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| The country of the Beast. |
The d’Ennevals, hunters from Normandy, were recalled in mid-July 1765, three
months after they’d requested the dismissal of the first official hunter, Captain Duhamel. François Antoine, royal gun-bearer to King Louis XV, now took over, but like Duhamel and the d’Ennevals, he faced
his share of frustrating setbacks, such as a mini-monsoon period which foiled
his plans.
Two people were killed this month, out of about a dozen
attacks: a woman in either her fifties or sixties, of the parish of Lorcières,
and a nine-year-old boy of Auvers, who vanished. François Antoine observed two sets of wolf tracks after the
first death on July 4. In between, the Beast harassed a number of people,
including a mail carrier, two nuns, and two herdboys who had to scramble up a
tree to evade the monster. The creature destroyed the little shelter in which
the boys slept at night, and lunged at the tree, extending itself up and on its
hind legs. Richard Thompson tells us it vamoosed when a horseman came on the scene.
With
an arsenal that included harpoon-like poles with barbed iron points, François Antoine began
hunting in earnest, coming across more large pawprints on the 11th, but nada
on the 25th. On the July 27, the Beast seized four-year-old Pierre
Roussel (future great-uncle of the dean of Beast chroniclers, Abbé Pourcher),
and carried him more than 500 yards before dropping the boy. Unfortunately, a gullywasher
destroyed the animal’s tracks. A
hunt was set for July 28, but once more, Mother Nature was uncooperative,
sending cloudbursts and, incredibly, summer sleet.
