Latest / True Crime Library / Weird Crimes - Seabury Quinn

Transcript

Weird Crimes - Seabury Quinn · True Crime Library

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Number one blue Beard, compiled from transcripts of the judicial
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: records of the ancient Duchy of Brittany. Not long ago,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: the world was startled by the revelations of the trial
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: of Henri Lanseru, accused of murdering ten women and an
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: eighteen year old boy, blue Beard. The newspapers dubbed him,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: comparing him to the most grisly character in all the
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: fairy tales. How few of those who echoed the newswriter's
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: epithet realized that Langerous, who later expiated his crimes upon
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the guillotine at Versailles, and even the blue Beard, whose
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: story still frightens fretful children to stillness, were but amateurs
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: in crime compared to the man who first bore the name,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: the man whose trial and conviction rocked medieval France to
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: its foundations, and whose criminal exploits surpassed the wildest flights
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: of imaginative fiction. Never in the stories of Poe of
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Gautier of de Montbassan, not even Brahm's Stoker's Count Dracula,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: has a character more depraved, more terrible, more fascinating been
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: portrayed than Gilles de la Valle, sired Deuret's Marshal of France,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: chamberlain to the French King, and cousin to the mighty
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Duke of Brittany. The most monstrously depraved imagination, says a
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: French criminologist, never could have conceived what this trial reveals.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: This memorable trial presents horrors unsurpassed in the entire volume
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: of the world's history. During the year fourteen forty, terrible
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: rumours spread through Brittany, especially through the ancient Peydurets, which
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: extends along the Lois from Nante to Pembeuff. In hundreds
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: of peasant cottages. Mothers wept for children they would see
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: no more, and that the village inns, where the laborers
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: repaired from their fields to drink an evening cup of wine, whispered.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Curses mingled with sighs, and exclamations of grief were heard,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: and always when the peasants muttered their sullen complaints to
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: each other, the name of the Sired Deurets was whispered.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: In that day, the great feudal lords owned the common
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: people almost as absolutely as they owned the land itself,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: and the Sired Deurets chateau was strong, his men at
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: arms were many. What could a handful of wooden shod
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: peasants armed only with scythes and flails a veil against
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the king's favourite. But one last hope remained to the peasantry.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Though the chivalry of France was a mighty institution, the
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Church of Rome was mightier. No noble be his sword. Ever,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: so long were his arrogance so great dared lay a
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: hand upon the humblest village priest and to their spiritual advisers.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: The peasants betook themselves when they are pleased to the
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: civil authorities fell on deaf ears where it was born
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: to Jean Chateau Giron, Bishop of Nantes, that oppression lay
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: heavy upon his people in Brittany, and like the energetic
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: prince of the church he was, the bishop despatched his
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: agents to investigate their reports. Gilles de la Val, the
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: investigators found, had suddenly quit a most promising career at
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: court to immure himself in his country seat at Machecoul,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: a gloomy chateau composed of huge towers and surrounded by
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: deep moats. Also, since his residence in the country, he
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: had needed vast tracts of land to John V, Duke
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: of Brittany, in order, it was whispered to prevent that
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: nobleman's too close scrutiny of his actions. While the Marshal
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: kept closely to his house most of the time, he
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: was wont to make occasional trips to nearby towns, always
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: accompanied by a princely retinue. He spent money with a
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: lavish hand, enriching innkeepers and tradesmen beyond their wildest dreams,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and distributing vast sums of gold to the poor. It
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: might have been supposed that the townspeople would have welcomed
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: his coming as a visitation from the good Saint Nicholas himself.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Yet the bishop's agents found whenever the Marshal left a town,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: the cries of the poor, which had been restraint while
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: the clank of his men at arms sounded in the streets,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: broke forth. Tears flowed, curses were uttered, A long continued
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: wail went up to heaven. Mothers had lost their children,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Babes had been snatched from the cradle, Infants had been
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: spirited almost from their mother's breasts, and it was known
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: by sad experience that the vanished little ones would never
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: be seen again. De Retz's castle at Moshcoul was always
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: in condition to resist siege. The drawbridge was raised, the
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: portcullis down, the gates closed, the retainers constantly under arms.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: No one except the Marshal's own servants, the investigators heard,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: had even been known to go through the chateau's mysterious
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: gates and come forth alive. In the surrounding country, strange
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: tales of horror and deviltry circulated in hushed whispers. Yet
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: it was observed that the chapel of the castle was
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: gorgeously decked with silk and cloth of gold, and the
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: sacred vessels were encrusted with gems. The excessive devotion of
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: the marshal was also noted. He was said to be
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: passionately fond of ecclesiastical music, and to hear Mass three
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: times daily. But when dusk settled over the forest, and
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: one by one the castle windows became illuminated, peasants would
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: point to one casement high up in an isolated tower,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: from which a clear light streamed through the gloom. They
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: told of a fierce red glare which came from that
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: window at times, and of agonized cries children's cries wringing
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: from it, cries which had no answer but the howl
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: of the wolf as he rose to quest and kill
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: his prey. By night, once or twice a week, the
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: drawbridge was lowered and the servants of Duretz stood at
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: the gateway, distributing clothes, money, and food to beggars who
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: crowded round. It often happened that children were among those beggars.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: The servants would offer them rare dainties if they would
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: go to the kitchen for them. Those little tots who
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: accepted the offers were never seen again. Charges had been
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: laid before the Duke of Brittany accusing them Marshal as
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: a wholesale murderer of children. The Duke had treated the
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: accusations and the accusers alike with scorn. When this report
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: was laid before the Bishop, he summoned Pierre de los Pital,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Grand Seneschal of Brittany for a conference. Together, they demanded
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: that the Duke ordered the arrest of the marshal on
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: a charge of murder, threatening action by the church if
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: he refused. Reluctantly, the Duke had Pierre de los Pital
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: proceeded with the prosecution. Action followed. Immediately, a sergeant arms
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: was given a warrant authorizing him to take the very mighty,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: very powerful Sire Durets and his accomplices into custody. Jean Labat,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: the sergeant, was a man worthy of the master he served,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: though warned that resistance would likely be encountered at the chateau.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: He selected a posse of twenty chosen men and marched
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: to the castle gate, calling lustily upon the Sire Durets
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: to surrender. Who calls, demanded the Marshal from behind the
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Portcullis Wabbert replied the sergeant, drawing his sword. The Marshal
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: turned pale, crossed himself, and ordered the drawbridge lowered, saying
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: it is impossible to resist fight. Years before, an astrologer
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: had warned him he would one day fall into the
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: hands of an abbe. Until the moment the sergeant demanded
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: his surrender, the marshal had supposed the prophecy meant he
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: would one day become a monk. Accompanied by two of
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: his retainers who had been inseparable companions, Auree and Ponteux
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: by name, the Marshal crossed the drawbridge and handed his
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: sword to Jean Lebay, Closely guarded by the sergeant's posse,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: The accused men made their way to Nantes, where Pierre
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: de lo'spital waited to dispense stern and even handed justice.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: It was well for the Sire Deurets that Labay had
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: brought his score of dauntless peace officers with him. When
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: word passed among the villagers that redoubted Gille de Laval
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: was riding toward Nantes, surrounded by a bodyguard of Ajon's arms,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: peasants left their fields, women their kitchens, and laborers tropped
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: their tools to throng the streets way. Cried John Leby,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: give way to the servants of my lord Bishop. A
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: sullen murmur from the crowd answered him. Suddenly a woman's
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: shrill scream rent the noonday. Calm my child, she screeked,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: accursed of God, restore my child. Then a wild, wrathful
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: howl broke from the crowd, rang along the Nantes road,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: and died away. Only when the great gates of the
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Chateau de Bouffet Clane shut behind the prisoner. The whole
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: population of Nante was in a turmoil. It was whispered
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: the investigation would be a farce. The Duke would surely
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: screen his kinsman. The Sire de Retz would be forced
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: to surrender some more of his land. Perhaps after that
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: he would be released. Justice weighed heavily only on the poor.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Sure Enough, an attempt was made to shield the accused.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Jean de Toucheron, whose office it was to collect evidence
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: against the prisoners, was approached by the Duke and told
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: that it would be pleasing to the great nobleman if
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: the evidence was so colored as to render the charge
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: on which Deurets would be tried less than capital. But
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: the Duke reckoned without. The Bishop of Nantes and Pierre
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: de Lospital, Grand Seneschal of Brittany, these fearless exponents of justice,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: summoned de toucherond before them, Monsieur said de la Hospital,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: fixing his penetrating black eyes on the lawyer, yaotdiiti lies
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: plain before you situit, dat it be well performed. The
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: bishop fingered the jeweled cross suspended from his neck by
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: its golden chain. You have taken an oath to do
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: equal justice to origin poor, Monsieur, He reminded de Torcheron.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Excommunication may be the penalty for oath breaking. Criminal procedure
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: then in vogue in France, differed from that of England,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: and that the accused was not permitted to confront his
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: accusers face to face. At the trial. Evidence for the
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: prosecution was taken before a commissioner especially nominated for that purpose,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: then reduced to writing. The train script of this testimony
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: was then transmitted to the trial justice, who summoned the
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: accused before him, read a brief summary of the offense
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: of which he was charged, and proceeded to examine him.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: No opportunity was afforded the prisoner for cross examination of
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: the prosecution's witnesses, nor was he informed of the nature
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: of their testimony. It remained for the judge to piece
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: together the stories of the prosecution and defense, deciding for
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: himself whether the prisoner had adequately refuted the testimony of
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: his accusers. Such a thing as trial by jury was
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: undreamed of anywhere outside of England. Manifestly unfair as this
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: procedure was in many respects, it had one advantage lacked
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: by the common law system. The accused was unable to
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: invent false testimony with which to meet unexpected statements made
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: by the prosecution's witnesses. The investigation opened on the morning
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: of September eighteenth, fourteen forty. The witnesses were introduced into
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: the Hall of Justice singly or in groups if they
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: were relations. On entering the room, each way witness knelt
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: before the commissioner, kissed the crucifix, and swore with his
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: hand on the Gospels that he would speak the truth
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: and nothing but the truth. After this he related all
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: the facts in his knowledge pertaining to the case, without
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: being either interrogated or interrupted. The first to present herself
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: was Bahurien Lussaude, living at Laroche Bernard. Tears streaming down
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: her face, she related how two years before, in the
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: month of September, the Sire Deretz with all his retinue,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: passed through Laroche Bernard. She lived opposite the house where
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: the nobleman stopped her child, a lad of ten, the
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: finest in the village, had attracted the attention of Deurets
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: as he stood at a window, leaning on his squire's shoulder.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Ponteu Durette's servant spoke to the boy, asking him what
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: he intended to be when he grew up. I Suldia.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: The lad replied very well, Pontou answered, come with me,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: I will give you a sword. The child entered the
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: house with pont for the coveted weapon and was never
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: seen again. Deposition followed deposition, always to the same effect.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Parents had left their houses, sometimes only for a few moments,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: when they returned that their children were gone. An old
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: beggar woman, once subsisting on the peasants alms, had been
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: observed going toward the castle at evening, many times accompanied
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: by children. She invariably returned alone. In a few months,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: from some unknown source, she had amassed a competence, moved
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: from the neighborhood, and was seen no more. Thirty children
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: had disappeared from a single village within a year, and
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: the victims were always boys. No girl child had been molested.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: So frequent had the kidnappings become that parents dared not
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: send children to tend sheep or goats, or carry food
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: to their fathers or brothers working in the fields. When
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Jean Labat went to the chateau to arrest Aurets Parien, Lussard,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: half crazed with grief at the laws of her child,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: had accompanied him entering a stable while the sergeant's guard
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: was there to protect her. She had found a heap
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: of ashes and powder, which gave off a sickly and
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: peculiar smell. At the bottom of a trough, she found
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: a child's shirt half burned, the remaining portion caked with
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: dried blood. After several days spent in taking similar testimony,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: the prosecution announced its case complete and court was opened
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: to hear what defense Gille de la Val, Sire Deurets
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: and Marshal of France, had to offer to the dastardly
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: crimes charged against him. The Marshal entered the court room
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: dressed in dublat and hose of white satin, thickly sown
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: with seed pearls. About his neck hung several golden collars
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: emblems of his orders of knighthood. On his breast a
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: half score military decorations blazed for the Sire Deurets had
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: been a mighty warrior of France before he took up
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: his abode in the country and became the object of
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: terrible suspicions. On a dozen hotly contested field, he had
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: led the French forces to victory and had engaged in
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: the Siege of Orleans, with Jean Dark entering the castle's
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: mote with her, and being severely wounded by an English pikeman.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Upon his head was a cap of ermine, the royal fur,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: which none but the King and a few of his
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: most valuable nobles were privileged to wear. No one at
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: first glance would have thought the Sire Deurets capable of
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: such horrid crimes as those of which he stood accused.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: His face was somewhat pale, in war in repose, an
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: expression of gentle melancholy. But his beard was his outstanding characteristic.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: In sharp contrast to his hair and mustache, which were light,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: almost blonde, it was jet black, yet in certain lights
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: it assumed a blue hue. It was this peculiarity which
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: earned for the Sire Tourets the surname of Bluebeard, a
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: name that has attached to him in popular romance since
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, though his story has undergone a strange change,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: remaining in general memory only as the ghastly fairy tale
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: which frightened children today. Mild and gentle as Deretz's face
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: appeared at first glance, however a closer inspection revealed an
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: innate cruelty. In his eyes. There always smoldered a lurking,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: sinister expression, which now and again glowed like charcoal embers
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: when blown upon by the fire bellows. At such times,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: he ground his teeth like a wild beast about to
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: leap upon its prey, and his lips became so contracted
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: they showed pale and bloodless against his beard. Then it
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: was his beard appeared to bristle and show its blue
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: shade more than ever, and his face paled to a
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: corpse gray. After a few moments, his features became serene again.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: A sweet smile reposed on the lips, which had a
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: moment before been set in a diabolical snarl, and his
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: expression relapsed into a vague and tender, melancholy messieuse, said
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: the Marshal, lifting his furred cap and saluting his judges
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: with formal politeness. Pray expedite my matter as quickly as possible.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: I would that my unfortunate came be soon disposed of,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: for I am peculiarly anxious to consecrate myself to God's service.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: He has pardoned my sins, and I would even enter
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: a monastery and become a monk. Fear not. I shall
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: richly endow several of the churches of Nantes, and shall
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: distribute the greater portion of my goods among the poor
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: the betters, to secure the salvation of my soul. Had
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: this been Spain, where religious fervor swayed even the actions
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: of courts of justice, the Sire de Retz's plea might
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: easily have operated to discontinue the prosecution. But the Frenchman
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: is as practical in things spiritual as in things temporal.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Monseigneur gravely replied Pierre de lo'spital. It is ever a
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: weell to think of this salvation of one's soul. But
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: you will please remember that we are now concerned with
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: the salvation of your body. A look of impatience flitted
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: across the face of Gielde. Ritz. I have confessed to
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: the farther superior of the commelites, he answered, there is absolution.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: I have been able to communicate. I am therefore guiltless
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: and purified. Pierre de Lospital drummed noiselessly on the polished
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: table before him with his finger tips. True servant of
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: the church though he was, this talk of confession and
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: purification pleased him not at all. To day he was
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: sitting in this secular capacity of judge. The body of
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: a man accused of killing the bodies of helpless children
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: was on trial before him. Let the superior of the
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: Carmelites supervise the welfare of the prisoner's soul. He Pierre
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Lospital would perform the earthly office. Men's justice is not
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: in common with that of God, he said finally, Nor
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: though you were forty times confessed and shriven, can I
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: tell you what your sentence will be? And till I've
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: reud the evidence in your case, be ready then to
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: make your defense and listen carefully to the charges brought
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: against you. He nodded to the court's clerk, who rose
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: and unrolled a parchment.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Here Ye, Gille de la Varre, sired the rets conseiler
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: to majesty the King and Martial of France, read the priest,
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: forasmuch as it has come to our is that you
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: have seized, and cause to be seized, the bodies of
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: several little children of the Diocese of Nantes, not only
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: ten or twenty, but thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, one hundred,
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: two hundred and more, and have murdered them with inhuman tortures,
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: afterwards burning their bodies to ashes. We do charge and
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: a jure your true answer to make to these charges,
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: and say whether ye be guilty or not guilty of
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: these abominable doings.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: The grave eyes appeared. De Lospital never left the prisoner's
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: face while the indictment was being read. What justification can
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: you make? He asked, Take an oath and the holy
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: gaspils to declare the truth, not, I, exclaimed the marshal haughtily.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: The witnesses are bound to declare that testimony on oath,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: but the accused need take nose. I will make no answer.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Pierre de Lospital rose from his chair, gathering his scarlet
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: robes of office about him. He was a small man,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: wiry and quick as a terrier, and with something of
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: the terrier's nervous activity in his movements. His great head,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: with its high white brow, seemed to weigh down his
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: diminutive body. His eyes, large and black, have been likened
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: to the pools of new ink, and truly, like the ink,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: they recorded everything. These eyes, he fixed on duretz and
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: an unwinking stare. Do you refuse to plead? He asked,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: in a voice of ominous calm. Why do thundered the
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: marshal the deathlike pallor, which told of his ungovernable temper
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: beginning to spread over his face. I'm Marshal of France,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: I am Pierre de Lospital, stretched out a scarlet clad
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: arm and pointed to a baize curtain hanging near the
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: judge's bench. The portiere swung back, revealing an alcove rec
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: est from the main chamber. In it was a long,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: low bench of dark wood, worn smooth and polished by
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: much use. At either end were curious rope and ring attachments,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: and above it was a windlass over which the ropes wound.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Standing beside the instrument were two men enclose fitting tights
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: of brown stuff uncouth headgear, Masking their faces through the
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: eye holes in their masks, they watched Pierre de Lospital expectantly.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: Gilderettes glanced once through the uncurtained doorway and cast a
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: look of murderers hated his judge, But a pallor more
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: sallow than that of rage overspread his face. For the
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: low wooden bench in the alcove was the rack, and
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: the masked men beside it were the official torturers of
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: the court, gilderettes, who delighted in the sight of suffering
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: children enjoyed, and the sound of their death. Mones had
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: no stomach for the rack. I will lance, he said,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: attempting to compose his features. Torture me not good, Monsieur
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: de L'As bital, I implore you as to the charges,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: I say nothing. They are simply false and Calumnius indeed,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: answered his judge. And am I to believe that all
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: the people who complain of having lost their children lied
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: under oath? Undoubtedly, replied the Marshal, his equanimity restored, now
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: that the curtain had been again drawn before the rack,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: What am I to know of their brats? Am I
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: their keeper? Gain me the same? Nsar, remarked Pierre de hospital. However,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: as you solemnly deny these charges, we must question Arie
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: and Pontu. Aurie Pontu, cried the Marshal, trembling. Surely they
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: accuse me of nothing not as yet they have not
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: been questioned. But they are about to be brought into court,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: and I do not think they will lie in the
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: face of justice. I demand that my servants be brought
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: not forward as witnesses against their master, stormed the Marshal,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: his brow wrinkling and his beard bristling blue upon his chin.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: A master is above the gossiping tales of his servants.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Do you think, monsieur, your servants will accuse you. I
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: demand that I, a marshal of France, a baron of
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: the duchy, should be sheltered from the slanders of small folk.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Whom I disown is my servants, if they are untrue
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: to me. Justice knows no smiled, foulque and no great
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: We shall see what Aunrier and Ponteu have to say.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Pierre de l'o pital nodded meaningly toward the curtain concealing
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: the rack. There are means of gleaning this ruth. At
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: a sign from the judge, guards led the Sire tourets
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: back to his prison. In the corridor outside the courtroom,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: the Marshal passed Aurerier and Ponteu, escorted by Ajent d'Arme.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Aurier averted his eyes, but Ponteux burst into tears at
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: the side of his master. Duretz held out his hand,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: which Pontu kissed affectionately. Remember I'll have done for you,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: my children, said the marshal, And be good and fightful servants. Again,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Ponteu covered his hands with kisses, but Aurie shank from
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: him with a shudder in silence. The two culprits were
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: conducted to the bar of the court. Pierre de l'spital
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: looked sharply from one to the other, then signed to
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: the clerk to read the indictment, which charged them as
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: accomplices of the Sire de Wrets. Never for an instant
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: did the eyes of the President of the Court leave
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: the face of Arier, while the clerk droned out the charge.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Anrier was a sharp contrast to Ponteu. Ponteu's bullet head,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: short thick neck, and undershot jaw betokened a nature innately
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: cruel and beastial. Nothing but torture carried past the limit
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: of human endurance would wring the truth from him. Arier,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: on the other hand, was as fragile and as prettily
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: made as a girl. Slender and tall, with tapering white
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: fingers and blonde hair falling in loose curls about his ears,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: he looked any thing but the criminal he was accused
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: of being. His blue eyes, though sat too close together,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: were mild and timid in expression, and the slope of
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: his beardless chin bespoken nature rather weak than wicked. What
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: say ye are wretched men guilty? Are not guilty? Asked
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Pierre de l'sperital, Still gazing fixedly at Anvier alas, Monsieu exclaimed, Henriete,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: I am even as you say, I shall tell all,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: for I have another master besides my poor master of rats,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: and I shall soon be with the heavenly one. He
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: would have continued had not a shout from Pontaux interrupted him.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Monsieur le juge, he cried, My poor.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: Friend is tossing the head.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: He is mad. All he says is but the raving
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: of a lunatic. Ah ponteu at of then non mouth,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: hast thou convicted thyself returned Pierre de lo'spital. For hadst
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: thou not been concerned and deviltry, thou wouldst not have
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: feared deaf friends or avings proceed He nodded to Aurier,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: and see to it that thou speak'st but the truth.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: But Henriet seemed to have lost the power of speech.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Only incoherent murmurings came from his nervously working lips. At
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: last he managed to gasp, Monsieur le George, I cannot
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: speak to the abominable words I've to utter while that
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: is in my sight. He pointed a trembling finger to
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: the great crucifix suspended about the judges bench. Led by
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Pierre de l'asperital. The court rose and stood with bared heads,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: while amid a deathlike silence, the image of the Lord
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: was veiled in black bunting condensed. Aurier's testimony was as follows.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: On graduating from the University of Angus, he had taken
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: the situation of reader in the household of Sired Deurets
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: from the first The Marshal had taken a liking to
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: him and soon made him chamberlain a confidant. When he
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: had been in the household about six months, the Marshal
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: decided to deed the castle Chantons to the Duke of Brittany.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: The night preceding the morning the Duke took possession, the
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Marshal summoned Henrier, Pontu, and one petit robin to his
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: bed chamber. When all were assembled, Durets compelled Henrier to
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: kneel on the bare floor and take a solemn and
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: horrible oath, never to reveal what was about to be
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: told him. The oath taken the Sired Deurets told them
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: he was expecting the Duke's officers to take over the
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: chateau the following day, and before that happened, there were
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: certain matters which had to be disposed of. Pontu and
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Robin grinned knowingly at this, but Anrier was in the
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: dark until the other two servants procured ropes and poles
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: tipped with hooks. They then led the way to an old,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: disused well, giving Henree a torch in one of the
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: grappling hooks. The lowered him into the well with instructions
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: to pass up all he found there. What was his
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: horror to find the whole filled with bodies of children,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: long dead. Almost fainting from fright and horror, he had
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: nevertheless proceeded with the task assigned him, and before daybreak
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: the well was emptied and the little bodies, all of
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: them terribly mutilated, burned to ashes in a great bonfire
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: the other two servitors built. He had counted thirty six
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: heads in the well, but more bodies than heads. Following
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: this horrifying experience, life went on as usual within the
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Marshal's household for several months. Deretz was deeply religious and
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: attended daily masses in his private chapel, accompanied by his
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: entire suite. But one day, just at dusk, the Marshal
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: summoned Henrier to a room in a remote tower where
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: a great fire was blazing on the hearth. Fetch me
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: a child, his master ordered, curtly, not daring to ask
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: an explanation, Arier went outside the castle, seized a little
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: boy he found in a nearby road, and carried him
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: to his lord Celette. The Sire Deuretes bade him hilt.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: The young secretary stammered, how don't Durette stamped his foot impatiently,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: at the same time drawing back his lips like a
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: snarling beast slit its throat. Aurier carried out the fiendish order,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: while the Marshal stood by and gloated at the sight
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: of the little one's death. Agonies then began a life
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: of crime unspeakable for Arier. Child after child he bore
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: to his master, always with the same fatal result. Sometimes
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: Deuretz himself inflicted the death stroke. More often he stood
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: by watching his servants performing the deed. Lucky was the
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: child whose life ended with one quick blae from knifer
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: axe torture, slow and horrible was the lot of the
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: great majority of the little victims. When one of these
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: massacres was finished, and the port infant finally dead, the
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: Marshal was invariably filled with remorse for the deed. He
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: would toss weeping and preying on the bed, or recite
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: fervent litanies on his knees while his servants washed up
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: the floor and incinerated the little victims in the great fireplace.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: An insupportable odor filled the room where these slaughters invariably
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: took place, but the Marshal inhaled it with keenest delight.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Alria acknowledged he had seen no less than forty children
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: done to death in this manner, and so good a
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: description was he able to give of several that it
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: was possible to identify them as children whose parents had
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: testified to their loss. Relating the case of two lads
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: named Hamelin Babes, of three and four years respectively, he
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: told how the older boy waited his turn, weeping and praying,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: while his little brother was slowly tortured to death. But
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: this is incredible, exclaimed Pierre de Hospital, whose eyes dilated
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: at the horrors of Arier's revelations. Only some of the
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: caesars of Rome have been charged with such detestable crimes.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Monsieur le seuge Auree replied, here was the acts of
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: these caesars my master desired to emulate. I used to
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: read him the chronicles of Seronius and Tacitus. He never
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: tired hearing them, but ever urged me to read more
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: and more. How many children do you estimate as Sire
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Durets and his servants killed darachoning his long eye from
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: my own wretched part, confessed to killing twelve with my
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: own hand at my master's orders, and I have brought
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: him more than to re score. I know this devil's
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: business has long gone before I entered his service. Have
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: you more to declare? Asked the President of the court,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: sighting himself with the cross. Nay, monsieurges say, have to
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: ask Ponteu, my friend, to corroborate what I have said.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Ponteu said Pierre de Lo's pitta, turning its burning eyes
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: on the other culprit, I command you, in the name
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: of God and of justice, to declare all did to know.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: The deep graved lines about the older servant's mouth linked
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: and as his facial muscles tightened, but he kept silence.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: For those who will not speak dares to rac the
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: judge reminded him, signing to the torturers to make ready.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: But Ponteu, heartless murderer though he was, had still the
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: virtue of loyalty to the hand that fed him. Not
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: until the executioners had forced him on the rack and
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: the cold iron of the jives bid into his wrists
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: and ankles, did he commence his confession. Then, as the
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: head torturer laid his hand to the windlass, which would
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: tighten the ropes, dislocating the prisoner's knee and elbow joints,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Pontou's confession began. If he had maintained a stubborn silence
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: in the face of torture, his volubility was great enough
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: now all that anreier had told them more. He related
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: heaping description of crime after revolting crime before the court,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: till Pierre de Lospital would hear no more enough, exclaimed
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: the judge, cutting short the prisoner's abhorrent tale where a
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: thousand men on trial before us, thou hast told enough
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: to convict them all. Next day, Gille de la Val
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: stood once more before his judges, What then, Sir Mike,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: you to the charges, asked Pierre de Lospital, I am
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: chamberlain and martial to his venerative majesty. The King Franz
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: began the prisoner arrogantly, This is no affair of the
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: King of France. Thunder the judge, incensed at the criminal's effrontery,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: confess or by the and Saint Denis you got Todrak
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: cowled his iron nerve broke by the threat of torture.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Gill de la Val told such a story as no
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: court before or since ever listened to. Shortly before his
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: voluntary retirement from the royal court, he had chanced upon
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: a Latin book detailing the lives of the Caesars. Tales
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: of revolting cruelty which would have sickened an ordinary man,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: thrilled him with the greatest pleasure. He resolved to imitate
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: or surpass these monsters of antiquity. That very night he
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: carried his resolve into execution by running his sword through
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: a luckless wife he came upon in the streets of Paris.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: But Paris was a great city under the ever watchful
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: eye of the king's officers. His plans could not be
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: carried out there in safety, so as soon as he
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: could wind up his affairs, he renounced his promising career
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: as a courtier and submerged himself at his principal country seat.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: From the day he settled at Marte School, his depredations
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: on the childhood of the diocese of Nantes began. In
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: less than seven years, he had committed personally or by agent,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: more than eight hundred child murders. The confession finished, Gill
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: de la Val looked expectantly at his judges. He was
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: a very great, a very powerful nobleman. Yet the President
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: of the Court had shown himself fearless and impartial throughout
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: the trial. Would they order his lands confiscated? Would they
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: dare imprison him, Grand Seigneur and favorite of the king
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: though he was. Pierre de Lospital, president of the Court,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: glanced from left to right where his associate justices sat.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Each way, he looked his colleagues, met his eyes steadily,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: and nodded briefly significantly. Pierre de Lospital looked down upon
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: the prisoner, as though some loathsome reptile were coiled upon
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: the pavement before him. Ah Morte said shortly, and at
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: the words, a bell high up in the tower of
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: the Hall of Justices began to toll. Gills de Laval
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: fell back a pace, his jaw relaxing as he looked
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: upon the stern faced man who had pronounced the sentence
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: a mourt to death. Gill de Laval, Sire de Wretz,
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Chamberlain and counselor to the King, cousin of John V,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Duke of Brittany and Marshal of France, had been sentenced
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: to die like a common felon a mourt. He muttered, wonderingly,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: stunned by the two word sentence to hang in shame
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: between two criminals. Oh Lord, so die dem mast, whispered Henrie,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: how pale and tearful had stood to receive his sentence.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: The Sire Deurets turned on him with an animal snarl.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: His lips went back from his teeth, and his beard
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: showed blue and half light streaming through the courtroom windows. You,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: he began raising his clenched fists over his trembling servant.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: You tried to you to As gen Dame laid hands
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: on him and led him from the Justice hall. Every
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: effort was made to stay execution. John V, Duke of Brittany,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: was not pleased that his cousin should die upon the
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: gallows gold lands. All the mighty fortune of the mighty
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: sired eurets were offered the Bishop of Nantes. If only
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: he would consent to have the sentence commuted, churches would
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: be endowed, Countless masses should be said for the souls
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: of the worthy poor, Splendid abbeys should be built. Next morning,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: a procession of priests, monks and civil guards wound its
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: way through the Nantes to the meadow of Biez, on
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: the further side of the River Loire. Three men, hands
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: bound to sides, iron clanking at their ankles, marched near
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: its head. The procession halted near a line of poplar trees,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: where three gibbets, the center, one somewhat higher than its neighbors,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: had been erected out of the depths. Have I cried
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: unto thee O, Lord, Lord, hear my voice. Let thine
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication, chanted
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: the choir. The tallest of the three prisoners, elegantly dressed
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: in white satin, mounted the rickety step ladder standing beneath
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: the center gallows. A masked executioner adjusted the noose about
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: his neck, being careful not to disturb his pointed blue
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: black beard on the creamy lace ruffles at his throat.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: The other two condemned knelt in their chains beneath their
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: respective gibbets. Be a brave soldier of our Lord de Master.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: They called a ruffle of drums, a swelling anew of
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: the de profundus from the choir of monks. The tall
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: stool was struck from under him, and the body of
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: gild de la Val swayed grotesquely in mid air above
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: the fire of brushwood and pitch. The executioner lighted under it.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: From the crowd came six veiled women and six barefooted
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: carmelite friars, carrying an ornate coffin. The body of Gilderets
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: was cut down, scarcely, scorched, and carried toward the carmelite
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: church of our Lady. Two more high stools crashed to earth.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Two more bodies dangled at Rope's ends. Two more fires
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: roared beneath the gallows, but no coffin was brought forward
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: for Unrier and Ponteu. Their bodies crisped to ashes borne
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: away by the autumn breezes among the poplars of the
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Loire and the meadow of b S, while in the
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: carmelite Church of our Lady, a mighty choir of monks
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: chanted the responses of a solemn high mass of requiem
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: above the remains of Gil de la Val, Ciederetes, chamberlain
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: and courtier to the King Marsial France, and Bluebeard, the
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: greatest criminal ever tried before a court of justice. Note
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: from the peculiarities of his case, as related by his
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: servants and himself, there can be no doubt that Gill
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: de la Val, like the famous Jack the Ripper of London,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: was a victim of that form of insanity known to
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: modern psychiatrists as algolagnia see a Abril psychoanalysis, Wharton and Steel,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: Medical jurisprudence church in Peterson, nervous diseases and insanity. But
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: his insanity was not such as would entitle him to
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: escape legal execution, either under the common or civil law,
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: since by his own confession, he knew the unlawfulness of
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: his acts and was clearly able to distinguish between right
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: and wrong, as his fits of remorse showed see Clark,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: or any standard text book on criminal law see Berry Quinn.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: This is the first of a series of articles written
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: for Weird Tales by Seabury Quintin. The second will appear
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: in the November issue. End of section one, number two.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: The Grave Robbers, the thief who would steal the pennies
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: off a dead man's eyes is proverbially the meanest crook
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: in the world, judged by present day's standards. He is
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: also a piker. For the post war inflation. Like everything else,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: mortuary thievery has increased its ante. Robbing the dead, or
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: more accurately, stealing from the bereaved, is so mean a
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: form of crime that it is fortunately seldom met with.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: Yet a few crooks have specialized in this despicable thievery
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: and found it while it lasted exceedingly remunerative. Late in
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: nineteen twenty one and early in nineteen twenty two, the
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: police of Chicago began to receive complaints from recently bereaved
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: residents of the city's West Side. The article stolen varied
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: in kind and value, but the circumstances surrounding the crimes
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: were invariably the same. A family which had lost, a
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: member would attend the internment, and when they returned they
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: found their home had been burglarised and rifled of every
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: valuable of an easily portable nature. For three months, this
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: funeral burglar carried his flashlight in jimmy in the wake
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: of death in Chicago's West Side. More than fifteen complaints
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: were lodged with the authorities, and the burglaries went merrily on.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: At last, the police department decided to set a trap
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: for the thief. Special officers were detailed to the case,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: and when a prominent resident died, they asked permission to
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: attend the funeral services. When the friends and mourners had
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: entered the waiting limousines and driven off to the cemetery,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: the officers remained behind. Scarcely had the last motor in
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: the funeral procession disappeared. When the telephone began to ring imperatively,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: the officers glanced significantly at each other and let the
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: bell continue to jangle. Five minutes past, again the phone rang,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: and again the officers ignored it. Another five minutes and
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: the telephone rang again, longer, this time as if the
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: party on the line were urging Central to make an
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: effort to get the family again, the detectives remained mute,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: Hardly enough time to allow a rapid walker to travel
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: from the corner drug store to the residents elapsed before
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: the police heard the sharp click of a rear window
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: being forced, and a neatly dressed young man stepped briskly
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: from the butler's pantry to the dining room, making with
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: unerring instinct for the sideboard where the family silver was stored.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: At the station house, he gave his name as Benjamin Shurmurky,
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: aged twenty one, and admitted being the perpetrator of the
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: series of burglaries which had cost bereaved chicagoans thousands of dollars.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: His system, he told the police, was a simple one.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: Each morning, he searched the obituary columns in the daily papers.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: When the names of people living in pross first sections
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: of the city appeared, he made careful note of the
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: day and hour of the funeral, noting whether services be
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: from the home church or undertaking establishment. After allowing a
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: reasonable time for the obsequies, he would ring up the
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: family residence. If anyone answered, he would announce himself as
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: a friend of the deceased and offer condolences, then, after
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: another interval, he would call again. If he received another answer,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: he would repeat the farce of tindering sympathy and bide
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: his time. When his telephone call was finally unanswered, or
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: if his first ring brought no response, he would go
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: to the house, force a window, and make off with silverware, jewelry,
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: and anything else easily carried. His gentle appearance averted suspicion
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: even if he were seen leaving a prosperous neighborhood with
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: a bundle. A speedy trial followed, and residence of Chicago's
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: West Side will have to defer the doubtful pleasure of
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: entertaining mister Schimerky until he has exhausted the hospitality of
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: Joliet Penitentiary. An attempt to practice the same specialty was
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: nipped almost in the bud in New York early in
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two. Samuel Deutsch, a four times offender against
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: the New York burglary Statute, was caught red handed by
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: a young woman who happened to remain in the house
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: to straighten up the rooms while the family was attending
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: the burial of a deceased relative at Woodlawn cemetery. When discovered,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Deutsch told the young lady, it's all right. I'm the undertaker.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: You're a thief, replied the courageous girl, and grabbed him,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: calling loudly for help. At the same time. He shook
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: her off, but was captured before he left the block.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: You've got me right, he admitted the policeman. I used
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: to look up the obits, and when I've seen a
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: bunch of them in the same neighborhood, I'd grab me
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: Jimmy and do me stuff. Had Deuts choosed Sir Murky's
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: precaution of telephoning, the chances are he would still be
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: at liberty. As it is, he had been made very
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: comfortable in his old cell at Sing Sing, where he
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: will continue for twenty years less time off for good behavior.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: No less ingenius and decidedly safer for its perpetrator was
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: the scheme conceived by Samuel f Ware, a Negro undertaker
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: of Atlanta, Georgia, for mulleting relatives of persons he had buried.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: Where's plan had for its basis the principle of the
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Indian gift. He would sell a casket, then steal it
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: back again. Doctors and undertaker's mistakes and often their profits,
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: are usually permanently screened from public view by several cubic
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: feet of earth, and Where's dereliction might have gone unsuspected
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: indefinitely had it not been for his desire to secure
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: the last split scent of profit from his perfidy. An
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: expensive casket might be sold, stolen back, and resold two
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: or three times, but after its fourth or fifth in
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: tournament it began to look shopworn. A little time and
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: expense spent in refinishing it would have made it a
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: readily emerchantable commodity once more. But Where was a verse
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: even to the small overhead chargeable against his profits. Accordingly,
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: he employed an emissary to canvas the smaller funeral supply houses,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: offering high grade caskets at prices attractively below the usual wholesale.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: One of these traveling salesmen approached the Southern Undertaking Supply
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: and Sales Company of Jacksonville and told them a certain
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Atlanta undertaker was preparing to furnish them a limited number
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: of fine caskets at a price far below that of
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: the manufacturers. Solo. Indeed, were the prices quoted that the
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: company's secretary became suspicious and communicated his suspicions to police
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: Chief Beavers of Atlanta. Chief Beavers, also suspected that all
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: was not as it should be, in detailed two plainclothesmen
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: to investigate these bargain counter caskets. South View Cemetery as
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: the principal Negro burying ground of Atlanta, and it was
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: here the detectives began their quest. Nothing untoward was apparent.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: The place presented the usual hodgepodge of expensive monuments and
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: neglected graves common to all Negro cemeteries in the south.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: The wind sowed dolefully through the Lombardy poplars. Birds twittered
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: and quarreled in the branches. A pair of Negro grave
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: diggers plied their mournful trade in the unyielding yellow clay. Well,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: just stuck around tonight and see what happens, one of
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: the detectives said. The other agreed, and after a cursory
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: inspection of the graveyard and a few formal questions to
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: the grave diggers, the sluice left that night. They posted
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: themselves behind the fence where they could get a full
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: view of several new and flower decked graves. Toward morning,
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: an undertaker's motor casket wagon drove to the cemetery gate,
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: was admitted, and chucked its way to the new section
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: of the graveyard. Three men armed with mattocks and spades alighted,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: carefully removed the floral pieces from a grave, and commenced
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: to dig. Tense with excitement, the detectives saw the trio
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: unearth an expensive casket, tumble the body back into the grave,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: replace the earth in flowers, then drive off with the
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: burial case, for which several hundred dollars had recently been paid.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: Drawing their revolvers, the detective barred the wagon's passage. The
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: occupants attempted to run them down, but the side of
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: the officer's guns and shields, coupled with the fact that
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: they were white men, dampened their ardor for the exploit.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: The surrendered. When the officers inspected their catch, they found
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: they had taken Samuel F. Ware, president of a prosperous
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: Negro undertaking company, and Thurman Jones and Claude Mattock's grave
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: diggers in the cemetery's employee. A few days after Ware's
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: duplicity became known in Atlanta, the traditional belief that Coloured
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: people in the South always give cemeteries a wide birth
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: exploded with an impressive bang. Scores of enraged Coloured residents
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: of the city whose dead had been interred in the
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: South View Cemetery, armed with picks, shovels, hose, rakes, any
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: sort of delving instrument they could find, descended upon the
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: Peaceful God's acre and began a personal investigation of their
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: relative's graves. The first grave opened was that of Nancy
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: Joy one time Bell of Auburn Avenue. Her casket was gone.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: It was found in the next grave to be explored,
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: that of a Negro man. Ware had stolen it after
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: burying Nancy and resold it to the man's family. For
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: some reason, perhaps because he had not yet gotten around
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: to it, he had not stolen that particular casket a
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: second time. As each grave was opened, new wailings and
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: moanings arose, until it seemed the cemetery was witnessing a gigantic,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: multiple funeral, each part of which was equipped with a
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: large and demonstrative corps of mourners. For a time, it
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: appeared that the cemetery would bereft of its dead, but
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: after striving futilely to calm the excited negroes, The cemetary
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: authorities sent for the police, who put an abrupt stop
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: to the impromptu investigation, where Jones and Maddox were indicted
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: by the Fulton County Grand Jury shortly afterwards. The indictment
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: charging violation of section four oh eight of the State
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: Penal Code, which prescribes a maximum penalty of ten years
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: imprisonment for the wan hung removal of a body from
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: its grave. A novel defense was outlined, the contention being
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: that the caskets alleged to be stolen were really rented.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: The suggestion of this remarkable defense, involving the psychology of
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: the fine funeral, was made by one of the grave
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: diggers arrested with ware Wea told us he said that
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: he wasn't stealing those caskets. He said he had just
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: rented them to the families so they could make a
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: big show of having a fond funeral. He said his
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: customers had agreed to let him put the bodies and
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: playing boxes afterward and take back the expensive caskets so
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: he could rent them.
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: To other people.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: The caskets were removed under cover of darkness. It was
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: explained so that nobody would know of Where's arrangement with
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: his patrons. There was no indication of such an understanding, however,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: among the Negroes who had thronged the South View Cemetery
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: when Where's operations were being unofficially investigated, neither was there
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: any evidence of rental agreements. When his case came on
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: for trial before the petit jury, a verdict of guilty
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: was quickly arrived at, and the miscreant who had betrayed
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: his patron's trust received a sentence of the extreme penalty
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: provided by the statute, ten years imprisonment at hard labor.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: The third article in this absorbing series while appear in
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: an early issue of Weird Tales, end of section two,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: number three, The Magic Mirror murders We gets Barbara. The
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: blacksmith of the little Bavarian hamlet of loysier Re threated
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: the daughter of Peter Reisinger. We gets Lanzman if he
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: gets Lansman, pretty, Barbara replied from her doorstep. Think your
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: young cloud boats ill weather. This morning, the blacksmith studied
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: a fleck of cotton wool vapor riding languidly across the
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: blue German sky. Then turned his smile on Barbara again.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: Nine he opined, 'tis about a wind cloud? But why
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: so anxious about to with her? Is it toy picnic? Party?
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: You go? I'll decked in your pretties. Barbara brushed the
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: tip of her nose with a tiny cluster of corn
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: flowers plucked from her father's dooryard. Indeed, is the blacksmith
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: had said? She was dressed in her finest. A cloth skirt,
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: a neat little jacket of the same material, a blouse
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: of horse linen, spotlessly laundered, pinchbeck ear rings, even stockings
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: of white cotton, and leather shoes were among her morning finery,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: and by this last it might be known she was
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: wearing the very best her wardrobe afforded for poverty rode
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: heavily on the shoulders of the Bavarian peasantry in eighteen
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: o seven, and both men and women went barefoot or
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: shod with wood, except upon gala occasions. Stockings and leather
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: shoes were worn only to mass and celebration of the
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: King's birthday were other extraordinary fits. The girl smiled coquettishly
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: at her neighbor. Perhaps I go to look for work,
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: perhaps to seek a husband who knows, she answered, But
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: the blacksmith began then broke off with a puzzled shake
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: of his head. The ways of young folks were beyond him.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: He resumed his way toward his forge, while Barbara set
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: out in the opposite direction along the hamlet's single street.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: When the day's work was done, the blacksmith returned to
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: his home in his evening meal of black bread and
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: pea soup, but Barbara did not return that night. Barbara
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: did not return at all. It was as if she
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: had walked over the rim of the earth at the horizon.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: Her parents made frantic inquiries for her. Weeks and months
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: went by, but no one could tell them of her whereabouts.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: Village heads were shaken, dire surmises of her fate were
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: uttered by local wiseacres, and her disappearance had taken its
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: place in neighborhood tradition almost when gossip was suddenly revived
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: by the disappearance of Catherine Seidel, a bell of the
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: neighboring community of Rigendorf, early in January eighteen o eight.
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: Catherine had set out from her father's house, also dressed
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: in the best clothes she had possessed Like Barbara, she
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: answered questions concerning her destination evasively, and like Barbara, she
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: seemed to vanish, like a smoke wreath from her grandsire's pipe.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: She was gone, and no one could or would give
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: any news of her. Matters might have simmered down in
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: her case, as in that of Barbara Reasinger, had it
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: not been that Catherine's elder sister, Walburga's sidel was a
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: spinster of more than ordinary firmness of purpose. While others
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: shrugged their shoulders over Catherine's disappearance, some even hinting the
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: paths she had taken led to the sort of ease
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: purchased with shame, Whilburga insisted her little sister was the
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: victim of foul play. So vehemently did she assert this
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: belief to all she talked with that the neighbors began
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: to look upon her with a sort of tolerant pity.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: One day, early in the spring of eighteen oh eight,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: Walburga was passing through the public market of Rigendorf when
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: she espied with amazement a bit of cloth she recognized
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: as coming from the skirt Catherine had warned the morning
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: she left home, entering the shop, she excitedly demanded. Whence
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: the cloth came. After a moment's hesitation, the Hebrew proprietor
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: of the place informed her he had bought the goods
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: from a certain fraw Beeschel, wife of Andrew Beechel, a
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: day laborer who lived nearby. He volunteered the further information
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: that Frau Beeeschel was one of his regular cusustomers, trading
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: cloth and trinkets for goods, and often selling him garments
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: or cloth remnants for cash, though this offered no real
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: evidence to support her suspicions. While Bergo felt more convinced
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: than ever that her sister had been murdered or spirited away,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: and determined to find what part Bechel had played in
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: the mystery. With greater cunning than might have been expected
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: from one of her station in life, she went not
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: directly to Beechel's house, but to the neighborhood in which
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: he lived. Pretending to be in search of work. She
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: interviewed every household in the vicinity of the Beechel home,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: bringing in the Beechell family incidentally in her conversation, and
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: adding together such scraps of information as different neighbors, let
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: drop that night, she reviewed the result of her work
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: and found herself in possession of the following facts and rumors.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: Andrew Beechell, a day laborer and the son of a
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: day laborer, was about forty eight years old. Because of
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: his indolence, he was usually out of employment, and the
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: small vegetable garden before his house was more productive of
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: weeds than any other crop. About a year before, however,
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: his fortunes had suddenly taken a turn for the better.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: He had in some way secured a couple of pigs,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: a goat, and several geese, and had been heard to
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: boast of a contemplated purchase of a cow. None of
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: the neighbors could account for this sudden prosperity, since Beechell
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: had been, if possible, lazier. Since his fortunes began to
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: mend them before, his clothing and that of his wife
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: was noticeably better than formerly, and disregarding the usual custom
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: of having all his garments made at home, he had
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: fallen to patronizing a nearby tailor, he supplying the materials
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: while the tailor fashioned the garments. Beechell was noted for
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: his good nature, or rather for his lack of aggressiveness
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: in former days, having permitted himself to be bested in
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: every encounter, whether physical or verbal, rather than defend himself.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: He was known for a coward both physical and moral,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: always seeking to ingratiate himself with those he met and
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: resorting to the most servile flattery in order to secure
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: the barest toleration from his acquaintances. Of late, he had
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: achieved greater esteem among a certain element of the locality,
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: since he had shown a willingness to buy beer for
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: whoever would consent to drink with him at the inn.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: It must be remembered that fiscal conditions in the Germany
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: of that day were as stringent as those of the
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: post war period, only the pressure was from exactly the
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: opposite direction. In the disorganization following the World War, the
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: Republic suffered from an inflated currency, literally from too much money.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: In eighteen o eight, poverty was due to lack of
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: money of any sort, and a few pence secured by
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: the sale of articles of little intrinsic worth might easily
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: raise a peasant to a position far above that of
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: his struggling neighbors, whose whole time was occupied in securing
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: the barest necessities of life. Bearing this in mind, we
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: can realize how articles of practically no value, provided they
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: could be obtained without cost, might enable a poverty crushed
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: german to outdistance his fellows. A floating logs valueless to
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: the man on shore. To the spent swimmer, it may
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: mean salvation. While Burga's sidyl was aware of all this,
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: a lifetime of poverty had impressed her with a very
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: definite appreciation of values, even the value of a piece
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: of secondhand clothing, and her sister had worn an entire
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: outfit of new clothing besides several articles of cheap jewelry
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: on the day she disappeared, while Burgo pondered the information
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: she had gleaned for several days before she again sought
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: the neighborhood where Bitchell lived. A few guarded inquiries disclosed
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: the name of the tailor Bitchel patronized. She located a shop, and,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: predending faintness from the heat. It was early May, went
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: in and begged to drink of water, while the tradesman
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: fetched her a cup. She inspected his shop and suddenly
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: started forward in her seat upon a hook ready for delivery,
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: hung a waistcoat and It was made of cloths such
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: as her vanished sister had worn for a cloak when
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: last seen don Kashun, she told the tailor, draining the
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: dipper he handed her. Then, as she rose to leave,
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: she turned, surveying his wares carelessly. That waistcoat, she said,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: pointing to the garment which had set her pulses racing.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: It is a prighty thing. You make it for some grave,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: some great gentleman. No Nine, laughed the tailor, shaking his head.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: No great gentleman comes to the shop. I make it
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: for a neighbor one here Beechel. Yes, it is pretty,
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: is it not? He added, stroking the soft cloth. Almost,
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: I think too pretty for a man's waar twould be
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: better in a lady's coat. Not jaw jaw, ejaculated Wahburger chokingly,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: as she stumbled from the astonished tailor's place. Yes, yes,
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: for a lady's cloak, to be sure, And she burst
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: into peals of hysterical laughter.
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: Oh sister, dear little sister.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: She sobbed, as she half walked, half ran along the
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: dusty road towards Beechell's house.
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: Some one has done you an injury. But warburgo will
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: find out, Walburga, I will never rest till she has
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: found you.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: And she clinched her work worn hands and frenzy.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: And if they have dared to harm you, I've got
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: twould be better for them had they never seen the sun.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: A few minutes, hurried walk brought her to Beechel's door,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: upon which she hammered unceremoniously. Beechel himself answered her summon,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: smiling pleasantly. You wish to see me, he inquired, politely,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: Wretch Wahlburger cried.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: My sister, my little sister, Catherine, What have you done
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: with her?
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Beechell's pale features remained politely, inquiring, not the trimmer of
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: a muscle betrayed her words had touched an uneasy conscience. Catherine,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: he repeated, as though puzzled, What Catherine, I know many
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: young ladies by that name, choking with emotion. While Burga
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: declared herself the sister of the vanished Catherine's sidle, and
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: again demanded an account of her sister, Beechell heard her through,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: then repeated his declaration of innocence. He knew no Catherine Seidel,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: he insisted, never remembered having known a girl by that
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: name the fraeu Line was mistaken. She was excited the heat.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: Perhaps would not the Fraeuleine enter and partake of a
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: cup of goat's milk. It had a very soothing effect
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: on those affected by the unseasonable spring heat. So sincere
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: he seemed, and so genuinely anxious to help her that
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: Walburga's suspicions were almost disarmed. But there was the evidence
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: of the piece of cloth in the market stall and
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: the new waistcoat at the tailor's. Walburga left the Beechel
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: home and sought the untersuchung's Richter or provincial magistrate. The
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: police system of Bavaria at that time was decidedly defective. Indeed,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: as we understand the term today, there was practically none.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: Each village had its constable or police officer, whose duties
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: were more of a supervisory than of police nature. He seldom,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: if ever, patrol the streets, nor did his authority extend
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: beyond the impounding of misdemeanans. In addition to these purely
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: local and inefficient officers, there was the Gendarmerie or military police,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: whose duties were twofold the protection of the government from
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: political offenders, and the enforcement of the magistrate's mandates. In
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: this latter duty, which was wholly subordinate to that of
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: arresting political enemies of the crown, they acted almost as
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: our modern bailiffs or United States marshals, not attempting action
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: on their own initiative, but waiting until the direction of
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: the magistrate. A certificate of suspicion from the examining judge
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: was necessary to set the police machinery in motion, as
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: a warrant from a US commissioner or a judge is
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: required before lawful search and seizure may be made in
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: this country. But slow moving in inadequate as the Bavarian
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: gin darmery of a century ago was, it possessed the
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: German characteristic of thoroughness, and once a magistrate's order was
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: hinded them, the officer kept their task till they had
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: some definite report to make. With painstaking care of the
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: gendarmes interrogated every resident within a mile of Mitchell's home,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: voluminous notes of the answers they received. Their investigation began
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: on May nineteenth, eighteen o eight. By nightfall, they had
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: taken testimony from every man, woman and child in Beechell's neighborhood,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: and had gleaned one fact of prime importance. Several young
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: girls had gone to Beechel's house to see their fortunes
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: in a glass, and though several neighbors had testified to this,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: not one could be found who could say he had
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: seen one of the girls. Since in the forenoon of
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: May twentieth, two sergeants of police went to Beechel's house.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: He was gone to a nearby fair, where goods of
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: all descriptions, including second hand clothing, were bought and sold.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: The officers walked round the house, inspecting the outbuildings, glanced
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: at the garden, and returned to the doorstep. Lighting their
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: porcelain pipes, they seated themselves in the shade. Beechell must
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: return some time. Everyone came home, sooner or later. Life
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: was relatively long, and a day of waiting mattered little. Besides,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: sitting in the shade was vastly preferable to marching over
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: miles of dusty road to the fair. A nervously energetic
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: Latin or efficient Anglo Saxon policeman would have exhibited symptoms
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: of hydrophobia at sight of such tactics, but the Germans
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: understood German psychology. At nightfall, Beechell returned his pockets, clinking
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: with copper and silver the proceeds of his day's trading,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: and the sergeant's matter of factly placed him under arrest.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: There was no haste in the proceedings. Beechell's permitted thirty
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: six hours in solitary confinement to allow his conscience to
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: begin its work, then summoned before the examining judge. This
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: official kept the prisoner waiting beside his table for several
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: minutes while he pretended to be busily examining some papers.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: At length, he looked up, staring at Beechel as though
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: he had been some novel sort of animal. Do you
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: know the reason for your arrest? Andrew Beechel, he asked
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: at length. Nine mind here, replied the prisoner with a
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: servile bow. So the magistrate raised his eyebrows. You do
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: not very well, He motioned to a gendarme, and Beechel
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: was conducted back to his solitary cell. Another day and
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: night elapsed, and Beechel was again led into the magistrate's presence.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: Andrew Biechel said, the judge, tell me why you are arrested?
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: Manheer replied, Beachel upon the Holy Cross, I cannot imagine.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: Then you must have a few days of rest and
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: quiet to stimulate your imagination. The magistrate answered, there were
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: no such things as writs of Habeas Corpus. In Bavaria.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: When a prisoner refused to talk, he was lodged in
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: solitary confinement until his tongue loosened. Andrew Beechel spent a
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: week more in a cell, during which he heard no
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: voice and saw no human face, even his food being
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: passed to him through a small opening in the dungeon door,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: which permitted him no sight of his jailers. Seven days
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: meditation eroded Beechell's resolution. The next time he faced the judge,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: he was ready to talk as before. The magistrate asked,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: Andrew Beechel, do you know why you are arrested? Yes, Minehier,
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: answered the prisoner. It is in connection with the disappearance
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: of Catherine Seidel and Barbara Risinger. But of her supplemented
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: the judge, yesieur worship faltered Beachel m Barbara Reslinger too.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: Where are they? What did you do with them? The
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: magistrate demanded, Oh, mineher, the trembling wretch protested, I did
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: nothing with them on the holy tree by the beard
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: of Saint Andrew, my patron. I did them no injury.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: They came to me, They pestered me to get them
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: their fortunes. Told I knew a man, No, your excellence,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: I do not know his name nor whence he comes.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: And you are certain man who can divine the future.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: This man, he has but one eye, your Exaltedness, and
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: is also plagued with the goiter. This man came to
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: my poor house and showed these misguided girls the future
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: has in the peep show. A peep show, echoed the judge.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: What kind of peep show? A crystal ball, your nobleness,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: a crystal ball? Did you not say it was a
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: peep show? Yes, your honorableness, But I'm into crystal ball
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: such as Eastern phakir's shoes. What you know of Eastern fakirs?
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: Andrew Biechel, your worship, I have read, Andrew Bichel interrupted
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: the magistrate. I can read that you are an unconscionable liar.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: Back to your cell, rogue. You will be questioned Anon
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: when you are ready to tell the truth. Meantime, the
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: gendarmes had not been idle. Accompanied by a squad of men,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: a sergeant had searched the Beechel homestead from roof tree
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: to cellar. In an upper room concealed beneath a heap
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: of trash, two roomy chests been discovered. When the padlocks
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: on their lids were forced. They were found literally crammed
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: with articles of feminine apparel linens, skirts, jackets, cloaks, leather shoes, stockings,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: bits of cheap jewelry like that worn by peasant bells, combs,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: under garments. Enough clothing to have outfitted a small village
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: of middle class peasant girls was recovered from these trunks.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: Most important to the prosecution, articles definitely identified as having
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: been worn by Barbara Ressinger and Cathercytol were found among
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: the chest contents. The judge ordered a careful inventory made
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: of these things and commanded the searchers to continue their work,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: scarcely believing more evidence would be unearthed. The police proceeded
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: to make a cursory investigation of the land and outbuildings
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: without bringing anything more to light, but one of them
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: was suddenly struck with the idea of utilizing a four
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: footed assistant. A hunting dog was secured and turned loose
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: in the grounds. The animal seemed it fault for some time,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: but when one of the officers led him into the
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: dark shed at the rear of the lot, he betrayed
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: increased interest. Against the shed's rear wall was stacked a
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: pile of manure, the pungent ammonia gas that gave off
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: obscuring all other odors which reached the men's noses. But
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: the dog was not to be thus fooled. He attacked
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: the base of the pile with his fore paws, dug
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: tentatively a moment, then abruptly seated himself, pointed as muzzle skyward,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: and emitted a dismal, long drawn out howl country bread.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: The policemen recognized the sound only too often they had
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: heard dogs give vent to the death cry when members
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: of their master's family had died. Her got cried one
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: of the men, while another crossed himself piously. A digging
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: fork was brought and the police attacked the dung heap.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: Beneath the litter of straw. Quite near the surface, the
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: lower half of a woman's body was found. The clay
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: soil and combination with the straw and the manure which
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: shut away. The air had completely foiled the murderer's purpose.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: Instead of decomposing, the flesh was almost perfectly preserved, though
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: soupontification had taken place to some extent. Feverishly, now the
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: police dug a torso the arms. Finally, a severed head
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: were brought to light. Catherine's sidle was found. For several days,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: the officers prosecuted their search, each succeeding excavation revealing a
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: fresh villainy. Poor vain Little Barbara Reisinger was taken from
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: the unconsecrated grave where she had lain nearly a year,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: and the bodies of other girls not reported to the
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: authorities were brought forth to keep her company. But the
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: most ghastly phase of this terrible case appeared when surgeons,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: summoned to view the bodies handed in their reports. In
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: every case the women's throats bore evidence of wounds, but
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: in no instance were these wounds sufficient to have caused
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: immediate death. The opinion of the doctors was that the
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: women had been dismembered while still alive. The preliminary evidence secured.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: The examination of Andrew Beechell began under the criminal Code
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: that in force in Bavaria, there were no rules of
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: evidence as common law lawyers know them. Every fact germane
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: to the case in hand was to be elicited. The
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: accused was not permitted to face his accusers, nor was
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: he permitted to refuse to testify against himself. The unter
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: suchung's Richter or examining judge, combined to the duties of
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: prosecuting attorney and police judge, being charged with the double
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: office of examining into the crime and committing the prisoner
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: if the evidence warranted it, to jail to await trial
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: by the central criminal court of the district. Prisoners might
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: not be tortured into confession, the wreck having been formally
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: abolished by law in eighteen o six, but they were
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: held in close confinement during the entire period of their examination,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: which sometimes lasted for months. The science of psychoanalysis had
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: not been dreamed of in those days, yet something closely
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: akin to it obtained in the Bavarian courts. The examining
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: magistrate would ask the prisoner innumerable questions, many of them
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: having only the most remote bearing on the case. Yet
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: at intervals there would be sandwiched in questions of the
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: utmost importance questions which, coming amid irrelevant queries, might easily
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: startle the accused into a damaging admission. All questions and
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: answers were reduced to writing by a notary, and any
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: unusual length of time taken by the accused in answering
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: a given question, his demeanor at the propounding of questions
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: calculated to elicit damaging replies, and similar facts were also
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: noted in the minutes of the examination footnote. It is
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: to this faithful noting of the most minute details in
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: the transcripts of these criminal examinations that we owe our
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: ability to record practically all the important incidents in trials
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: held more than a century ago. Editor and despite his
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: declared intention of telling all, Beechell fenced skillfully with the
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: judge for several days, contradicting himself a dozen times at
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: each session, but inevitably being led to an admission of
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: his guilt. At length, the magistrate asked him, did you
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: not pretend to have a magic mirror in your possession,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: a mirror in which young women might see their future husbands.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: Beechell was observed to change colour at this, but stoutly
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: denied it. The judge, unhurried confident his questions would bring
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: out the truth, continued at intervals to ask, tell us
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: of your magic mirror, Andrew Beechell, or why did you
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: pretend to have a magic mirror? Persistence at last prevailed
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: worn out, with constant questioning his solitary confinement between court sessions,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: making him a prey to his accusing conscience. Beechell at
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: length broke down and confessed he had let it be
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: noised about among the peasant girls. He said that he
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: possessed a magic mirror in which any girl looking would
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: see her future bridegroom. And to sweeten the bait for
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: the silly fies he purported catching in his web, he
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: also said he would accept no fee for a look
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: at this marvelous glass, but she who would see its
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: secrets must come secretly, otherwise the charm would be broken,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: and she must come dressed in her best, as she
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: would wish to appear when first beholding her future husband.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: His plan succeeded with shameless ease, so fast the girls
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: applied that he had to turn some away for fear
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: of conflicting engagements. The procedure was the same in each case.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: The victor was shown a piece of board, about which
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: a towel had been wrapped. This was the magic mirror.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: When the wrappings were removed, Beechel assured his dupe the
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: future bridegroom would stand revealed. But first he must pronounce
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: an incantation, and the girl must help him with her
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: own pocket handkerchief. He bandaged her eyes, binding her hands
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: behind her back with a piece of packing thread. Then,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: standing before the smiling girl, he pronounced these words, maiden,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: behold thy bridegroom. His name is death, So saying, he
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: struck her in the throat with a butcher knife he
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: had concealed in his sleeve. A basin was ready. He
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: eased the terrified girl to the floor, placing the vessel
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: where it would catch the blood from her wound, lest
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: her clothes be stained and so rendered unsailable, For it
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: was for their clothing and the few tawdry trinkets that
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: he had murdered, all these innocent, credulous curls. When the
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: victim was exhausted, he undressed her, folded her clothes up neatly,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: ready to be packed in his treasure chests upstairs, and
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: proceeded leisurely to dismember and bury her body. The astounded
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: judge asked, but why did you anatomize them before they
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: were dead? To this, Speechel made the astonishing reply, your
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: excellence desquaimed. It was delightful when the tedious process of
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: collecting all available evidence at length came to an end.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: The written report of Beechell's case, comprising several volumes of
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: closely written German script, was certified to the Central Criminal
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: Court by the examining judge. Wary lawyers with endless tongues
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: had no opportunity to address the court. Under the Bavarian
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: Criminal Code, the defendant's legal adviser was allowed to read
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: the transcript of testimony taken before the examining judge, then
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: to prepare a written defense of his client. In this brief,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: he might base his defense on either the law or
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: the facts, or both, and might use as much space
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: as he deemed necessary, but he might not appear in
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: person before the court. Thus it was that many an
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: advocate won fame as a criminal practitioner, yet had never
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: seen the judges whose decisions, as pleased swayed. Beechell's counsel
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: did the best he could with the handicap under which
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: he labored and the Central Criminal Court doubtless read his
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: learned defense attentively, but the result of the case was foregone.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: On February fourth, eighteen o nine, nearly a year after
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: his arrest, Andrew Beechell was led into court to hear
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: his sentence. It was an impressive scene. The judges, in
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: their robes of office trimmed with ermine, the royal fur
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: in token of their right to dispense the King's Justice,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: sat before a long table of age darkened oak, raised
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: three steps above the court room floor. Behind them, and
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: before the doors and windows of the hall stood how
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: berdiers in coats of green and gold, the sunlight glinting
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: on the polished heads of their weapons. The official justicer,
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: the the Headsman, stood beside the steps leading to the
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: judge's table. A crowd had gathered to hear sentence pronounced,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: and broke into murmurs of suppressed rage. As two stalwart
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: jailers led the prisoner before the judges. The clamor of
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: halbert butts on the floor brought instant silence. For the
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: halberdiers were not slow to rap for order on the
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: heads of the rabble. If their first admonition to silence
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: went unheeded. Beechell halted before the judge's table, and the
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: President of the court rose facing him. In one hand,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: he held a parchment scroll before him. On the table
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: lay a light wand of dried willow. The prisoner's pale
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: face went as shade whiter as he beheld this for
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: well he knew what the wand portended. A pause, the
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: judge unrolled his parchment and read the sentence that Andrew
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: Beechel of Rigendorf be dragged to the place of execution
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: and be not carried or aloud to walk, That he
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: there be broken on the wheel from the feet upwards
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: without the previous mercy stroke, and that his body be
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: afterwards exposed on the wheel as a warding to evil doers.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: As he finished, the President picked up the willow wand
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: snapped it into and cast the pieces at Beechel's feet.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: This was to signify that as the wood was separated
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: in two parts, so should the condemned man's soul and
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: body be severed in the furtherance of the King's justice.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: Almost insane with terror, Beschel was dragged from the court room.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: His vain pleas for mercy ringing fainter and fainter to
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: the closing of his dungeon door shut them off completely. Well,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: he knew the fate awaiting him. He would be tied
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: against the great cartwheel, so that he hung like a
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: fly caught in the web of a giant spider. Then,
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: with a heavy sledgehammer, the brawny executioner would rain blow
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: after blow upon him, breaking the bones of his legs
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: and arms, his ribs, finally crushing his skull. In ordinary cases,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: the headsman would have given him the blow on the
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: head first, so that the others would have been but
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: savage mutilation of his dead body. But his sentence had
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: expressly provided that he should be broken on the wheel
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: from the feet upwards. Without the customary mercy stroke, he
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: would die slowly, horribly. The thought drove him shrieking against
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: the unyielding door of his cell, striking it with his fists,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: crying aloud for mercy, he who had shown no pity
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: to the girls whose finery he coveted. Next morning, when
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: they led him out to die, he gave a great
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: shout of joy as he beheld his executioner. For that
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: grim official leaned upon the handle of a great sword
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: not on the hell of his terrible hammer. The court
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: had reconsidered its decision during the night and commuted his
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: sentence to death by beheading, saying it it is below
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: the dignity of the state to vie with a criminal
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: and cruelty. This is the third of a series of
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: unusual articles that Seabury Quinn is writing for The Weird Tales.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: The fourth will be published in an early issue. End
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: of section three, number four, Schiantek the Beggar, the landlord
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: of the Silver Axe, was on the verge of nervous prostration.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: Half an hour before a messenger had brought tidings of
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: a great English milord whose coach had broken down a
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: scant ten miles from the hamlet of Palomija. Even now
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: the wealthy foreigner were not all the English. Fabulously rich
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: and his servants were making their ways best they could
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: along the forest road, and the Silver Axe was the
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: first inn they would pass on their journey to the
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: town of Dabko. The winter of eighteen forty eight had
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: been cruel to the inhabitants of the lordship of Parkost
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: in Austrian Galicia. The peasants who got their meager living
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: by hewing down the tall fir trees and floating them
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: down the vistula to market had been sorely plagued by
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: deep snows and frozen streams. Disease and lack of fodder
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: had depleted their small supply of livestock, and the taxes
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: of the landed proprietors, of whom they held their hovels
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: and little garden patches had been heavier than usual. In
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: these circumstances, there had been few coppers to buy beer,
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: and fewer silver pieces to buy wine at the tap
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: room of the Silver Axe, and the landlord's purse had
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: suffered in consequence. Now, when May had come to drive
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: away the lingering frosts of winter, and the men folk
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: had gone to their summer work of resin collecting, came
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: word of the wealthy Englander dropped into the Landlord's inn,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: like the purses of the good Saint Nicholas, into the
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: lapse of the dowerless maidens, and there was nought with
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: which to prepare a feast for the unexpected guests. Chickens
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: had perished on their roosts in the biting winter frosts.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: One of the pigs had done of the cholera, and
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: the other had been taken by the Imperial tax collector
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: in lieu of unforthcoming coin. Only the ducks remained the ducks.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: That was the solution of the problem. The landlord would
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: regal the Englishman with roast duck. Come, Come, he called
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: to his bustling hossfrow, Make haste kill me our three ducks.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: We must have them roasted to a turn, with pickled
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: fish and watercress, and the best of our wine for
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: the rich Englander. Ah twall be a meal fit for
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: the table of a duke. Doubtless our guest will reward
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: us with a gold piece. Mayhap two followed such an
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: agonized squawking as never before was heard in all ducdum as.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: The landlady and her assistance ran a dignified and much
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: scandalized drake to his doom. But of the slaughtered drake's harem,
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: no sign was to be found. Search high, search low.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: No frightened quack gave testimony of a cowering duck hiding
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: from the axe. Time pressed, the Englishman drew nearer with
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: every passing minute, and only one duck lay waiting to
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: grace the table for the famished foreigner and his hungry servants.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: A trembling stable boy ran to tell the landlord. The
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: landlord tore his hair and beard, calling freely and impartially
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: on all the red and Black letter saints in the
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: calendar to witness his misfortune. He also cursed the stable
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: boy who brought him the evil tidings. But most of all,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: most horribly, most blasphemously, he cursed the unknown miscreant who
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: had robbed him of his ducks and of the prophet
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: he would have made from the Englishman. What misbegotten descendant
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: of an unvirtuous wild pig would do this thing to me?
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: The landlord questioned, of the unanswering forest wind, who would
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: steal from me? Do I not attend regularly at Holy
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: Mass and give liberally to the poor? Do I ever
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: turn beggars from my fire ah? The landlord seised his
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: curses and put on his hat. The rehearsal of his
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: charities had turned his th beggars in general, and from
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: mendicants in general. His thoughts had turned upon the neighborhood
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: beggar in particular, scarcely a stone's throw from the silver
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: axe to the hut of Schwiantek, the beggar of Polomnia.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: Summer and winter, this old man was to be seen
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: squatting at the church door, his long white beard falling
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: to his knees as he held forth his wooden basin
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: and whined an alms and alms for the love of Christ.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: Kind friends, give to the needy, and the Lord will
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: reward you alms alms for the love of God. The
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: Landlord cherished no love for Sviiantec. On more than one
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: occasion he had caught him in the act of pilfering
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: from the silver axes none too plentifully stalked pantry, and
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: on more occasions than one he had proof he had
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: suspected him of thievery. To be sure, who would have
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: been more likely to make away with this so precious
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: ducks than this whining mendicant, who, though strong and hearty
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: as any man his age in the forest band circle
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: of Tornau, preferred to eke out existence on what he
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: could beguile from the pockets of honest laboring men. The
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: Landlord picked up the stout cudgel and set off for
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: Santec's hut. As the rogue stolen my ducks, he muttered,
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: I'll write the eighth Commandment on his thievish hide. With this,
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: he brandished his club menacingly as he neared the beggar's door.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: The strong and savory odor of roasting flesh greeted his
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: nostrils as he crept nearer Siantec, the beggar, the man
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: who lived without work, was preparing a meal of meat,
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: while the great English melword must go hungry and the
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: worthy landlord of the silver axe unrewarded villain. The landlord shouted,
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: bursting through the door, I have caught thee red handed.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: I will teach thee to steal ducks from honest men.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: While their guests cooled their heels and hunger, Cheviantek stepped
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: back quickly from the fireplace over which he had been bending,
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: at the same time stuffing some object about the size
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: of a duck out of sight beneath his peasant's blouse.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: In a trice, the furious landlord had him by his
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: venerable white beard, shaking him as a terrier does a rat.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: Back and forth. The innkeeper shook the beggar, berating him
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: as only a man whose good fortune has been suddenly
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: snatched away hand. The half roasted piece of meat, which
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: Spiontech had all this time clutched to his bosom beneath
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: his loose blouse, slipped from his grasp and fell, rolling
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: and bumping to the floor. It was the severed head
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: of a fourteen year old girl. Horror paralyzed, the innkeeper
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: stared at the grisly thing, catching his breath in short,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: panting sobs. Schiantek slunk into a corner of the hut
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: next instant with an inarticulate cry of mingled rage and fear.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: He made at the landlord, a butcher knife brandished in
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: his skinny hand. The knife flashed forward for a stroke,
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: but the swish of the innkeeper's oaken cudgel was followed
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: by a heavy thud. Spiontek, the beggar sank to the
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: hut's earth floor without a cry. As fast as terror
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: spurred messengers could summon them. Gendarmes from Dabkow came to
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: Colombia and hustled their prisoner to jail. All along the route,
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: s Fiantak cried out like a trapped forest wolf, flinging
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: himself repeatedly to the earth and attempting suicide by trying
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: to swallow clods of road, clay and stones. His captors
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: choked these from his throat with no very gentle hands.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: Austrian gendarmes were never noted for tenderness toward their prisoners,
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: and the already proven crime of this felon was not
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: the sort to inspire them with an extra amount of courtesy.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: The prisoner was taken at once before the protocol committing
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: magistrate's court and remanded to prison pending an investigation. Gendarmes
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: were sent to search his dwelling, while others scoured the
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: forest country for witnesses. In Austria, as in Germany, courts
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: and prosecutors were not hampered by refinements of evidence, such
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: as those in vogue and common law countries. Everything which
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: had a bearing on the case in hand was eagerly
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: sought and brought out at trial, regardless of whether it
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: was hearsay or not. Even rumor was listened to on
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: the odd chance it would throw light on the case,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: the judges deciding what should receive consideration in influencing their decision.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: For this reason, the agents of justice brought into court
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: a considerable number of witnesses whose stories, while inadmissible under
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: British or American law, were nevertheless of great interest. The
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: residents of the lordship of Parkost in the vicinity of
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: Palomja were for the most part, wretchedly poor. They were
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: woodcutters who tilled small garden patches in the intervals between
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: their logging work. Each held his house in farmlet by
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: a sort of vlain tenure, that is, he paid no
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: money rental, but was bound to work a fixed number
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: of days each year for his landlord. The scheme of
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: payment by labor, while it might at first glance seem
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: the fairest treatment of people whose stock of cash was
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: always scanty, was really one of the contributing causes of
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: the peasant's poverty, since the landlord's invariably exacted labor from
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: their tenants at times when the tenant's own crops were
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: ripe for harvesting, or when the cutting of timber would
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: prove most remunerative. Nevertheless, in spite of their poverty, the
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: villagers had always a ready hand for those who besought
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: their charity, and witnesses who had transacted business with fiantec
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: always to the latter's advantage, were numerous. One of the
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: first to testify at the hearing was a peasant woman
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: who some two years before had taken compassion on the
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: old beggar as he crouched at the church door, and
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: bidden him come to her cottage for food. He had
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: at first appeared reluctant, asking her if she could not
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: give him a copper instead, But when she charitably insisted
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: on his sharing the Sunday meal with her and her
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: good men, he assented. They pressed such food as they
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: had upon him, but he seemed strangely lacking an appetite.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: While he ate a little bread, he turned from the
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: meat pie they offered, with what seemed to her like repugnance.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: After dinner, when the master of the house presented the
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: beggar with a pipe of tobacco, he became more genial,
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: recounting stories of his adventures upon the road and amusing
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: the children with a few tricks of simple ledger Man.
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: One child, a chubby little girl of nine or ten,
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: attracted the old man's attention. Particularly schiantec felt in his
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: pocket and produced a ring consisting of a piece of
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: colored glass set in lead foil. This he presented to
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: the child, who ran off, delighted to show her companions.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: Is that little maid your daughter, he asked the housewife. No,
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: she answered, she is an orphan. There was a widow
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: in this place who died leaving the child, and I
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: have taken her into my family. One month more will
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: not matter much, and the good God will bless us
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: for a charity. Aye aye, agreed shriadnek the orphan's and
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: fatherless or ever under his particular care. She's a good
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: little thing and gives us no trouble. The woman resumed,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: You go back to Palomija tonight I do, the beggar
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: answered then, as the little orphan ran up to him, Ah,
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: you like the ring, little one. It is a beautiful thing,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: is it not. I found it under a big tree
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: to the left of the churchyard. Who knows there may
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: be dozens more in the same spot. You must go
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: thereafter dark has fallen and turn around three times, Then,
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: says a boy, look among the tree roots, and you
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: will surely find more rings. Come, screamed the delighted child
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: to her playmates.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 3: Let us go look for rings.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: Nay, nay, shfine tech cautioned, you must seek singly, one
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: at a time, or the charm will not work. The
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: children scampered off to the wood, and siantuck flung his
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: coat about his stooping shoulders. You may thank me for
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: ridding you off the children's noise for a time, at least,
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: he laughed, as he opened the door to leave. He
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: left the cottage, walking rapidly, not going down the road,
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: but among the somber evergreens, which reached nearly to the
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: front door. An hour later, the woodcutter children returned, out
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: of breath with running. The little orphan girl was not
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: with them. Vaguely incoherently, as terrified children will. They told
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: how she, braver than the rest, had gone alone beneath
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: the shadow of the fir tree, where rings were to
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: be found. How she called out the words a boy lustily.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: Then how a startled scream had suddenly checked, like the
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: ceasing of a night bird's cry when the bullet strikes
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: its mark. They told two of a monstrous form, like
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: that of a cloaked and bearded man, half distinguished through
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: the gloom, and of hurrying footsteps, sounding fainter and still
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: more faintly through the underbrush.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 3: It was a wolf, the.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: Woman said, crossing herself piously. The talk of the cloaked
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: and bearded man. She set down to childless imagination. Several
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: schoolboys told how one of their companions, a boy named Peter,
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: had loitered behind his fellows one day after school they
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: saw him leave the path. They thought they saw him
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: talking with a man wearing a long cloak and having
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: a white beard. Though they could not be certain of this,
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: one thing was sure. Peter was never seen again. A
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: wealthy Russian jew told of the loss of his servant maid,
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: a girl of thirteen. One night, she left his house
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: on an errand when she failed to return, he became
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: uneasy and set out to look for her with a lantern.
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: Her footprints were plainly marked in the light snow. It
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: could be seen where she left the road, wandering into
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: a copse of fir trees. Here other footprints, much larger
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: and heavier, joined hers. For a time, the two trails
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: went on together. Then, at a spot where the trees
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: were so thick no snow had drifted down upon the
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: brown carpet of pine needles, all trace of the girl
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: and her companion was lost. At any rate, the girl
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: was never seen again. The gendarmes since the search Swantec's cottage,
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: returned with staring eyes and bated breath in a chest
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: neatly trussed up like a fowl, ready for the spit.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: They had found the legs and thighs of a half
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: grown girl, the child whose heads Fiantec had attempted to
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: hide when discovered by the Landlord of the Silver Axe.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: Beneath the earth and floor of the hut, they had
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: found caps and parts of clothing sufficient to account for
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: thirteen children and a young woman. The witnesses disposed of.
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: Schviontech was summoned before the magistrate for a time. He
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: stood dumb before the court, not touched with remorse for
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: his hideous crimes, but paralyzed with fear for himself. With
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: the notes of the testimony before him, the magistrate commenced
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: interrogating the prisoner, but wordless moans were the only replies
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: his questions. Evoked at last, by accident, the beggar's lips
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: were opened. You must have been insane to commit these acts,
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: the judge remarked. A crafty look, a gleam of hope
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: came into the prisoner's little eyes. For ignorant though he was,
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: he knew the law forbore to punish those whose misdeeds
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: were committed while insane. Your Excellency has said no more
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: than the truth, he replied, I was indeed a lunatic
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: when I transgress so terribly. But now your Excellency, I
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: am restored. I pray you let me depart. Hence my
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: reason is returned, and I will send no more. Tell
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: us first, how you came to do such savage and
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: unchristian acts, prompted the judge. It is necessary that our
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: records be complete before we dispose of the case. Disposing
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: of a case was a phrase capable of more than
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: one interpretation, but dread of punishment and overwhelming hope of
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: freedom led Spontek to place the most favorable construction on
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: the words. Smiling amiably at the magistrate, stroking his patriarchal
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: beard as he talked, he related one of the most
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: amazing criminal histories ever heard in a court of law.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: Three years before, during the better winter of eighteen forty six,
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: he had been hastening through the forest to his cottage
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: in Palomiga, just as the sun was setting. The frosts,
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: which set in early in autumn had held steady, and
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: the countryside had suffer greatly. Responses to his wine for
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: alms had been few and small, and he was near
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: to perishing with cold and hunger. As he neared the village,
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: he came upon the still glowing embers of a small
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: Jewish tavern which had burned down that morning, and paused
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: to warm himself beside the smoldering ruins. Creeping nearer for
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: extra warmth, he noticed the charred remains of the taverns keeper,
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: who had perished in the flames. The scent in sight
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: of the roasted flesh so worked upon his hunger that
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: he was unable to resist tearing off a bit of
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: flesh and tasting it. As the horrid morsel passed his lips,
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: he became to quote his own words as it were
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: a ravening wolf, rending, tearing, even growling in his throat
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: like a brute beast. He satisfied his hunger, then stuffed
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: his beggar's pouch with material for another horrible repast. Suddenly,
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: the enormity of his act struck him, flinging the pouch
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: with its grizzly load from him. He ran pell mell
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: down the road until exhaustion compelled him to stop. As
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: he sat upon a wayside stone, regaining his breath the
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: desire for another meal, like the revolting one he had
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: just completed, began to steal over him like a drunkard's
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: craving for drink. Battling with his conscience, yet yielding, he
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: retraced his steps, recovered his pouch, and hastened home. From
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: that night, he had never eaten any other meat, bread,
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: and vegetables. He had accepted from kindly disposed peasants who
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: pitied him, but their offers of meat filled him with
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: an almost uncontrollable revulsion. The little orphan girl, whose disappearance
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: had been testified to by her foster parents, was his
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: first victim. He had killed and eaten her as unconcernedly
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: as another peasant would have butchered a calf or pig freely.
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: As the magistrate questioned him, he admitted murder after cold
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: blooded murder, and case after case of cannibalism, with a
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: complacency which brought a shudder of horror to all who watched.
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: He rolled back his sleeves and loosened to the collar
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: of his blouse that the court might see how sleek
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: and fat he had grown upon his frightful meals.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 3: And now he.
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: Concluded, looking expectantly at the magistrate. I have told you all,
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: your excellency, surely you will let me go inhuman monster,
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: the judge replied, out of your own mouth, you have
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: condemned yourself. No madman could have told his tale so reasonably.
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: If there be any justice in the Empire of Austria,
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: you shall die upon the scaffold, and the public executioner
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: will hang his head in shame that his duties force
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: him to lay hands on so vile a wretch as you.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: Screaming with terror, Sviantek was dragged back to his cell
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: for his terror, palsied legs refuse to bear his weight.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: Next morning, when the turnkey of the jail made his
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: tour of inspection, he found that justice had been cheated.
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: S Fontec the beggar had hanged himself to the bars
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: of his prison window. This is the fourth article of
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: a series at Seabirdy Quinn's writing for Weird Tales. The
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: fifth will appear in an early issue end of Section four,
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: number five. Merry Blandie. Two dirty, unkempt urchins fought and
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: struggled in the gutter way of Henley the Elder, a
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: ragamuffin lad of thirteen or so, bore his antagonist to
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: the kidney stone pavement, pressed his knee upon the other's chest,
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: and leaned forward, intent upon gouging the little fellow's eyes
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: with thumb and forefinger. It was a trick he had
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: learned from the bullies of the waterfront, a trick no
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: decent English lad would stoop to. But this little alley
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: rat was not a decent English lad. Help, Help, screamed
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: this smaller boy, fighting desperately to keep the sharp, unclean
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: nails of his enemy from his eyes. There was a
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: clatter of flying iron, ringed hoofs against the paving flints,
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: a shout of command to the older boy, and a tall,
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: auburn haired girl, slim and straight as a youth, flung
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: herself from her pony, laying her riding crop mercilessly across
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: the unfair fighter's shoulders. Surprised by the sudden rear attack,
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: the boy loosed his grip on his opponent's face and
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: turned furiously to defend himself. He might as well have
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: attempted to beat back the north wind, right, cut left,
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: cut back and forth. The girl swung her whip with
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: the speed and skill that marked the practiced fencer and
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: the strength that tells of healthy young muscles, grown strong
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: and supple through systematic exercise. Thou chill, thou mean base
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: volet thou Frenchman, She cried, still plying her whip. Dost
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: fight with teeth and nails like a yowling gibcut d art,
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: not fit to breathe the hour of England. She cut
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: him again across his writhing shoulders, Hopelessly worsted in the combat,
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: the boy drew off a safe distance and made the
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: oldest gestures of insult. The world knows that of the
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: thumbed nose. Y'all go on, tomboy, He mocked from his
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: zone of safety beyond the cut of her whip. Tomboy tomboy.
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: Live like a man, and die like a man. Fighting
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: girls and crowing hens always come to somebod inns. You'll
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: die on the gallows, Mary Blandye, and all your father's
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: money can't save you from it. Tomboy tomboy, gallows bird tomboy.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: The girl made a threatening gesture, and he took refuge
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: in flight, but his raucous taunt of tomboy tomboy, gallowsbird
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: tomboy could be heard long after the patter of his
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: broken souled brokens no longer sounded in her ears. She
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: tossed a copper for comfort to the lad she had rescued,
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: remounted her pony, and rode slowly toward her father's house.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: Mary Blandy was the only child of Francis Blandy, a
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: prominent solicitor of the town of Henley on the Thames,
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: and because her father had wished a son and been
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: disappointed with a daughter, he had done the next best
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: thing and had marry educated more like a young squire
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: than a young noblewoman. At fort teen, she could ride
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: fence and shoot as well as most boys several years
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: her senior, and better than some, and her proficiency in
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: the classics was a source of wonderment and no little
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: shame among parents with sons in the neighborhood. Many of these,
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: piqued by the girl's extraordinary ability, contented themselves with saying
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: such training and efficiency were unladylike, unfeminine, and entirely disgusting.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: So at an early age, Mary Blandye suffered unpopularity among
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: the parents of her boy acquaintances. In a few years,
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: unpopularity was increased one hundred percent for Mary the young
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: woman proved herself as apt at all feminine accomplishments as
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: Mary the Girl had excelled in boyish pastimes. Her father's
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: house became a rendezvous for the eligible young men of
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: the vicinity, and many a womanly woman sat beside her
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: lonesome fireside, while young professional men and officers from the
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: nearby garrison made the rafters of the Blandy withdrawing room
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: ring with their song and laughter. Of all the gay
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: young redcoats who came to court, Lawyer Blande's daughter, the
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: most favored was Captain William Henry Cranston, an infantry officer,
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: brother to Lord Mark Care of Scotland, and possessor of
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: a yearly income of fifteen hundred pounds, a very respectable
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: fortune in those days. Other suitors gradually drifted away, and
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: in the course of time the Captain's proposal of marriage
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: was duly made, discussed by the Blandy family, and accepted.
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: Happy in the possession of her gold laced lover, Mary
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: Blandy went about her preparations for marriage, choosing silks and
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: taffetas for gowns with the nice discrimination that marked all
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: her dealings, embroidering silk stockings for war at the Grand
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: Court levies she would attend when her precious sweetheart should
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: at last be promoted and ordered for duty at London Town,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: and between whilst dreaming the long, long opened eyed dreams
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: every girl dreams during her engagement. Then one day came
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: a letter for Lawyer Blandy from the North Scotland. It
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: was signed by a young woman claiming to be Captain
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: Cranston's wife, and what was more, the mother of his son.
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: Mister Blande called his daughter to him, showed her the
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: letter and told her she must have nothing more to
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: do with the captain. Shocked as she was, Mary still
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: held faith in her lover, believing the best of him,
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: as all good women do of the men they loved,
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: declaring there was either some mistake or that the Captain
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: would be able to make a satisfactory explanation this. He
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: was given an opportunity to do that very night, and
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: when confronted with the documentary evidence of his perfidy, coolly
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: denied any attachment with the letters. Cinder When Lawyer Blandie
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: worldly wise from forty years practice of a profession which
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: has its tap roots and human frailties. Declared he needed
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: something more than the young officer's bare denial. The Captain
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: asked a few days grace in which to marshal his defense,
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: declaring he too, would produce documentary evidence. Blandy was a
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: just man and acceded to the Captain's request, but put
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: him on his honor not to see or communicate with
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: Mary until he showed the promised papers. Few days later,
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: Captain Cranston appeared at the Blandy residence with a letter
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: bearing a signature identical with the one mister Blandy had received.
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: This letter, addressed to the Captain, admitted that Cinder was
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: neither his wife nor his son's mother, and had no
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: claim whatever upon Captain William Henry Cranston of His Majesty's Army.
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: The canceled engagement was renewed, and preparations for the wedding
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: were all most complete when a second letter came from
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: mister Blande imploring him not to let his daughter marry
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: a scoundrel. The writer averrege she had been led into
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: making a denial of her wifehood by an urgent appeal
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: from Captain Cranston, telling her he had no intention of
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: marrying Miss Blande, having become engaged to her merely as
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: a diversion. He had urged his wife to stultify herself
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: because he had no chance of preferment in the service
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: if it were known he was married, whereas if he
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: could pass a single a few months longer, he would
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: surely be promoted, and would then acknowledge her as his
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: wife and bring her to live with him. With womanly unselfishness,
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: she had agreed to write the lift letter he sought,
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: but far from feeling proper gratitude of her sacrifice, the
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: unprincipled rogue had sent copies of her renunciation to her family,
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: who thereupon turned her out of doors. She was reduced
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: to starvation and prayed mister Blandy to release her husband
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: from his engagement and restore him to her. To prove
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: the truth of her claims, she enclosed the letter Crinceton
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: had written, asking her to sully her reputation for his sake,
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: and declaring his engagement to marry a mere frivolous pastime.
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: Such evidence could not be ignored. In spite of fervent
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: protestations of innocence. Mister Blandy sent the Coxcombe Captain about
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: his business, and forbade his daughter, on pain of disinheritance,
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: ever to see him or write to him again. But
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: the love that laughs at Locksmith's pays even less attention
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: to parental commands, And though Mary dutifully forbore seeing the Captain,
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: she carried on a continual clandestine correspondence with him. His
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: earnest disavowals of all wrongdoing, his passionate declarations that he
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: was the victim of a designing woman who sought to
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: stand between him and happiness overbore Mary's customary keen judgment.
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: In a short time, she ceased to think of him
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: as a deceiver and regarded him as a greatly wronged man.
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: Once or twice she undertook to plead her lover's cause
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: with her father, but her advances called forth such outbursts
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: of temper from the indignant old gentleman that she ceased
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: the attempts. Mary had not inherited her father's auburn hair
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: and gray eyes without a fair share of his choleric disposition,
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: and in the course of their arguments she repaid most
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: of his irascible remarks with compound interest forgetting that keyholes
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: are as fairly adapted to servant's ears and eyes as
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: to keys. Her father's adamant attitude and her lack of
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: intimate acquaintances among the neighborhood young women forbade her telling
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: her troubles to a disinterested listener, and with this safety
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: event denied her, she poured forth her woes to her
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: companion in misery, Captain Cranston. That gentleman was absent on
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: leave from his regiment, visiting relatives in Scotland, and it
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: may well be supposed his replies were from urging her
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: to meet obedience or patient waiting. Yet never did he
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: counsel her to defy her parent openly, nor did he
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: suggest a romantic elopement. Mister Blande possessed a considerable fortune
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: and an unrelenting temper. If Mary contracted an unsanctioned marriage,
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: she would certainly come dowerless to her husband, and that
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: eventuality was far from being included in Cranston's program. In
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: these circumstances, he had recourse to a stratagem pretending great elation.
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: He wrote his forlorn sweetheart that he had met a
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: witch in the Highlands of Scotland. A woman able to
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: brew all sorts of potent drafts. She could concoct potions
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: which begot instant and undying love in the breasts of
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: those who took them. She could charm birds from their
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: nests and snakes from their holes. Best of all, she
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: could prepare a medicine, quite harmless to the taker, which
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: could mister Blandee, but be induced to swallow it would
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: instantly turn his aversion to Captain Cranston's marriage with his
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: daughter into a beaming consent. Mary knew the power of
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: Scottish wishes, were they not beings condemned for sorcery at
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: every court term, and this particular which Cranston wrote, was
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: more powerful in her magic, both black and white, than
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: any yet condemned to hang. Trusting implicitly in her lover's promises,
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: Mary joyfully awaited the coming of the packet, which should
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: bring her a happy issue out of all her afflictions.
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: In due time, the drug arrived, marked as had been
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: agreed powders for polishing Scottish pebbles. It was fine white,
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: and when applied to the tongue with a moistened finger,
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: had the faint tart sweet taste of apples. At her
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: first opportunity, Mary mixed a generous portion of the medicine
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: with her father's morning gruel. Then waited expectantly for an
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: abatement of his hatred of Captain Cranston, But instead of
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: becoming complaisant, mister Blandy grew more testy than ever. Fearing
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: the charm had lost some of its potency in the
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: long trip from Scotland, Mary administered as still stronger dose
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: the following morning. Shortly after word, her father took to
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: his bed with violent stomach pains. For a few days.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: Mary gave him no more of the powders, and his
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: health began to mend gradually, but his temper remained as
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: hot as formerly. Letters from the Captain urged her to
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: continue the treatment, and, feeling sure her lack of success
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: was due to insufficient dosage of the magic powder, she
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: prepared a larger portion than ever, pouring it into the
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: broth prescribed by the physician. Almost immediately, mister Blandy became
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: desperately ill. The doctor was summoned posthaste, but declared his
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: skill unavailing. The patient was dying then, and not till
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: then was Mary's consciousness awakened to the enormity of her actions.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: At last she realized the mysterious powders and her father's
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: illness were cause and effect. Overcome with horror at the
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: part she had unwittingly played, she rushed into her father's
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: bed chamber, and, falling to her knees, sobbed. Oh father,
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: dear dear father, do what you will with me, mete
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: out any punishment you say fit, but forgive you foolish love,
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: blind child, Oh my.
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 3: Father, my father, forgive me, forgive me.
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: In spite of the violent pain he suffered, Mister Blandy
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: lay calmly while she told her story, tears streaming down
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: her cheeks, her words split with sobbing. At last he
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: put forth his hand, laying it gently on his daughter's
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: bowed head. My dear, he gasped, I forgive thee freely,
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: nay more, I bless thee, and pray God will bless THEE.
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: Now go and say no more of this business, lest
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: thou shouldst let drop some word to thine own prejudice. Farewell,
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: my child, and may God pity and watch over thee.
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: As the weeping girl groped her way blindly from the room.
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: Lawyer Blandy muttered, Oh, the villain, the graceless villain, to
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: come to my house, eat at my table, and in
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: return take away my life and ruin my daughter. Beside
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: herself with grief and remorse, Mary ran from the house,
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: seeking solitude in which to weep away some of the
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: anguish in her heart. At last, feeling she must see
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: her father to implore his forgiveness once more before he died,
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: she re entered the house and sought the death chamber.
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: A strange man, roughly dressed and armed with a heavy bludgeon,
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: stood at the door. As she approached. He smiled malignantly
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: at or tomboy. He announced, zout, not into here, thy
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: devil's work is already done. With a start, Mary recognized
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: the bailiff. Though age had altered him, he still bore
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: a strong resemblance to the gutter urchin she had thrashed
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: years before for fighting with his nails like a yowling
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: GiB cat. And at his repetition of the epithet tomboy,
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: she remembered his shouted prophecy in the streets of Henley,
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: He'll die on the gallows. Mary Blandie. Now he was
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: a hanger on at the jail, a thief taker servant
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: to the Constable Tomboy. His taunt of years ago came
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: back to her, Gallows Bird Tomboy. She had been a
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: girl of fourteen when the dirty street Arab had called
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: her that. Now she leaned weakly against the wall for support,
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: closing her eyes in hopeless misery. Tomboy, Tomboy, Callows Bird Tomboy.
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: The words seemed beating a rhythm in her pulses. A
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: hand fell on her shoulder, Mary Blandie, in the name
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: of our Lord the King. She was under arrest. Her
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: trial for parricide was held at Oxford on March third,
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: eighteen fifty two. Among the witnesses for the Crown were
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: her servants, all of whom testified to the heated debates
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: she had with her father over Captain Cranston. Not one, however,
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: could be made to say she had shown any evidence
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: of harboring a grudge. On the contrary, all the testimony
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: showed that her anger evaporated almost as soon as it boiled.
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: While England today enjoys what it is perhaps the best
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: system of criminal procedure in the world, a system under
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: which speedy results are achieved in few, if any innocent
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: persons suffering justice. She was just emerging from the dark
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: ages in which to be accused of crime was almost
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: tantamount to being convicted when Mary Blandy was called to
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: the bar. Persons accused of felony or permitted counsel, it
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: is true, but only to a limited extent. Their lawyers
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: might advise them on matters of law. But though the
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: crown was numerously and ably represented by trial lawyers, counsel
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: for the accused might neither examine witnesses for the defense,
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: cross examined witnesses of the prosecution, nor advise their clients
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: respecting examination of witnesses or any other matter of fact.
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: This might not seem so great a hardship at first glance,
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: but when it is remembered that a trial consists merely
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: of measuring facts developed in evidence by the yardstick of
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: the law, it will be seen that for one untrained
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: in the law to develop a proper legal defense from
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: the testimony of his witnesses, or to break down the
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: prosecution's case in law by astute cross examination, was almost
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: an impossibility. Add to this the fact that while the
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: crown's lawyers might address the court in jury at length,
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: the defendant's council might not be heard in argument, and
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: the hopelessness of the accused ply may be realized to
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: offset the inability of the defendant to be heard through council.
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: The theory that the judge himself was charged with the
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: protection of the defendant's rights was laid down, but only
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: too often. In those days, this theory was no more
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: than a legal fiction, a grim jest at the prisoner's expense.
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: The indictment for murder covered several parchment sheets, and charged
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: that Mary Blandie, Spinster, her, not having the fear of
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: God before her eyes, did wickedly, wilfully, maliciously, and of
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: her deliberate and premeditated malice, feloniously kill and murder her father,
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: the said Francis Blandee, of the town of Henley, aforesaid,
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: against the form of the statute in such case made
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: and provided, and against the dignity of our Lord the King.
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: How are you betried, Mary Blandie, asked the court's clerk,
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: when he had finished reading the interminable hodgepodge of legal
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: verbiage accusing her of murder by God and by my country.
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: The girl replied, using the perscribed form mila, which signified
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: she desired trial by jury. Twelve residents of the Vicinity
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: were sworn well and truly to try, and a true
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: deliverance made between our Lord and King and Mary Blandy's spinster,
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: and the trial commenced. It lasted eleven consecutive hours, when
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: all the Crown's witnesses had been examined, no testimony was
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: offered by the defense, and the Attorney General had harangued
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: the jury, charging Mary Blandy with the foulest of crimes
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: next to treason known to the law. The judge nodded
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: to the girl. Her time to speak had come bewildered
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: by the unfamiliar surroundings denounced by the very servants of
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: her father's house, and with not one friendly eye upon
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: her in all that crowded court room, an inexperienced girl
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: rose to plead for her life. An eye witness of
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: the trial describes her as being above medium height, erect
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: and proud and bearing, and with calm eyes and unruffled brow.
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: She was plainly but decently dressed in a gown of
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: dark woolen stuff with white linen collar and wristbands. Her voice,
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: though low, was distinct, firm and unhurried, and her wide
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: gray eyes never left the judge's face as she spoke.
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: Among all the addresses delivered in court since man first
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: sat in judgment on man, Mary Blandi's surely deserves high
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: rank for strength and simple eloquence. The speech attributed to
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: Robert Emmett had long been held a masterpiece of forensic oratory.
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: But Emmett was a practiced orator and fired with patriotism.
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: Mary Blandie had never addressed a public gathering in her life,
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: and was on the point of exhaustion at the end
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: of eleven hours of denunciation, an ordeal sufficient to break
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: the spirit of a strong man, My lord, she began,
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: dropping a courtesy to the court. It is mortally impossible
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: for me to detail to you all the hardships I
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: have endoed, but west of all I have been aspersed
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: in my character. In the first place, it has been
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: said I spoke ill of my father, that a curse him.
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: That is entirely false. Sometimes little family affairs have happened,
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: and we did not speak as kindly to each other
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: as I could have wished I own. I am passionate,
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: my Lord, and in my passion I may have dropped
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: some hard words. But your lordship must have noticed what
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: great care has been taken to recollect every word I
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: have said which could be applied to my disadvantage. These
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: are hardships, my lord, such as you yourself must allow
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: to be so. It has been said too that I
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: endeavored to make my escape. Your lordship will judge the
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: difficulties I labored under. I lost my father. I was
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: accused of being his murderess. I was not allowed to
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: go near him. I was forsaken by my friends, affronted
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: by the mob, insulted by my servants. Although I begged
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: to have the liberty to listen at the door when
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: he died, I was not allowed it. My keys were
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: taken from me, my shoe buckles and garters, too, to
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: prevent my making away with myself, as though I were
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: the most abandoned creature. What could I do? My Lord?
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: Was this a condition in which to attempt an escape?
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: When I was arrested in my home, I was locked
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: up for fifteen hours without a maid to attend the
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: decencies of my sex. I was sent to jail, and
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: the high sheriff told me he must put an iron
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: on me. A little later he came in and said
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: he must put a still heavier iron on my ankles.
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: Until my day in court arrived, I was chained like
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: a savage beast. My Lord, newspapers and ballad mongers have
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: made free with my reputation. I have been represented as
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: the most abandoned of my sex, and prejudiced in the
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: eyes of the world. I submit myself to your lordship
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: and to the worthy jury. I do assure you, as
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: I am answered at the Great Tribunal, where I am
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: some day to appear. I am entirely innocent of my
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: father's death. I really thought the powder was an innocent,
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: innofansive thing, and I gave it to him to procure
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: his love. It has been mentioned I should say that
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: I have been ruined, my Lord, in the sense the
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 1: witness is mean. I have not. I am virtuous. But
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: when a young girl loses her character, is not that
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: her ruin? Is it not ruining my character to have
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: this vile charge of murder laid upon me? Whatever may
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: be the events of this trial, my Lord, I'm already
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: ruined most effectually and beyond the hope of redemption. Carefully
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: and painstakingly, the judge instructed the jury and the legal
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: definitions of murder in the first degree, murder in the
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: second degree, manslaughter, and innocence. He seems to have been
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: a just man who took his duty to conserve the
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: prisoner's legal rights seriously. The instructions done, the court rose
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: waiting the jury's retirement, but no movement came from the
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: jury box. The clerk frowned an annoyance a baili of
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: motion to the jury's foreman to retire, but he was
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: answered by a stubborn shake of the head. Gentleman of
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: the jury exclaimed the clerk, have you agreed upon a verdict?
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: He is prepared to suggest sarcastically that they retire deliberate.
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: When the foreman answered in the negative, he was not
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: given the opportunity where you have replied the foreman. Prisoner,
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: look on the jury jury behold the prisoner, cried the
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: clerk mechanically. Then as Mary Blandy rose and regarded the
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: men who held her fate. The clerk continued, gentlemen of
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: the jury, how do you find the prisoner at the
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: bar guilty? Or not guilty, guilty. The foreman spoke the
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: words of doom. Gruffly. Mary Blandy's unpopularity in the neighborhood
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: had paid its final dividend. Your verdict is that you
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: find the prisoner at the bar guilty of murder in
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: the first degree, so say all of you. The clerk intoned,
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: following the ritual of all criminal trials. Again, the jurors
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: nodded solemnly, bring me my cap, the judge word. An
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: attendant fetched a small black silk cap, which the judge
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: fitted over his full bottomed judicial wig. No sentence of
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: death could be pronounced in an English court unless the
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: judge wore this symbol of mourning. The symbolism of the
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: black cap in English courts was equivalent to the broken
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: wand and German tribunals when the death sentence was given
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: footnote see article three of this series The Magic Mirror
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: Murders end footnote. Briefly, the court congratulated Mary Blandy on
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: having had a fair and impartial trial by a jury
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: of her peers, and ordered that she be hanged by
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: the neck until death. On the sixth of the following month,
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: as legal form prescribed, He ended the sentence with the
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: prayer that God would have mercy on her soul. The
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: girl received her sentence calmly, nor did she waste breath
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: in vain, Please for mercy. She was not a lawyer's daughter,
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: for nothing. None knew better than she the inexorable course
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: of British justice. During the thirty three days of her imprisonment,
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 1: Mary's conduct was marked by the utmost gentleness. Not once
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: was she heard to protest against her fate, or to
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: reproach the servants and former friends on whose testimony she
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: had been condemned. Poor girl, why should she cling to life?
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 1: Her father was dead and she condemned in the world's
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: opinion as his murderess. Her lover had forsaken her. In
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: all the world, she had not a single friend or
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: well wisher. April sixth the dawned bright and warm. Mary
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: Blandy arrayed herself in a modish gown of black bombazine,
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: with a white kerchief about her throat. When the sheriff's
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: men came to lead her to execution, she wished them
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: a cheerful good morning. Executions in England in those days
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: were publicly conducted, and the gallows on which criminals were hanged,
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: was not erected in the jail yard for each execution.
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: It was kept standing in an open field, where its
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 1: grim shadow was a constant reminder to evil doers. And
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: this field was nearly a mile from the jail where
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: Mary Blandy was confined. A carriage was offered her, but
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: she declined, saying she would enjoy the april sunshine as
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: long as possible. So, accompanied by the officers and a clergyman,
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: she set out upon her last journey afoot. Previous to
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: leaving the jail, her wrists had been crossed and bound
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: before her with black ribbons, a concession to her sex
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: and gentility, and this mode of tying her hands permitted
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: her to hold a prayer book before her. This was
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: another courtesy for condemned criminal's hands were customarily lashed behind
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: their backs with a rope. The attending clergyman read the
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: office appointed for executions in the Book of Common Prayer,
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 1: but Mary Blandy opened her book to the psalter appointed
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: for the sixth day of the month, and read from
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 1: Psalm thirty two. Blessed is he whose unrighteousness is forgiven
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: and whose sin is covered, I said I will confess
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 1: my sins unto the Lord, and so thoust forgavest the
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: wickedness of my sin. Beneath the gibbet, a step ladder
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: draped in black bunting had been set up, and on
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: this she mounted two rungs, saying, gentlemen, I beseech you
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: hang me no high of for decency's sake. But the
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: knotted noose swinging from the gallows crossbar would not reach
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 1: her where she stood, so she climbed to the ladder's top.
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 1: A puff of wind caused the ladder to sway slightly,
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: and the poor girl cried out in terror of falling,
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: raising her helpless bound hands to steady herself fear. Ye
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: not tomboy, called a hoarse voice from the group about
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: the gallows. Ye'll fall clean to hell in a minute.
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: The Chief Constable turned and struck her torment her such
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: a heavy blow in the mouth that his lips bled.
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: So her old enemy's last meeting with Mary Blandy was
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: like his first, the occasion of a beating. When the
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 1: rope had been adjusted, Mary raised her hands, drew her
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: kerchief over her face, and stood a moment in silent prayer.
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: Then she held her prayer book forward. This was the
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: signal agreed upon between her and the sheriff. Two husky
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 1: jell attendants heaved the ladder from beneath her, and Mary
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: Blandy's slender body swung between earth and heaven. It was
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 1: half an hour before they cut her down, for her
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: weight was not great enough to break her neck, and
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: she strangled slowly, while the great crowd of mean folk
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: gathered to watch the execution stood in hanging, jawed amazement
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: to see a woman fight so long for life. At
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: one o'clock the following morning, she was carried by torchlight
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 1: to the family vault at Henley, and, with the rope
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: that strangled her still about her slim white throat, buried
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: beside the father for whose murder, rightly or wrongly, she
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: was hanged. Diligent search was made for Captain Cranston, but
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 1: the scoundrel had heard of Mary's arrest, and, deserting the army,
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: fled to France. For five years, he lived a fugitive
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: from justice, but the government took legal proceedings to attach
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 1: the source of his income. At last, reduced to abject poverty,
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: he died in a home for the indigent kept by
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: the church at Boulogne, and was buried in a nameless
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: grave in foreign soil. This is the fifth article of
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: a series that Sebery Quinn is writing for Weird Tales.
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: The six will appear in our next issue. It is
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: entitled The Werewolf of Saint Bunol. I described some startling
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: things that happened in France under the reign of Charles
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 1: the ninth. Be sure to read this gripping article and
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: the May Weird Tales end of section five, number six,
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: The Werewolf of Saint Bunol. The long European twilight was dying,
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 1: and darkness crept stealthily across the fields and pasture lands.
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 1: As three horsemen trotted slowly along the forced road of
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: Saint Bunol. Two of the riders carried lutes slung across
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 1: their shoulders, which marked them as Trouvour's ballad singers, while
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 1: the third rode slightly to the rear, balancing a portmanteau
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: and his saddle bow, by which token he was labeled
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 1: attendant of the other two. All three jangled long swords
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 1: from their hips, for France was under the reign of
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: the Weak and vacillating Charles the ninth, And he who
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: would bring his life and property safely to his journey's
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: end must need travel prepared to defend them swounds, swore
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: one of the minstrels, drawing a scarlet cloak more tightly
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: about his shoulders. But this abominable wood is colder than
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: the tomb of the blessed Lewis, with winter a good
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 1: two moons away. Methinks this chill in the air hath
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: more or the devil's flavor than of God's good weather.
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 1: His companion grunted a reply and sunk his chin deeper
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: in his tippet. The speaker looked right and left at
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 1: the pale new moonlight sifting eerily between the tree trunks,
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 1: and continued, A flagon of the Count's wine would like
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 1: me well enough? The now what wo A twenty mile
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 1: ride and no provender for the man a beast along
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: the way I'd seen of Alexander the Greek and Arthur
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: of the Briton from now till sun up for a
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 1: single stoop of wine and a morsel of bread and cheese.
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: Again an inarticulate reply from his mate Steath. The conversationally
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 1: inclined singer went on, didst ever see such a lonesome,
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: uncanny place as this accursed bois? Methinks Monsieur Leupgarou himself
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: would like no better place for his questing. He fled
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: ung back his bearded chin with a ringing laugh, and
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: began the opening lines of Bisclavaret in a deep baritone.
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 1: The poem, one of France's oldest, dealt with the multitudinous
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: herd not yet made fast in hell, the people of
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: the loup garoux or werewolf, who had sold their souls
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 1: to the devil in return for the power of transforming
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: themselves in the wolves to kill and devour their enemies.
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 1: All Europe trembled at the very name of these men monsters,
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 1: but no country was more plagued by them than France. Hush, hush, Auri,
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 1: the taciturn minstrel suddenly broke his silence as the singer
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 1: expanded the theme of his terrible song. Pou le more
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: de la mon dieu ceased that singing. Suppose a werewolf
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: were in this twenty times damned wood. He glanced fearfully
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: among the shadows. We should all be torn to bits. Bah,
• 2:09:50
  Speaker 1: the other replied, the luke Garou would be lucky if
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: I did not eat him famished, as I am oh
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: la monsieur. Where wolf, he cried mockingly, come out of
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 1: the forest, Come out and be eaten by the hungriest
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: song singer whoever kissed the tab and winch or drank
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 1: a gallon of burgundia a draft. It was as if
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 1: his challenge had been waited for. From a low clump
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 1: and bracken beside the road rose such a marrow freezing
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: howl as no man had heard before, and a huge gray,
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 1: shaggy form, larger than any wolf that ever fought a
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 1: pack of hounds, launched itself straight at the astonished travour's throat.
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: The horses reared in sudden terror, plunging futilely to beat
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: off his assailant. Amoi luis, amoi froscoir quick for the
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 1: love of God, or I perish. But the other singer
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 1: and the servant could give no aid. Encumbered by their
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 1: cloaks and trappings, their horses plunging and rearing in panic fear,
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 1: they could but fight desperately to retain their saddles, and
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 1: cry supplications to the Virgin help help the attacked man
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 1: called again, Then with a shout of desperate he fell
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: from his saddle, The great gray thing's teeth fastened and
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: his shoulder near the base of his neck. For a
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 1: moment he thrashed among the underbrush, Unable to draw his
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 1: long sword and powerless, the thrust back the creature with
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: his bare hands. In the struggle, his hand brushed against
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 1: the hangar and his girdle. He dragged the short cut
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 1: and thrust blade from its scabbard with frantic haste, and
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: struck once twice three times at the foul creature, snarling
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: at his throat. A cry of rage and pain sounded
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 1: amid the monsters growling, and with a deep angry bay,
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 1: it rushed off into the forest depths. Mon Dieu gasped
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 1: the minstrel as he regained his saddle. Would the dight
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 1: he did, thy warning, Louis, never again will I challenge
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 1: one of those tall as hounds from the devil's kennel
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 1: Tomorrow morning, if it please I, lady, we see the
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 1: light of another day. This matter goes before my Lord Duke.
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: Holy Church and the Secular Government must combine to rid
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 1: the province of these changeling wolves. The three riders set
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 1: spurs to their mounts, nor did they slacken rain till
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 1: safe within the fortifications of the city of dol. Next morning,
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 1: the two singers and their lackey appeared before the provincial
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 1: officials and made formal complaint that they had been set
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 1: upon and one of them all but killed by a
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: loup garoux or werewolf, in the forest of Saint Bonno.
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 1: The officials looked grave when they had heard the complainants
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: through This was not the first account of werewolf depredations
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 1: to come before them. Farmers living in the territory contiguous
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 1: to the city had brought in accounts of sheep stolen
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: from the fold at dead of night, of dogs killed
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 1: as they watched the flocks, even of little children found
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 1: dead and horribly mingled along the roadside and beneath the hedges.
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 1: Now came these three wayfarers, all of them veterans of
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: the wars, and two of them men of learning and respect,
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: to tell of being boldly attacked on the royal road
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 1: as they journeyed through the wood. This thing must not
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: be the power of the country. Must be raised the werewolf,
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 1: for ware wolves responsible for the outrages sent forthwith to
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: the fiery hell, where their master, the devil, waited the
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 1: coming of their forfeited souls. France of fifteen seventy three
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 1: was in no condition to police her country districts. The
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 1: long and devastating wars between Huguenots and Catholics had made
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 1: a sort of no man's land of large districts. Charles
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 1: the Knights, the king was a man of wax, molded
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: now by this, favorite now that, and giving no thought
• 2:13:28
  Speaker 1: to the welfare of his people. Every available sow that
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 1: taxation could ring from rich or poor was spent to
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: gratify or further the ambitions of the most corrupt and
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 1: consciousness politician whoever debased a government, the Queen Mother Catherine
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: de Medici. In these circumstances, the Court Parliament at Dole
• 2:13:46
  Speaker 1: might pass as many enactments as it chose, but lacking
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: force with which to make its mandates effective, its acts
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 1: were but mere scraps of unavailing paper. One power still
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 1: remained to the court. This was a levee on moss.
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 1: A j general calling to arms of the countryside tradesmen
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: in residence of the towns of those days stood bareheaded
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 1: when titled swaggerers, rode forth, and the agricultural classes were
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: little more important to the nobility than the earth they tilled.
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 1: For one not holding a patent of nobility to engage
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 1: in the gentlemanly sport of hunting was to court immediate
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: and merciless punishment. Game must be preserved for the nobles
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 1: to hunt. Though the peasant's stomach went empty and his
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 1: flocks and herds were depleted by wolves, till poverty crushed
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: him to the ground. Now was a chance to declare
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 1: an open season, give the peasants the thrill of engaging
• 2:14:37
  Speaker 1: in the noble pastime of the chase, rid the country
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: of the dreaded werewolves, and save the sorely needed public
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 1: funds all at once. Accordingly, the following proclamation was issued
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 1: by the Court of Parliament at Dole. According to the
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 1: advertisement made to the Sovereign Court of Parliament at Dole,
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 1: that in the territories of Aponnier Salvaine or Chapon, and
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: the neighboring villages has often been seen for some time
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: past a werewolf, who it is said, has already seized
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 1: and carried off several little children, so that they have
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 1: not been seen since. And since he has attacked and
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 1: done injury to divers horsemen in the country who kept
• 2:15:13
  Speaker 1: him off only with great difficulty and danger to their
• 2:15:16
  Speaker 1: persons and lives. The said Court, desiring to prevent any
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 1: greater danger, has permitted, and by these presents, does hereby
• 2:15:24
  Speaker 1: permit all those who are now abiding and dwelling in
• 2:15:27
  Speaker 1: said places and others, notwithstanding all and any edicts concerning
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: the chase, to assembol with pikes, halberts, arquebuses, and other weapons,
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 1: to chase and to pursue the said werewolf in every
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 1: place where they may find him, to seize him, to
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: tie him, or if necessary, to kill him, without incurring
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 1: any pains or penalties of any sort, kind or nature whatsoever.
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 1: Given at the convocation of the said Court on the
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 1: thirteenth day of the month of September fifteen seventy three
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 1: mounted herold were dispatched throughout the territory adjacent to Dole,
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: and within a few days the court's proclamation was known
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 1: to every dweller in the vicinity. Soon point processions were
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 1: seen issuing from all the villages in the neighborhood, headed
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 1: by their parish priests with sacred statues born before them.
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 1: The people sallied forth to hunt down the dreaded Loup Garoux.
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 1: Solemn high mass had been sung, the weapons of the
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 1: huntsmen had been formally laid in the chancels of their
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 1: churches and blessed by the cures, and now the hunt commenced.
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 1: Separating into parties of two, the peasants ranged to fields
• 2:16:35
  Speaker 1: and woods, seeking everywhere for their accursed prey. It must
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 1: be admitted that many of them had no stomach for
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 1: their task, and would have dropped their weapons and fled
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 1: incontinently at the first sight of anything resembling a werewolf
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 1: in the most remote way. Others so far forgot the
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: sacred and official duty with which they were charged, as
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 1: to devote themselves to the hunting of edible game, and
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 1: many a luckless bunny found its way into the pouches
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 1: and later to the kettles of the werewolf hunters. Still
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: others routed forest wolves from their lairs and killed them.
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: So not a few wolves scalps were brought before the
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 1: provincial authorities. But these were all natural wolves, as incapable
• 2:17:14
  Speaker 1: of assuming human shape as the peasants were of becoming wolves,
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 1: And though their deaths doubtless added greatly to the safety
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: of the neighborhood. Sheep folds that brought the werewolf menace
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 1: no nearer a termination than when the Court of Parliament
• 2:17:27
  Speaker 1: first issued its proclamation. Interest in the hunt began to slacken.
• 2:17:31
  Speaker 1: The peasants had their farmlets to attend, and the great
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 1: landed proprietors were heartily sick of having their game preservers
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 1: raided by those supposedly bent on public service. Except among
• 2:17:41
  Speaker 1: those who had lost children or sheep, the Loup Garoux
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 1: became little more than a hazy recollection, and then suddenly, unexpectedly,
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: he was found on the eighth of November fifteen seventy three,
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 1: when the fields were all but bare of vegetation, and
• 2:17:57
  Speaker 1: the last leaves were reluctantly parting, come beanny with the trees.
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: Three laborers, hurrying from their work to their homes at Chastenoy,
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 1: by a woodland shortcut, heard the screams of a little
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 1: girl issuing from a dense tangle of vines and undergrowth,
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 1: And with the child screams mingled the baying of a
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 1: wolf swinging their stout bill hooks, cutting a path for
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 1: themselves through the tangled wild wood. The laborers hastened toward
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 1: the sounds. In a little clearing, they beheld a terrifying sight.
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 1: Backed against a tree, defending herself with a shepherd's crook,
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 1: was a ten year old girl, bleeding from a half
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 1: dozen wounds, while before her was a monstrous creature which
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 1: never ceased its infernal baying and howling as it attacked
• 2:18:38
  Speaker 1: her tooth and nail. As the peasants ran forward to
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 1: the child's rescue, the thing fled off into the forest
• 2:18:45
  Speaker 1: on all fours, disappearing almost instantly in the darkness. The
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 1: men would have followed, but the child demanded all their
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 1: attention for Weakened by loss of blood and exhausted with terror,
• 2:18:55
  Speaker 1: she fell fainting before they could reach her. The child
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 1: was carried home and the workmen reported their adventure to
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 1: the authorities. Their astonishment had been too great and the
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 1: night too dark for them to make accurate observations, so
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 1: there was a conflict in their testimony. To affirmed the
• 2:19:11
  Speaker 1: thing possessed the body of a wolf, the third swore
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: positively it was a man, and what was more, to
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: the point, he recognized him. The clerical authorities cast their
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 1: vote with the peasants asserting the child's assailant a wolf,
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 1: and there the matter rested for a time. On the
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: fourteenth of the month, the disappearance of a little boy
• 2:19:31
  Speaker 1: about eight years old was reported. The child had last
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 1: been seen within an arrow's flight of the gates of Dole,
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 1: yet he had vanished as completely as though swallowed by
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 1: the earth. Now the civil authorities decided on action. They
• 2:19:45
  Speaker 1: were not inclined to discount the werewolf theory entirely, for
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: to deny the existence of such monsters in those days
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 1: was treading dangerously close to the skirts of heresy. But
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 1: neither were they minded to overlook any clue which pointed
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 1: a natur explanation to the mystery. The Frenchman is curiously
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 1: logical and direct, even in matters of superstition. Two days
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 1: after the little boy's disappearance was reported, a sergent de
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 1: Ville set out from Dole, armed with a writ of
• 2:20:15
  Speaker 1: attachment and a very businesslike sword, and accompanied by six
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: stalwart arquebusiers. Guided by the peasant who claimed to have
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 1: recognized the little girl's assailant, the party hastened through the
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: forest of Saint Pinol to the home of one Gille Garnier,
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: which stood beside the banks of a woodland tarn, not
• 2:20:32
  Speaker 1: far from the village of arne Gill Garnier. The man
• 2:20:37
  Speaker 1: they sought was a somber, ill favored fellow, surly and taciturn.
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 1: He walked with a pronounced stoop and a shuffling gait,
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 1: looking neither to the right nor left, and usually muttering
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 1: half crazily to himself. His pale face, repulsive features, and
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 1: livid complexion repelled all advances from those who met him,
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: and little was known of his personal habits. But because
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 1: of his long, unkempt beard, his filthy and ragged colas clothing,
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 1: uncleanliness was next to godliness in those days, and his
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 1: solitary life, he was popularly known as the hermit of
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 1: Saint Benol. This title, however, carried with it no implication
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 1: of sanctity, quite the reverse. Persons with property to lose
• 2:21:15
  Speaker 1: were wont to lock it up securely when the hermit
• 2:21:17
  Speaker 1: was known to be in the vicinity, and many a
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 1: hen roost owed its depreciated population to his evening visits.
• 2:21:24
  Speaker 1: The hermit's hut was as dilapidated as its tenant. Its
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 1: crude roof was made of squares of sod laid across
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 1: rickety rafters, and its walls of uncemented stones, irregularly piled
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 1: one upon another, were encrusted with lichen. The floor was
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 1: of trodden clay, and the rough timber door hung crazily
• 2:21:42
  Speaker 1: on hinges of raw hide. The windows were unglazed and
• 2:21:46
  Speaker 1: stopped against the weather with aprons of untanned skins. The
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 1: sergeant deployed four of his half dozen followers in an
• 2:21:53
  Speaker 1: enveloping movement about the hut, while accompanied by the remaining
• 2:21:56
  Speaker 1: two and his guide. He approached the hut and not
• 2:22:00
  Speaker 1: thunderously on its sagging door with the hilt of his sword.
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 1: Hell calls. Gill Garnier peered evilly from window, I do,
• 2:22:10
  Speaker 1: the sergeant answered, open in the name of the law.
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 1: What seek ye? The hermit parleyed, I seek thee accursed
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 1: of God, werewolf sleave of little children. The officer replied,
• 2:22:25
  Speaker 1: come forth and yield ye, or by lady, I'll come
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 1: in fool thee. Gil Garnier bared his long yellow teeth
• 2:22:33
  Speaker 1: in an ugly snarl and hunched his rounded shoulders as
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 1: if to spring upon the messenger of justice. But a
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 1: second look at the arquebusiers showed him the futility of resistance.
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 1: The arquebus was grandfather to the flintlock musket of revolutionary
• 2:22:47
  Speaker 1: days and great great grandfather to the modern rifle. It
• 2:22:51
  Speaker 1: was nearly as tall as a man, had a bore
• 2:22:53
  Speaker 1: larger than the modern twelve gage shotgun, and was fired
• 2:22:56
  Speaker 1: by its bearer, thrusting the glowing fuse or gun match
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 1: into a touch hole at a time. Breach, even with
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: the inferior gunpowder of those days, had arranged twice that
• 2:23:04
  Speaker 1: of the strongest crossbow, and though it was anything but
• 2:23:06
  Speaker 1: accurate in anime, it carried a charge of leaden slugs
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 1: and broken nails, which scattered almost over a half acre lot.
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 1: If one of the soldiers had opened fire at point
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 1: blank reins, Jill L. Garnier would have been mingled almost
• 2:23:20
  Speaker 1: beyond human recognition. Gil Garnier thought it prudent to come
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 1: out and surrender his arms and legs firmly, manacled an
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 1: iron chain about his neck, binding him fast to the
• 2:23:31
  Speaker 1: sergeant's stirrup. The werewolf of Saint Bunol was brought to Dole.
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 1: For a time. There was a controversy whether state or
• 2:23:40
  Speaker 1: ecclesiastical courts should take jurisdiction. The clerics maintained that the
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 1: prisoner had committed his crimes in the form of a wolf,
• 2:23:47
  Speaker 1: and since he had sold his soul to the devil
• 2:23:49
  Speaker 1: in order to become a werewolf, it was a matter
• 2:23:51
  Speaker 1: cognizable only in the court's spiritual The civil authorities declared
• 2:23:56
  Speaker 1: it had not yet proven that the accused had committed
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 1: any crime, and so if he had committed any whether
• 2:24:02
  Speaker 1: as man or beast, it followed he must be tried
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 1: before the temporal courts. The civil lawyers won, and the
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 1: trial commenced. Witnesses were summoned to prove the deaths of
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: children and the condition in which their bodies were found.
• 2:24:14
  Speaker 1: Shepherds appeared to tell of their missing sheep. The two
• 2:24:17
  Speaker 1: minstrels and their servant told of the attack made on
• 2:24:19
  Speaker 1: them the previous September. The little maid, rescued by the peasants,
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 1: identified the prisoner positively as her assailant, and showed the
• 2:24:27
  Speaker 1: court the scars left by his teeth and nails. Then
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 1: came the examination of the prisoner, in anticipation of his
• 2:24:33
  Speaker 1: claims to innocence. A choice collection of racks, thumb screws,
• 2:24:37
  Speaker 1: leg crushers, and branding irons was made ready, and the
• 2:24:41
  Speaker 1: official torturers looked forward to a busy morning. But the
• 2:24:45
  Speaker 1: prisoner not only confessed all the crimes charged against him,
• 2:24:48
  Speaker 1: but volunteered information concerning a number of others unknown to
• 2:24:51
  Speaker 1: the court. On the last day of Michaelmas September twenty ninth,
• 2:24:56
  Speaker 1: near the wood of lass Air, while in the form
• 2:24:58
  Speaker 1: of wolf, he had attacked and slain with his teeth
• 2:25:01
  Speaker 1: and claws, a little girl of ten or twelve years,
• 2:25:03
  Speaker 1: drawn her into a thicket and gnawed the flesh from
• 2:25:06
  Speaker 1: her arms and legs. On the fourteenth day after All
• 2:25:10
  Speaker 1: Saints November fourteenth, also in the form of a wolf,
• 2:25:13
  Speaker 1: he had seized a little boy, strangled him, and partially
• 2:25:16
  Speaker 1: eaten him. Asked how he could have strangled the child
• 2:25:20
  Speaker 1: if he were in Wolfe's form at the time. He
• 2:25:22
  Speaker 1: was at first vague in his replies, but finally recollected
• 2:25:26
  Speaker 1: that his hands had not been changed, so he still
• 2:25:28
  Speaker 1: had the use of his fingers. On the Friday before
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 1: Saint Bartholomew's Day, he had seized a boy of twelve
• 2:25:34
  Speaker 1: or thirteen near the village of Peruse and killed him,
• 2:25:37
  Speaker 1: but was prevented from eating him by the approach of
• 2:25:40
  Speaker 1: some peasants. These men were found and corroborated the prisoner's statement.
• 2:25:45
  Speaker 1: Although the little girl whose rescue was the cause of
• 2:25:47
  Speaker 1: his arrest declared the prisoner had been in human form
• 2:25:50
  Speaker 1: when he attacked her, Gillgarnier stoutly maintained he had been
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 1: in wolf's shape at the time, and to prove his
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 1: power to change into a wolf at will, he suddenly
• 2:26:00
  Speaker 1: sank to his all fours on the court room floor,
• 2:26:02
  Speaker 1: began capering about in grotesque imitation of a wolf, and
• 2:26:05
  Speaker 1: emitted a series of howls, yelps, and growls which perfectly
• 2:26:09
  Speaker 1: simulated those of a ferocious beast of prey. The court
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 1: deliberated over his case, decided he had imitated wolf calls
• 2:26:16
  Speaker 1: only to terrify his victims, but had never actually assumed
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 1: wolfe's form, and consequently voted him guilty of simple murder,
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 1: unaccompanied by sorcery. As a murderer, he was punishable only
• 2:26:28
  Speaker 1: by the civil authorities. Sentence followed hard upon the verdict.
• 2:26:33
  Speaker 1: On the tenth day following his arrest, Jille Garnier, the
• 2:26:35
  Speaker 1: self confessed werewolf of Saint Beno, was dragged by ropes
• 2:26:39
  Speaker 1: attached to his ankles over a rough road for a
• 2:26:41
  Speaker 1: distance of nearly a mile, bound to a stake, and
• 2:26:44
  Speaker 1: burned to death. Note the reader must be aware that
• 2:26:48
  Speaker 1: Jils Guarnier was the victim of that form of insanity
• 2:26:51
  Speaker 1: known as zoomania, where the patient believes himself an animal. Zoomania,
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 1: or that branch of it known as elupomania, where the
• 2:26:58
  Speaker 1: lunatic imagines himself is fortunately relatively uncommon today, yet frequent
• 2:27:03
  Speaker 1: enough to be recognized by medico legal authorities. If it
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 1: be remembered that Gille Garnier was obviously a man of
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 1: feeble intellect, and that all France, indeed all Europe of
• 2:27:12
  Speaker 1: that day wreaked with terror tales concerning the Loup Garoux,
• 2:27:17
  Speaker 1: which tales Garnier had heard and implicitly believed since earliest infancy.
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 1: It can readily be seen how, when his poor wits
• 2:27:25
  Speaker 1: finally broke down, he came to imagine himself a werewolf.
• 2:27:29
  Speaker 1: The fact that he was lucid enough on every subject
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 1: save this one delusion, stamps his ailment as paranoia or monomania,
• 2:27:36
  Speaker 1: one of the commonest forms of insanity among the young
• 2:27:39
  Speaker 1: and middle aged. The man must have been quite powerless
• 2:27:42
  Speaker 1: to restrain himself when seized with one of his attacks,
• 2:27:45
  Speaker 1: and in any modern court he would have been committed
• 2:27:47
  Speaker 1: to an institution without even being brought to trial. It
• 2:27:51
  Speaker 1: does not appear that he ate the flesh of his
• 2:27:53
  Speaker 1: victims because of hunger. On the contrary, this shocking act
• 2:27:56
  Speaker 1: must be regarded purely as a symptom of his derangement.
• 2:28:00
  Speaker 1: When under the spell of his disease, the lunatic frequently
• 2:28:04
  Speaker 1: resorts to the most unlikely diet. The author was once
• 2:28:07
  Speaker 1: present at an autopsy performed on a paranoiac's body, when
• 2:28:11
  Speaker 1: no less than half a dozen tenpenny nails were extracted
• 2:28:14
  Speaker 1: from the unfortunate man's stomach, several of them almost entirely
• 2:28:18
  Speaker 1: eroded by the natural hydrochloric acid of that organ. See
• 2:28:23
  Speaker 1: Barry Quinn, end of section six, number seven. The human
• 2:28:30
  Speaker 1: hyena Miltonnair. Again the Prefect of Police beat the polished
• 2:28:37
  Speaker 1: top of his bureau with a furious fist and bent
• 2:28:39
  Speaker 1: a stare of angry incredulity on the sergeant de Surratre,
• 2:28:44
  Speaker 1: who stood at attention before him. It has happened again
• 2:28:48
  Speaker 1: to yose Nom de nome Is, a policeman never to
• 2:28:51
  Speaker 1: sleep again in this accursed city, even sir, Monsieur le prefet,
• 2:28:56
  Speaker 1: replied the sergeant imperturbably, another of depo once has been
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 1: dragged from her blessed rest and dismembered. Ha. The Prefect
• 2:29:06
  Speaker 1: fairly thundered. Yes, Monsieur, dismembered even those the others Nom
• 2:29:12
  Speaker 1: du peti baum home, exclaimed the Prefect, then, feeling that
• 2:29:16
  Speaker 1: the name of a good little man was scarcely a
• 2:29:19
  Speaker 1: strong enough oath for the occasion, he added, Hey, norm
• 2:29:22
  Speaker 1: de dieu. He drummed a moment on the polished surface
• 2:29:26
  Speaker 1: of his desk with nervous fingers. Regarding his companion thoughtfully heben,
• 2:29:31
  Speaker 1: he said, at last, away must be found to lead
• 2:29:34
  Speaker 1: a sly one by the heels. No perfectly, Monsieur agreed.
• 2:29:39
  Speaker 1: The sergeant has a garb been placed in all decimetaries,
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 1: not all, monsieur. The city is so unsettled the gendarmes
• 2:29:47
  Speaker 1: are solely needed for patrol duty. Yes, yes, I understand,
• 2:29:52
  Speaker 1: the Prefect interrupted. We must decide upon some other way.
• 2:29:55
  Speaker 1: Leave me. I will think this over. Something must be
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: done at once. Pa adieu tis getting so no man
• 2:30:01
  Speaker 1: can slip peacefully even in his cave. The sergeant saluted,
• 2:30:06
  Speaker 1: placed his right foot exactly six inches behind his left,
• 2:30:09
  Speaker 1: swung round in a perfect about face, and left the room,
• 2:30:12
  Speaker 1: closing the door noiselessly behind him Alone. The Prefect of
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 1: the Paris Police lighted a long, thin cigar and stared
• 2:30:19
  Speaker 1: fixedly at his office wall, blowing clouds of rancid tobacco
• 2:30:22
  Speaker 1: smoke from his nose. The Prefect's hands were very full.
• 2:30:26
  Speaker 1: It was the autumn of eighteen forty eight, and France
• 2:30:28
  Speaker 1: was in such turmoil as she had not known since
• 2:30:31
  Speaker 1: the days of the Directory. That summer, the people had risen,
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 1: Louis Philippe, the last of the Bourbons, had fled to
• 2:30:39
  Speaker 1: England under the assumed name of mister Smith, and a
• 2:30:42
  Speaker 1: second Republic had been declared, with La Martine, the poet historian,
• 2:30:46
  Speaker 1: as a provisional head. But reactionary plots were thicker in
• 2:30:50
  Speaker 1: Paris than Maggot's and Cheese and the gendarmerie, who were
• 2:30:54
  Speaker 1: kept busy guarding the life of the infant republic. Taking
• 2:30:58
  Speaker 1: advantage of the policeman's political preoccupation, criminals of all sorts
• 2:31:03
  Speaker 1: and degrees were plying their nefarious trades, often in broad daylight,
• 2:31:07
  Speaker 1: and no man's life or property were safe. Now added
• 2:31:10
  Speaker 1: to this ordinary run of the mill crime, a new
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 1: scandal had broken out in the city and environs of Paris.
• 2:31:16
  Speaker 1: Several cemeteries within or near the city limits had been
• 2:31:19
  Speaker 1: broken into during darkness, and many graves had been rifled.
• 2:31:23
  Speaker 1: At first, the depredations had been ascribed to medical students
• 2:31:26
  Speaker 1: seeking cadavers for anatomical study, but brief investigations by the
• 2:31:31
  Speaker 1: police proved this theory unsound. Had body snatchers been responsible,
• 2:31:35
  Speaker 1: the bodies would have been carried away. As it was,
• 2:31:39
  Speaker 1: the corpses were found lying about the opened graves and
• 2:31:42
  Speaker 1: broken's tombs in fragments.
• 2:31:45
  Speaker 3: A wild beast, I ain't escaped from a circus.
• 2:31:48
  Speaker 1: People said, But here again the clue proof groundless. With
• 2:31:53
  Speaker 1: characteristic thoroughness such as ever distinguishes French police methods. The
• 2:31:58
  Speaker 1: officers had visited every circus in zoological collection within twenty
• 2:32:03
  Speaker 1: miles of Paris, inquiring if any of them had suffered
• 2:32:06
  Speaker 1: a loss from their cages. Once a clue seemed within
• 2:32:09
  Speaker 1: grasp for a circus owner admitted having lost an animal,
• 2:32:12
  Speaker 1: but the missing beast was a panther. Had monsieur Le
• 2:32:16
  Speaker 1: proprietor ever possessed one of those interesting beasts ayena alas
• 2:32:22
  Speaker 1: monsieur le proprietor was desolated to inform the gentlemen of
• 2:32:26
  Speaker 1: the police it had never been his good fortune to
• 2:32:28
  Speaker 1: include such interesting exhibit of Asia's fauna among his collection. Lions, certainly, diegars,
• 2:32:35
  Speaker 1: but of course leopards, most assuredly panthers, jaguars, pumas. May
• 2:32:41
  Speaker 1: we but a hyena, oh no, may no. Monsieur. The
• 2:32:45
  Speaker 1: proprietor was grieved and shamed to admit it. But not
• 2:32:48
  Speaker 1: such splendid animal as a hyaena had he ever possessed.
• 2:32:52
  Speaker 1: The gendarmes shrugged their shoulders and proceeded with their quest.
• 2:32:57
  Speaker 1: One morning came an urgent message from the intendant of
• 2:33:00
  Speaker 1: her Lachet Cemetery. A most flagrant outrage had been committed
• 2:33:04
  Speaker 1: the night before the body of a young matron buried
• 2:33:06
  Speaker 1: in a five year concession, had been taken from its
• 2:33:09
  Speaker 1: coffin and literally hacked to pieces with the grave digger's spade.
• 2:33:13
  Speaker 1: The gendarmes went to the cemetery and inure to shocking sights.
• 2:33:18
  Speaker 1: Though their profession had made them, their weather beaten faces
• 2:33:21
  Speaker 1: went gray as the spectacle of that poor violated woman's body.
• 2:33:25
  Speaker 1: Blows of brutal strength had sheared limbs from torso the
• 2:33:28
  Speaker 1: face was mashed to an unrecognizable mass with the spade's
• 2:33:33
  Speaker 1: long handle. The top of the head had been beaten
• 2:33:35
  Speaker 1: to a bloody softness with a board wrenched from the
• 2:33:38
  Speaker 1: coffin's headboard. And beside the grave in the mud of
• 2:33:41
  Speaker 1: last night's rain were footprints. Long, slender footprints, the sort
• 2:33:46
  Speaker 1: of tracks of well shod gentleman's boots might leave a clue,
• 2:33:50
  Speaker 1: at last, a clue, the detectives exclaimed, But like all
• 2:33:54
  Speaker 1: previous ones, this clue led nowhere. The soft, moist earth
• 2:33:58
  Speaker 1: held the prince up to the cemetery's very game, but
• 2:34:01
  Speaker 1: the paving flints of the street outside had no testimony
• 2:34:04
  Speaker 1: to offer. Even if the miscreant had left tracks of
• 2:34:07
  Speaker 1: his muddy boots on the stones, the very rain that
• 2:34:09
  Speaker 1: had made the footprints visible in the cemetery would have
• 2:34:12
  Speaker 1: washed away all traces long before the officers arrived. Hard
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 1: pressed though they were by other duties, the police assigned
• 2:34:18
  Speaker 1: guards to Pere Lachaise, and the depredation ceased at Pere Laches,
• 2:34:24
  Speaker 1: But another cemetery less than a mile away was entered,
• 2:34:28
  Speaker 1: and the body of a little girl, a child but
• 2:34:29
  Speaker 1: two years passed her first communion, was dragged from a
• 2:34:32
  Speaker 1: three year concession and shamefully maltreated. Journalism then as now
• 2:34:37
  Speaker 1: was avidly on the trail of scandal, and the Paris
• 2:34:40
  Speaker 1: press began resting from its political tirades to abuse the police.
• 2:34:45
  Speaker 1: Republican and Royalist papers were in harmony on this theme.
• 2:34:48
  Speaker 1: One and all. They called for the immediate apprehension of
• 2:34:51
  Speaker 1: the monster who disturbed the repose of the blessed dead,
• 2:34:54
  Speaker 1: or the resignation of an impotent Prefect of Police. Yet
• 2:34:58
  Speaker 1: all efforts were unavaila. When all cemeteries were under double guard,
• 2:35:03
  Speaker 1: the human Hyaena never put in an appearance. Let the
• 2:35:07
  Speaker 1: guard be relieved for but a single night, and some
• 2:35:10
  Speaker 1: poor woman's body lay unearthed and horribly mingled under next
• 2:35:13
  Speaker 1: morning sun. All these things the Prefect of Police thought
• 2:35:17
  Speaker 1: of as he smoked his acrid cigar in his cabinet
• 2:35:21
  Speaker 1: and drummed up on the polished surface of.
• 2:35:23
  Speaker 3: His desk marbleu.
• 2:35:26
  Speaker 1: He muttered, we must seize this monster, this assassin of
• 2:35:29
  Speaker 1: the sleep of the dead.
• 2:35:31
  Speaker 3: We must, we must, we must.
• 2:35:34
  Speaker 1: But how the fellow's knowledge of preparations for his apprehension
• 2:35:37
  Speaker 1: was uncanny almost it seemed some unfaithful member of the
• 2:35:41
  Speaker 1: police establishment was giving him information. How else explained his
• 2:35:46
  Speaker 1: absence from guarded cemeteries, his inevitable raids upon those not
• 2:35:49
  Speaker 1: protected with gun and bayonet? Aha have it? The Prefect
• 2:35:54
  Speaker 1: sat suddenly forward in his chair and rang for his
• 2:35:57
  Speaker 1: orderly since for the omireur, he ordered. When his call
• 2:36:01
  Speaker 1: was answered, this assassin shall apprehend himself. We will set
• 2:36:05
  Speaker 1: the trap for him. The planet is formed. Now, let
• 2:36:08
  Speaker 1: us work, nom de noome. Why did I never think
• 2:36:11
  Speaker 1: of this before? Rapidly the Prefect sketched his plan for
• 2:36:15
  Speaker 1: the criminal's apprehension. The gunsmith he had summoned, nodding understandably
• 2:36:19
  Speaker 1: at intervals. Can you do it? The Prefect asked at
• 2:36:22
  Speaker 1: lenked yes, monsieur, the armorer answered, I am quite certain
• 2:36:27
  Speaker 1: it can be all right. Hurried preparations took place in
• 2:36:31
  Speaker 1: the material department of police headquarters all next day. Before
• 2:36:35
  Speaker 1: twilight faded into night. The walls of every cemetery throughout
• 2:36:37
  Speaker 1: Paris bristled with spring guns, so cleverly arranged that any
• 2:36:41
  Speaker 1: one attempting to enter the graveyards, except through their gates,
• 2:36:45
  Speaker 1: must necessarily come in contact with concealed wires, which touched
• 2:36:49
  Speaker 1: never so lightly would discharge the cocked and doubly loaded muskets.
• 2:36:54
  Speaker 1: With these automatic centuries on duty before the city's graves,
• 2:36:57
  Speaker 1: the Prefect was able to reduce his human guards to
• 2:36:59
  Speaker 1: one or two uo men for each burying ground, leaving
• 2:37:02
  Speaker 1: some score more gendarmes for you for patrolling the troubled
• 2:37:05
  Speaker 1: city streets. Autumn ripened into winter, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew
• 2:37:11
  Speaker 1: of Napoleon the Great, was chosen president of the new
• 2:37:14
  Speaker 1: Republic by an overwhelming vote and was triumphantly inaugurated on
• 2:37:18
  Speaker 1: the twentieth of December, with a relative of the Little
• 2:37:21
  Speaker 1: Corporal at its head. The young Republic felt assured of
• 2:37:25
  Speaker 1: continued existence, and the Paris police were able to turn
• 2:37:28
  Speaker 1: their attention from sedition hunting to thief catching. The palmy
• 2:37:33
  Speaker 1: days of crime were ended, and the press ceased its
• 2:37:36
  Speaker 1: abuse of the police, but the human hyena was still
• 2:37:39
  Speaker 1: at large. Almost with the establishment of the spring guns
• 2:37:43
  Speaker 1: and the cemeteries, his nocturnal raids ceased, and the Prefect
• 2:37:46
  Speaker 1: was about to relieve the graveyard guards and dismount the guns. When,
• 2:37:51
  Speaker 1: on a rainy, dismal night in March eighteen forty nine,
• 2:37:55
  Speaker 1: the gendarmes stationed at Saint Parnas's Cemetery huddled for shelter
• 2:37:59
  Speaker 1: beneath the pentus of the chapel, The rain, when driven
• 2:38:04
  Speaker 1: between the leafless branches of the poplar trees, beat dismally
• 2:38:08
  Speaker 1: down upon the age stained marble tombs and the rough,
• 2:38:11
  Speaker 1: unsodden mounds of the ten year concessions. Off by the
• 2:38:16
  Speaker 1: further wall of the cemetery. Beneath their ghastly white wooden signboards,
• 2:38:21
  Speaker 1: the five and three year concessions seemed to cower from
• 2:38:24
  Speaker 1: the storm. These were the graves of the poorer dead,
• 2:38:28
  Speaker 1: For in France there were four classes of burials beside
• 2:38:31
  Speaker 1: those of the potters field. First were those rich enough
• 2:38:35
  Speaker 1: to own their tombs or grave lots in perpetuity. They
• 2:38:38
  Speaker 1: slept the long, long sleep of death undisturbed. Next came
• 2:38:44
  Speaker 1: the ten year concessionaires, whose relatives had bought them the
• 2:38:47
  Speaker 1: right to lie in moderately deep graves for a decade,
• 2:38:50
  Speaker 1: after which they would be exhumed and deposited in a
• 2:38:52
  Speaker 1: common charnel house, all trace of their identity lost. The
• 2:38:57
  Speaker 1: five year concession's graves were scarcely deeper than the height
• 2:38:59
  Speaker 1: of the coffins they enclosed, and their repose was limited
• 2:39:03
  Speaker 1: to half a decade, while the three year concessions placed
• 2:39:06
  Speaker 1: nearest the cemetery walls, where merely mounds of earth heaped
• 2:39:10
  Speaker 1: over coffins resting on the surface of the ground, destined
• 2:39:13
  Speaker 1: to be broken down, emptied. Thirty six months after their
• 2:39:16
  Speaker 1: tenant's burial, Pardieu, one of the gendarmes, swore, sinking lower
• 2:39:23
  Speaker 1: under his waterproof cape, what a night, and what the
• 2:39:26
  Speaker 1: place better A thousand times the battlefield than such a
• 2:39:29
  Speaker 1: put All the shout of conflict, the crash of musketry bang,
• 2:39:35
  Speaker 1: the report of a discharged rifle cut through his words,
• 2:39:37
  Speaker 1: and a streak of yellow red fire tore the rain
• 2:39:40
  Speaker 1: drenched darkness above the wall beyond the three year concessions.
• 2:39:44
  Speaker 1: Nom de Cook exclaimed, the startled gentarme, leaping to his
• 2:39:48
  Speaker 1: feet and grasping his sable hilt. It is he the
• 2:39:52
  Speaker 1: canal has come together. The officers raced across the boggy graves,
• 2:39:57
  Speaker 1: their drawn swords glistening dully in the rain, Impeded in
• 2:40:00
  Speaker 1: their progress by the mud and darkness, They were in
• 2:40:03
  Speaker 1: time to see a dark figure in a military mantle
• 2:40:05
  Speaker 1: leap the wall and disappear in the gloom. Marks of blood, however,
• 2:40:10
  Speaker 1: gave evidence the spring gun's bullet had struck its mark,
• 2:40:14
  Speaker 1: and a scrap of blue cloth clinging to one of
• 2:40:16
  Speaker 1: the iron spikes with which the wall was topped afforded
• 2:40:19
  Speaker 1: and added clue to the ravisher of the graves. Un Sulda,
• 2:40:24
  Speaker 1: the elder of the Gendarmes pronounced alas, that is, the
• 2:40:28
  Speaker 1: follower of that noble profession should sink to such a crime.
• 2:40:33
  Speaker 1: Next morning, the search was on in earnest from barracks
• 2:40:36
  Speaker 1: to barracks. The Gendarmes, when inquiring if any of the
• 2:40:39
  Speaker 1: military personnel had reported himself suffering from gunshot wounds, almost
• 2:40:45
  Speaker 1: immediately they found their man and the person of Lieutenant Bertrand,
• 2:40:48
  Speaker 1: a junior officer of an infantry regiment stationed in the capitol.
• 2:40:53
  Speaker 1: Not only did this young man show such a wound
• 2:40:55
  Speaker 1: as would match the spring gun's ball, but his cloak
• 2:40:58
  Speaker 1: was ripped by some sharp instrument, and the fragment of
• 2:41:01
  Speaker 1: cloth in the gendarmes possession matched the rent. Their circumstantial
• 2:41:07
  Speaker 1: case was complete The wounded man was confined under guard
• 2:41:12
  Speaker 1: at val de Grass Hospital till his wound was healed,
• 2:41:15
  Speaker 1: then placed on trial. In England or America, his hearing
• 2:41:19
  Speaker 1: would have been before the civil tribunal, for during time
• 2:41:22
  Speaker 1: of peace. In these countries the civil power as separate
• 2:41:25
  Speaker 1: from and superior to the military. But France, though a republic,
• 2:41:29
  Speaker 1: was still imbued with continental European ideas of jurisprudence, maintaining
• 2:41:34
  Speaker 1: one general law for the citizenry in another or administrative
• 2:41:37
  Speaker 1: system for the military and official classes. Consequently, it was
• 2:41:41
  Speaker 1: not a civil criminal court but a court martial which
• 2:41:44
  Speaker 1: heard Bertrand's case. The judge advocate was relieved of the
• 2:41:47
  Speaker 1: necessity of proving his case for the young lieutenant made
• 2:41:50
  Speaker 1: a free confession, revealing one of the most amazing stories
• 2:41:54
  Speaker 1: ever detailed before a judicial inquiry. He was twenty three
• 2:41:59
  Speaker 1: years of age, excellently educated, having been a student at
• 2:42:02
  Speaker 1: the Theological Cemetery at Longe from early youth until at
• 2:42:05
  Speaker 1: the age of twenty. He had entered the army with
• 2:42:08
  Speaker 1: the Junior lieutenant's commission. He was a young man of
• 2:42:11
  Speaker 1: retiring habits, frank and cheerful to his comrades in arms,
• 2:42:15
  Speaker 1: and beloved by every member of his regiment, from the
• 2:42:17
  Speaker 1: colonel to the newest conscript. Private numbers of his brother
• 2:42:21
  Speaker 1: officers testified to his almost feminine delicacy of refinement, and
• 2:42:25
  Speaker 1: to the fact that he was at times seized with
• 2:42:27
  Speaker 1: inexplicable fits of depression and melancholy, none of which, however,
• 2:42:32
  Speaker 1: led to sullenness with his superiors or equals, or churliness
• 2:42:35
  Speaker 1: with his inferiors. According to his own statement made under
• 2:42:39
  Speaker 1: oath in February eighteen forty seven, as he was walking
• 2:42:42
  Speaker 1: with a friend in the country, he came to a churchyard,
• 2:42:45
  Speaker 1: the gate of which stood open the day before a
• 2:42:48
  Speaker 1: woman had been buried, but the sexton had not completed
• 2:42:51
  Speaker 1: his melancholy task of filling the grave, having been interrupted
• 2:42:54
  Speaker 1: by a sudden storm of rain. Bertrand had noticed the
• 2:42:57
  Speaker 1: spade and pick lying beside the partially filled and getting
• 2:43:01
  Speaker 1: rid of his friend by a ruse, he caught up
• 2:43:03
  Speaker 1: the spade and began hurriedly to unearth the coffin. To
• 2:43:06
  Speaker 1: quote his statement, soon I dragged the corpse out of
• 2:43:09
  Speaker 1: the grave and began to hash it with the spade,
• 2:43:12
  Speaker 1: without well knowing what I was about. A laborer saw me,
• 2:43:16
  Speaker 1: and I laid myself flat to the ground, vantre attire
• 2:43:20
  Speaker 1: till he was out of sight. Then I cast the
• 2:43:22
  Speaker 1: body back into the grave. I then went away, bathed
• 2:43:25
  Speaker 1: in a cold sweat, and to a little grove, where
• 2:43:27
  Speaker 1: I reposed for several hours. Notwithstanding the cold rain which fell.
• 2:43:32
  Speaker 1: I was in a state of complete exhaustion. When I arose,
• 2:43:35
  Speaker 1: My limbs were as broken and my head was weak.
• 2:43:38
  Speaker 1: The same prostration and sensation followed each attack. The prisoner
• 2:43:43
  Speaker 1: had suffered no further attack during the subsequent four or
• 2:43:45
  Speaker 1: five months, and had begun to regard his rural experience
• 2:43:49
  Speaker 1: as a fit of temporary madness. Indeed, he had sometimes
• 2:43:52
  Speaker 1: wondered whether it had not been simply a sort of
• 2:43:54
  Speaker 1: waking nightmare, and had actually never occurred at all. In
• 2:43:58
  Speaker 1: the summer of eighteen forty eight, his regiment was ordered
• 2:44:01
  Speaker 1: for duty to Paris, and among the sites he visited
• 2:44:03
  Speaker 1: was the cemetery of pere Laches. While walking through the
• 2:44:06
  Speaker 1: shadowy alleys of this great metropolis, the irresistible craving to
• 2:44:10
  Speaker 1: mutilate a corpse swept over him like a flood. That night,
• 2:44:14
  Speaker 1: he scaled the cemetery's wall, disintered a body and cut
• 2:44:18
  Speaker 1: it to pieces. This was the beginning of the mysterious
• 2:44:21
  Speaker 1: cases of ghoulism which had so baffled and puzzled the
• 2:44:25
  Speaker 1: police of the French capital. At first, Bertrand stated the
• 2:44:29
  Speaker 1: morbid fits followed an over indulgence in wine. His life
• 2:44:32
  Speaker 1: at the seminary had been most abstemious. But later they
• 2:44:36
  Speaker 1: came upon him without exciting cause. The police records failed
• 2:44:40
  Speaker 1: to disclose so great a number. Lieutenant Bertrand stated he
• 2:44:43
  Speaker 1: had undered twenty five bodies, several of them being men.
• 2:44:47
  Speaker 1: These last he had gloated over, but never dismembered, this
• 2:44:50
  Speaker 1: fiendishness being exercised only upon female corpses. Army physicians and
• 2:44:56
  Speaker 1: several eminent civilian practitioners subjected the young man to such
• 2:44:59
  Speaker 1: tests as science of that day afforded, and pronounced him sane.
• 2:45:04
  Speaker 1: The finding of the court was therefore that he be
• 2:45:07
  Speaker 1: shorn of his buttons and insignia of rank, and his
• 2:45:09
  Speaker 1: sword broken in the presence of his regiment, after which
• 2:45:13
  Speaker 1: he be confined in a disciplinary barracks for the period
• 2:45:16
  Speaker 1: of one year, and be dishonorably discharged from the army.
• 2:45:20
  Speaker 1: The sentence was carried out the case of this unfortunate
• 2:45:24
  Speaker 1: young man presents many interesting questions for the medical jurist.
• 2:45:28
  Speaker 1: Taking his early life and training into account, and remembering
• 2:45:31
  Speaker 1: how he must have lived almost entirely in unworldly surroundings
• 2:45:34
  Speaker 1: apart from wholesome feminine society, it is not very difficult
• 2:45:38
  Speaker 1: to imagine the basis of his original perversion. To use
• 2:45:42
  Speaker 1: a good, though much overworked and loosely employed term, he
• 2:45:45
  Speaker 1: was the victim of a complex, that is, a series
• 2:45:49
  Speaker 1: of emotionally accentuated ideas in a repressed state, like Gilles
• 2:45:54
  Speaker 1: de la Val, the Sire de Retz, whose case has
• 2:45:56
  Speaker 1: already been discussed. Foot see article one of this series Bluebeard,
• 2:46:03
  Speaker 1: October twenty three, Weird Tales. This magazine was the first
• 2:46:07
  Speaker 1: to have the courage to make public the shocking revelations
• 2:46:09
  Speaker 1: of the original Bluebeard's trial end footnote. The celebrated Jack
• 2:46:15
  Speaker 1: the Ripper, whose crimes mystified the London police a generation ago,
• 2:46:19
  Speaker 1: and the infamous Marquis de Sade Lieutenant Bertrand unquestionably suffered
• 2:46:24
  Speaker 1: from that form of mental derangement known to modern psychiatrists
• 2:46:28
  Speaker 1: as algolagnia, coupled perhaps with what is called coprophilia, or
• 2:46:32
  Speaker 1: a pathological liking for filth, this last being shown by
• 2:46:36
  Speaker 1: his desire to associate with interred corpses, his periods of
• 2:46:40
  Speaker 1: great excitement while indulging his disgusting mania for the mutilation
• 2:46:44
  Speaker 1: of dead bodies, and the following periods of profound lassitude
• 2:46:48
  Speaker 1: all point plainly to this in the light of modern psychiatry,
• 2:46:53
  Speaker 1: though these same symptoms were the cause of some odd
• 2:46:55
  Speaker 1: speculations by several observers of the case. The late doctor
• 2:46:59
  Speaker 1: Sabin Baring Gould, a profound student of folklore and anthropology,
• 2:47:05
  Speaker 1: naively suggested Bertrand to be the victim of demoniacal possession,
• 2:47:09
  Speaker 1: while Eliot O'Donnell believes or affects to believe him a werewolf.
• 2:47:13
  Speaker 1: To substantiate this surprising theory, he tells of a young
• 2:47:16
  Speaker 1: French woman, one Constance Armand, who was suddenly seized with
• 2:47:20
  Speaker 1: an uncontrollable desire to enter a house of mourning, seized
• 2:47:23
  Speaker 1: the body lying in its open coffin, and eat portions
• 2:47:26
  Speaker 1: of it. Two cases of lunacy cited to prove one
• 2:47:30
  Speaker 1: absurd superstition. Whatever the facts of Bertrand's case, it is
• 2:47:34
  Speaker 1: not to be denied he suffered a great injustice through
• 2:47:37
  Speaker 1: the sentence of the court martial. Since the crimes he
• 2:47:40
  Speaker 1: committed were obviously of a pathological origin, and, by his
• 2:47:44
  Speaker 1: own statement, committed under the urge of an irresistible impulse,
• 2:47:49
  Speaker 1: his moral sense told him he was doing a wrong,
• 2:47:51
  Speaker 1: but able though he was to distinguish the criminal nature
• 2:47:54
  Speaker 1: of his acts, he was unable to resist the dictates
• 2:47:58
  Speaker 1: of his Mania footnote. In these circumstances, a perfect defense
• 2:48:04
  Speaker 1: of insanity might have been legally raised see Clark, or
• 2:48:08
  Speaker 1: any standard work on criminal law. Seeberry Quinn end footnote.
• 2:48:16
  Speaker 1: Seaberry Quinn, author of this series of Weird Crimes, has
• 2:48:19
  Speaker 1: prepared for you a startling series of noted witchcraft cases.
• 2:48:24
  Speaker 1: Watch for them in Weird Tales. End of section seven.
• 2:48:32
  Speaker 1: End of Weird Crimes by Seaberry Quinn,