. From top of the head to between the two great angles of the eyes: 6 inches [16.2 cm]
• Q. From the great angle of the eyes to the tip of the snout: 5 inches [13.5 cm]
• U. Width from one ear to the other: 7 inches [18.9 cm]
• S. Mouth aperture: 7 inches [18.9 cm]
• B. Horizontal length of the neck: 8 inches 6 lines [22.8 cm]
• C. O. Width of shoulders: 11 inches [29.7 cm]
• E. Width at the root of the tail: 8 inches 6 lines [22.8 cm]
• D. H. Length of the tail: 8 inches [21.6 cm] [Correction from another document incites to read: 1 foot 8 inches, 54.1 cm].
• F. Diameter of the tail: 3 inches 6 lines [9.3 cm].
• V. Ear Length: 4 inches 6 lines [12 cm]
• Width of the forehead under the ears, 6 inches [16.2 cm]
• W. Distance between the two great angles of the eyes: 2 inches 6 lines [6.6 cm]
• I. L. Length of the humerus/femur (upper leg bone): 8 inches 4 lines [22.4 cm]
• J. M. Length of the forearm: 8 inches [21.6 cm]
• K. Length from the last joint to the nails: 7 inches 6 lines [20.1 cm]
• R. Length of the jaw: 6 inches [16.2 cm]
• X. Width of the snout: 1 inch 6 lines [3.9 cm]
• 3. Width of lower molars: 1 inch 3 lines [3.3 cm]
• 1. Length of the incisors, 1 inch 3 lines [3.3 cm]
• 4. Length of lower molars: 6 lines [1.2 cm]
• 2. Length of upper molars: 1 inch 1 line [2.72 cm]
• Length of the tongue: 14 inches from its root [37.8 cm]
• Y. Width of the eyes: 1 inch 3 lines [3.3 cm]
• T. Head thickness: 7 inches [18.9 cm]
• N. Hind legs from the first to the second joint: 7 inches 2 lines [19.3 cm]
• Z1. Z2. From the second to the third joint to the nails: 10 inches [27 cm]
• Z3. Leg width: 4 inches 6 lines [12 cm]
• From the “chataîgne” [literal French: chestnut] to the
extremity of the leg: 6 inches [16.2 cm]
• Length of the penis: 7 inches [18.9 cm]
The upper jaw is garnished with six incisors, the sixth being longer than the others. Two large strips or hooks far from the incisors and 1 inch 4 lines high [3.6 cm] with a diameter of 6 lines [1.4 cm], three molar teeth, of which one is fairly small and two are large, a fourth molar larger than the others and to which is nearly joined the fifth and penultimate one, which is divided into two parts, one of which extends perpendicularly and the other stretches horizontally in the interior of the palate, and finally a sixth molar.
The lower jaw is garnished with 22 teeth, to wit 6 incisors, and on each side a row similar to the upper ones, 7 molars, the first very small and far from the strip, the next three are larger and similar to the second and third upper molars, the fifth larger and longer is divided into three parts, the anterior of which is shorter, the sixth, quite large, has with two anterior and lateral protuberances, the seventh is very small and almost equal. (…)
They also pointed to us that this animal, from the front legs to the spine, is 2 foot and 4 inches high [75.76 cm] and that its eyes are the color of red cinnabar.
We offer this second testimony from the Archives departementales du Puy-de-Dôme:
Letter written from Auvergne to the Count of *** [name purposefully blanked in the original document], relative to the destruction of the real dire beast, its female and its five young, that used to ravage Gévaudan.
Mr. de la M*** [we know from other documents this was Mr. de la Mothe] made his examination. He observed that the head was monstrous, square in shape, much wider and longer than that of an ordinary wolf, the muzzle a bit obtuse, the ears straight and wide at their base, the eyes black and fitted with a very singular protruding membrane; it was a prolongation of the lower eye muscles. These membranes served it to cover both eye sockets at will, by rising and gliding under the eyelids. The mouth opening was very large; the incisors, resembling those of a dog, the big teeth close together and uneven, the neck very thick and short, covered with bristling hair, extremely long and thick, with a black transverse band descending toward the shoulder, the hind-quarters rather resembling a wolf’s, except for the huge size; the front legs shorter that the hind legs, more like a greyhound’s than an ordinary wolf’s, and covered, as well as the front of the head, with tawny hair, short and smooth, precisely the color of a deer’s (…) The body hair very thick and long, grayish in color and mottled with black. The animal has on its chest a wide white spot, having the perfect shape of a heart (…)
Notary Marin autopsy, body “proportions” for La Ténazeyre Canid (shot by Jean Chastel). Refer to text for data on measurements.
Notary Marin autopsy, head/legs “proportions” for La Ténazeyre Canid (shot by Jean Chastel). Refer to text for data on measurements.
We resolved to remove the flesh to preserve the skeleton (…)
What struck us with wonder was the head. After removing the common integuments, we spotted a bony ridge that began at the occipital; it was about 15 lines high (3.38 cm) and ended imperceptibly on the forehead, always decreasing (…) We removed a mass of muscular flesh, weighing over 6 lbs (2.9 kg), that covered the parietal. These muscles ended attached to the lower jaw and to the eyes. When all the fleshy parts were removed, this head, so monstrous in its natural state, merely consisted in a bony box, slightly bigger than a fist (…)
In Langeac, July 6, 1767
Conversion notes:
Measurements based on the official French units of the time (“royal units”), likely to have been used by a royal notary.
1 foot = 32.48 cm
1 inch = 27.07 mm
1 line = 2.25 mm
1 pound = 0.4895 kg
*Translation by Gustavo Sánchez Romero, corrections and complements by Alain Bonet, including conversion notes.
Notes
The Main Characters
xiv: financial misdeeds: Phil Barnson, dans l’Ombre de la Bête (In the Shadow of the Beast), www.labetedugevaudan.com.
Prologue
xxi: “six funerals and a wedding”: Colin Jones, The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 73.
xxi: “ringmaster”: Julian Swann, Politics and the Parlement of Paris Under Louis XV, 1754–1774 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 260.
xxi: two to three hundred animals: Jones, 85.
xxi: dogs by name: Mary Morton, ed., Oudry’s Painted Menagerie: Portraits of Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Publications, 2007), 6.
xxi: three thousand candles: James Breck Perkins, France Under Louis XV, Vol. I (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1897), 6.
xxi: yew tree and she as a shepherdess: Tony Spawforth, Versailles: A Biography of a Palace (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008), 129. Yves Carlier, A Day at Versailles (Paris: Flammarion, S.A., 2013), 142.
xxii: voyeuses: Alvar Gonzalez-Palacios, The Age of Louis XV, trans. Henry Vidon (London: Paul Hamlyn, 1969), 91.
xxii: and, almost, a re-directed river: A mind-boggling attempt was made to divert the river Eure, located more than fifty miles away; the project was abandoned but a gigantic aqueduct on the grounds of the Château de Maintenon (home of Louis XIV’s second wife, Madame de Maintenon) still remains. Spawforth, 17, 18, 35.
Chapter 1: The Apparition
3: all cropping grass on the vertiginous hillside: Livestock were taken to graze in what was termed the saltus; that is, non-cultivated areas that included meadows, scrublands, heath, and forest. Pierre Goubert, The Ancien Régime: French Society, 1750–1600, trans. Steve Cox (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Harper Torchbooks, 1974), 80.
5: Rambo-like sheep in the French mountains: Graham Robb, The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007), 182.
Chapter 2. The Gévaudan
7: Historians hold: Jean-Marc Moriceau, La Bête du Gévaudan (Paris: Larousse, 2008), 20.
7: “like a wolf, yet not a wolf”: Richard H. Thompson, Wolf-Hunting in France in the Reign of Louis XV: The Beast of the Gévaudan (Lewiston, New York; Queenstown, Ontario, Canada; Lampeter, Dyfed, Wales: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1991), 32.
9: “The famine was so terrible”: Abbé Pierre Pourcher, Histoire de la Bête du Gévaudan, veritable fléau de Dieu (History of La Bête du Gévaudan: True Scourge of God), trans. Derek Brockis (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, and Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse, 2006), 3. Abbé Pierre Pourcher, Histoire de la Bête du Gévaudan, Veritable fléau de Dieu, d’aprè les documents inédits and authentiques (Marseille, France: Éditions Jeanne Laffitte, 2006), 13.
9: guerrilla Resistance movement: Henry S. Ruess and Margaret M. Ruess, The Unknown South of France: A History Buff’s Guide (Boston: Harvard Common Press, 1991), 180, 189–197.
11: “bleak fields”: Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (New York: The Heritage Press, 1957), 33, 38.
11: “roaring blackness”: Ibid., 38.
11: “Wolves, alas,”: Ibid., 27.
Chapter 3: Lafont
13: “throttled and half-eaten”: Moriceau, 23.
14: shorter goosefeathers: Joyce Irene Whalley, Writing Implements and Accessories: From the Roman Stylus to the Typewriter (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1975), 24. (Whalleyalso tells us that the word pen comes from the Latin word for feather: penna.) According to historian John Fleming, “this was a world in which practically nobody who was anybody spent less than two hours a day conducting private correspondence, and some expended considerably more.” John V. Fleming, The Dark Side of the Enlightenment: Wizards, Alchemists, and Spiritual Seekers in the Age of Reason (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2013), 281.
15: “selfless”: Moriceau, 26.
15: outbreaks: Moriceau, 97.
16: “ecclesiastical surveillance”: Barnson.
Chapter 4: Count
Morangiès
21: First Communion: Moriceau, 24.
21: “poor man’s caviar”: Les lentilles du Puy, French green lentils, grown in Auvergne.
23: four and one half grams of silver: Goubert, 62.
24: “able to ‘read’ the ‘book’ of nature”: Ibid., 265.
24–25: small for his age, “non naturelle”: Moriceau, 24.
Chapter 5: Le Petit Versailles du Gévaudan
28: “a year’s salary”: Moriceau, 27.
29: Could an animal cause a human decapitation?: Ibid., p. 30. Also Sylvain Macchi, Parc à loups de Gévaudan, Sainte-Lucie, France, interview by Phil Barnson, dans l’Ombre de la Bête (In the Shadow of the Beast) (Béziers, France: Myster B Improductions, 2011), documentary.
29: suicidal hanging from a bridge: Bao-Li Zhu, Kaori Ishida, Shigeki Oritani, Mari Taniguchi, Masaki Q. Fujita, Kazunori Fukita, Hitoshi Maeda, “Decapitation in suicidal hanging—a case report with a review of the literature.” Legal Medicine, Vol. 2, Issue 3, October 2000, 159–162.
29: “le petit Versailles du Gévaudan”: Château de la Baume, www.chateaudelabaume.org.
30: “a sort of fear”: Pourcher, AuthorHouse, 15.
31: “lost their minds”: Pourcher, Éditions Jeanne Laffitte, 43.
31: advised “fervent prayers,” etc.: Pourcher, AuthorHouse, 66.
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