The Book of Were-Wolves - Sabine Baring-Gould (red queen free ebook TXT) 📗

make us see the great

danger there is in trusting to feelings in matters of religion. “If

thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments,” said our Lord. How

many hope to go to heaven because they have pious emotions!]

 

Then he commenced reciting the prayers of the dying; the executioner

passed the cord round his neck, and adjusted the knot. He mounted a

tall stool, erected at the foot of the gallows as a last honour paid

to the nobility of the criminal. The pile of firewood was lighted

before the executioners had left him.

 

Pontou and Henriet, who were still on their knees, raised their eyes

to their master and cried to him, extending their arms,—

 

“At this last hour, monseigneur, be a good and valiant soldier of God,

and remember the passion of Jesus Christ which wrought our redemption.

Farewell, we hope soon to meet in Paradise!

 

The stool was cast down, and the Sire de Retz dropped. The fire roared

up, the flames leaped about him, and enveloped him as be swung.

 

Suddenly, mingling with the deep booming of the cathedral bell,

swelled up the wild unearthly wail of the Dies iræ.

 

No sound among the crowd, only the growl of the fire, and the solemn

strain of the hymn

 

Lo, the Book, exactly worded,

Wherein all hath been recorded;

Thence shall judgment be awarded.

When the Judge his seat attaineth,

And each hidden deed arraigneth,

Nothing unavenged remaineth.

What shall I, frail man, be pleading?

Who for me be interceding?

When the just are mercy needing.

King of Majesty tremendous,

Who dost free salvation send us,

Fount of pity! then befriend us.

Low I kneel, with heart-submission;

See, like ashes, my contrition—

Help me in my last condition!

Ah I that day of tears and mourning!

From the dust of earth returning,

Man for judgment must prepare him!

Spare, O, God, in mercy spare him!

Lord, who didst our souls redeem,

Grant a blessed requiem!

AMEN.

 

Six women, veiled, and robed in white, and six Carmelites advanced.

bearing a coffin.

 

It was whispered that one of the veiled women was Madame de Retz, and

that the others were members of the most illustrious houses of

Brittany.

 

The cord by which the marshal was hung was cut, and he fell into a

cradle of iron prepared to receive the corpse. The body was removed

before the fire had gained any mastery over it. It was placed in the

coffin., and the monks and the women transported it to the Carmelite

monastery of Nantes, according to the wishes of the deceased.

 

In the meantime, the sentence had been executed upon Pontou and

Henriet; they were hung and burned to dust. Their ashes were cast to

the winds; whilst in the Carmelite church of Our Lady were celebrated

with pomp the obsequies of the very high, very powerful, very

illustrious Seigneur Gilles de Laval, Sire de Retz, late Chamberlain

of King Charles VII., and Marshal of France!

 

CHAPTER XIV.

 

A GALICIAN WEREWOLF.

 

The inhabitants of Austrian Galicia are quiet, inoffensive people,

take them as a whole. The Jews, who number a twelfth of the

population, are the most intelligent, energetic, and certainly the

most money-making individuals in the province, though the Poles

proper, or Mazurs, are not devoid of natural parts.

 

Perhaps as remarkable a phenomenon as any other in that kingdom—for

kingdom of Waldimir it was—is the enormous numerical preponderance of

the nobility over the untitled. In 1837 the proportions stood thus:

32,190 nobles to 2,076 tradesmen.

 

The average of execution for crime is nine a year, out of a population

of four and a half millions,—by no means a high figure, considering

the peremptory way in which justice is dealt forth in that province.

Yet, in the most quiet and well-disposed neighbourhoods, occasionally

the most startling atrocities are committed, occurring when least

expected, and sometimes perpetrated by the very person who is least

suspected.

 

Just sixteen years ago there happened in the circle of Tornow, in

Western Galicia-the province is divided into nine circles-a

circumstance which will probably furnish the grandames with a story

for their firesides, during their bitter Galician winters, for many a

long year.

 

In the circle of Tornow, in the lordship of Parkost, is a little

hamlet called Polomyja, consisting of eight hovels and a Jewish

tavern. The inhabitants are mostly woodcutters, hewing down the firs

of the dense forest in which their village is situated, and conveying

them to the nearest water, down which they are floated to the Vistula.

Each tenant pays no rent for his cottage and pitch of field, but is

bound to work a fixed number of days for his landlord: a practice

universal in Galicia, and often productive of much discontent and

injustice, as the proprietor exacts labour from his tenant on those

days when the harvest has to be got in, or the land is m best

condition for tillage, and just when the peasant would gladly be

engaged upon his own small plot. Money is scarce in the province, and

this is accordingly the only way in which the landlord can be sure of

his dues.

 

Most of the villagers of Polomyja are miserably poor; but by

cultivating a little maize, and keeping a few fowls or a pig, they

scrape together sufficient to sustain life. During the summer the men

collect resin from the pines, from each of which, once in twelve

Years, they strip a slip of bark, leaving the resin to exude and

trickle into a small earthenware jar at its roots; and, during the

winter, as already stated, they fell the trees and roll them down to

the river.

 

Polomyja is not a cheerful spot—nested among dense masses of pine,

which shed a gloom over the little hamlet; yet, on a fine day, it is

pleasant enough for the old women to sit at their cottage doors,

scenting that matchless pine fragrance, sweeter than the balm of the

Spice Islands, for there is nothing cloying in that exquisite and

exhilarating odour; listening to the harp-like thrill of the breeze in

the old grey tree-tops, and knitting quietly at long stockings, whilst

their little grandchildren romp in the heather and tufted fern.

 

Towards evening, too, there is something indescribably beautiful in

the firwood. The sun dives among the trees, and paints their boles

with patches of luminous saffron, or falling over a level clearing,

glorifies it with its orange dye, so visibly contrasting with the

blue-purple shadow on the western rim of unreclaimed forest, deep and

luscious as the bloom on a plum. The birds then are hastening to their

nests, a ger-falcon, high overhead, is kindled with sunlight; capering

and gambolling among the branches, the merry squirrel skips home for

the night.

 

The sun goes down, but the sky is still shining with twilight. The

wild cat begins to hiss and squall in the forest, the heron to flap

hastily by, the stork on the top of the tavern chimney to poise itself

on one leg for sleep. To-whoo! an owl begins to wake up. Hark! the

woodcutters are coming home with a song.

 

Such is Polomyja in summer time, and much resembling it are the

hamlets scattered about the forest, at intervals of a few miles; in

each, the public-house being the most commodious and best-built

edifice, the church, whenever there is one, not remarkable for

anything but its bulbous steeple.

 

You would hardly believe that amidst all this poverty a beggar could

have picked up any subsistence, and yet, a few years ago, Sunday after

Sunday, there sat a white-bearded venerable man at the church door,

asking alms.

 

Poor people are proverbially compassionate and liberal, so that the

old man generally got a few coppers, and often some good woman bade

him come into her cottage, and let him have some food.

 

Occasionally Swiatek—that was the beggar’s name, went his rounds

selling small pinchbeck ornaments and beads; generally, however, only

appealing to charity.

 

One Sunday, after church, a Mazur and his wife invited the old man

into their hut and gave him a crust of pie and some meat. There were

several children about, but a little girl, of nine or ten, attracted

the old man’s attention by her artless tricks.

 

Swiatek felt in his pocket and produced a ring, enclosing a piece of

coloured glass set over foil. This he presented to the child, who ran

off delighted to show her acquisition to her companions.

 

“Is that little maid your daughter?” asked the beggar.

 

“No,” answered the housewife, “she is an orphan; there was a widow in

this place who died, leaving the child, and I have taken charge of

her; one mouth more will not matter much, and the good God will bless

us.”

 

“Ay, ay! to be sure He will; the orphans and fatherless are under His

own peculiar care.”

 

“She’s a good little thing, and gives no trouble,” observed the woman.

“You go back to Polomyja tonight, I reckon.”

 

“I do—ah!” exclaimed Swiatek, as the little girl ran up to him. You

like the ring, is it not beautiful? I found it under a big fir to the

left of the churchyard,there may be dozens there. You must turn round

three times, bow to the moon, and say, ‘Zaboï!’ then look among the

tree-roots till you find one.”

 

“Come along!” screamed the child to its comrades; “we will go and look

for rings.”

 

“You must seek separately,” said Swiatek.

 

The children scampered off into the wood.

 

“I have done one good thing for you,” laughed the beggar, “in ridding

you, for a time, of the noise of those children.”

 

“I am glad of a little quiet now and then,” said the woman; “the

children will not let the baby sleep at times with their clatter. Are

you going?”

 

“Yes; I must reach Polomyja tonight. I am old and very feeble, and

poor”—he began to fall into his customary whine— very poor, but I

thank and pray to God for you.”

 

Swiatek left the cottage.

 

That little orphan was never seen again.

 

The Austrian Government has, of late years, been vigorously advancing

education among the lower orders, and establishing schools throughout

the province.

 

The children were returning from class one day, and were scattered

among the trees, some pursuing a field-mouse, others collecting

juniper-berries, and some sauntering with their hands in their

pockets, whistling.

 

“Where’s Peter?” asked one little boy of another who was beside him.

“We three go home the same way, let us go together.”

 

“Peter!” shouted the lad.

 

“Here I am!” was the answer from among the trees; “I’ll be with you

directly.”

 

“Oh, I see him!” said the elder boy. “There is some one talking to

him.”

 

“Where?”

 

“Yonder, among the pines. Ah! they have gone further into the shadow,

and I cannot see them any more. I wonder who was with him; a man, I

think.”

 

The boys waited till they were tired, and then they sauntered home,

determined to thrash Peter for having kept them waiting. _But Peter

was never seen again._

 

Some time after this a servant-girl, belonging to a small store kept

by a Russian, disappeared from a village five miles from Polomyja. She

had been sent with a parcel of grocery to a cottage at no very great

distance, but lying apart from the main cluster of hovels, and

surrounded by trees.

 

The day closed in, and her master waited her return anxiously, but as

several hours elapsed without any sign of her, he—assisted by the

neighbours—went in search of her.

 

A slight powdering of