They had given orders that they should not be interrupted in the chase for any reason whatever.  My great-grandfather was born while his father was following a fox, and Jean d’Arville did not stop the chase, but exclaimed:  “The deuce!  The rascal might have waited till after the view —­halloo!”

His brother Franqois was still more infatuated.  On rising he went to see the dogs, then the horses, then he shot little birds about the castle until the time came to hunt some large game.

In the countryside they were called M. le Marquis and M. le Cadet, the nobles then not being at all like the chance nobility of our time, which wishes to establish an hereditary hierarchy in titles; for the son of a marquis is no more a count, nor the son of a viscount a baron, than a son of a general is a colonel by birth.  But the contemptible vanity of today finds profit in that arrangement.

My ancestors were unusually tall, bony, hairy, violent and vigorous.  The younger, still taller than the older, had a voice so strong that, according to a legend of which he was proud, all the leaves of the forest shook when he shouted.

When they were both mounted to set out hunting, it must have been a superb sight to see those two giants straddling their huge horses.

Now, toward the midwinter of that year, 1764, the frosts were excessive, and the wolves became ferocious.

They even attacked belated peasants, roamed at night outside the houses, howled from sunset to sunrise, and robbed the stables.

And soon a rumor began to circulate.  People talked of a colossal wolf with gray fur, almost white, who had eaten two children, gnawed off a woman’s arm, strangled all the watch dogs in the district, and even come without fear into the farmyards.  The people in the houses affirmed that they had felt his breath, and that it made the flame of the lights flicker.  And soon a panic ran through all the province.  No one dared go out any more after nightfall.  The darkness seemed haunted by the image of the beast.

The brothers d’Arville determined to find and kill him, and several times they brought together all the gentlemen of the country to a great hunt.

They beat the forests and searched the coverts in vain; they never met him.  They killed wolves, but not that one.  And every night after a battue the beast, as if to avenge himself, attacked some traveller or killed some one’s cattle, always far from the place where they had looked for him.

Finally, one night he stole into the pigpen of the Chateau d’Arville and ate the two fattest pigs.

The brothers were roused to anger, considering this attack as a direct insult and a defiance.  They took their strong bloodhounds, used to pursue dangerous animals, and they set off to hunt, their hearts filled with rage.

From dawn until the hour when the empurpled sun descended behind the great naked trees, they beat the woods without finding anything.