Over All This The
Clouds Shed A Uniform And Purplish Shadow, Sad And Somewhat Menacing,
Exaggerating Height And Distance, And Throwing Into Still Higher Relief
The Twisted Ribbons Of The Highway.
It was a cheerless prospect, but one
stimulating to a traveller.
For I was now upon the limit of Velay, and
all that I beheld lay in another county - wild Gevaudan, mountainous,
uncultivated, and but recently disforested from terror of the wolves.
Wolves, alas, like bandits, seem to flee the traveller's advance; and you
may trudge through all our comfortable Europe, and not meet with an
adventure worth the name. But here, if anywhere, a man was on the
frontiers of hope. For this was the land of the ever-memorable BEAST,
the Napoleon Bonaparte of wolves. What a career was his! He lived ten
months at free quarters in Gevaudan and Vivarais; he ate women and
children and 'shepherdesses celebrated for their beauty'; he pursued
armed horsemen; he has been seen at broad noonday chasing a post-chaise
and outrider along the king's high-road, and chaise and outrider fleeing
before him at the gallop. He was placarded like a political offender,
and ten thousand francs were offered for his head. And yet, when he was
shot and sent to Versailles, behold! a common wolf, and even small for
that. 'Though I could reach from pole to pole,' sang Alexander Pope; the
Little Corporal shook Europe; and if all wolves had been as this wolf,
they would have changed the history of man.
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