“The night of the feast the monks draw near our cloister by means of a wooden theatre, which forms a terrace, and from this elevation they participate by the eye and ear in our amusements; that is enough.”

“Has Madame de Mortemart ever related to you the origin of her abbey?” resumed the King.  “Perhaps she is ignorant of it.  I am going to tell you of it, for it is extremely curious; it is not as it is related in the books, and I take the facts from good authority.  You must hear of it, and you will see.

“There was once a Comtesse de Poitiers, named Honorinde, to whom fate had given for a husband the greatest hunter in the world.  This man would have willingly passed his life in the woods, where he hunted, night and day, what we call, in hunter’s parlance, ‘big game.’  Having won the victory over a monstrous boar, he cut off the head himself, and this quivering and bleeding mask he went to offer to his lady in a basin.  The young woman was in the first month of her pregnancy.  She was filled with repugnance and fright at the sight of this still-threatening head; it troubled her to the prejudice of her fruit.

“Eight, or seven and a half, months afterwards, she brought into the world a girl who was human in her whole body, but above had the horrible head of a wild boar!  Imagine what cries, what grief, what despair!  The cure of the place refused baptism, and the Count, broken down and desolate, ordered the child to be drowned.

“Instead of throwing it into the water, his servant scrupulously went straight to the monastery where your sister rules.  He laid down his closed packet in the church of the monks, and then returned to his lord, who never had any other child.

“The religious Benedictines, not knowing whence this monster came, believed there was some prodigy in it.  They baptised in this little person all that was not boar, and left the surplus to Providence.  They brought up the singular creature in the greatest secrecy; it drank and lapped after the manner of its kind.  As it grew up it walked on its feet, and that without the least imperfection; it could sit down, go on its knees, and even make a courtesy.  But it never articulated any distinct words, and it had always a harsh and rough voice which howled and grunted.  Its intelligence never reached the knowledge of reading or writing; but it understood easily all that could be said to it, and the proof was that it replied by its actions.

“The Comte de Poitiers having died whilst hunting, Honorinde learnt of her old serving-man in what refuge, in what asylum, he had long ago deposited the little one.  This good mother proceeded there, and the monks, after some hesitation, confessed what had become of it.  She wished to see it; they showed it her.  At its aspect she felt the same inward commotion which had, years before, perverted nature.  She groaned, fainted, burst into tears, and never had the courage and firmness to embrace what she had seen.