The Wolf - Guy de Maupassant

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The wolf by GUIs de Marpaisant. This is what the
old Marquis D'Arville told us after Saint Hubert's dinner at
the house of the Baron de Ravel. We had killed
a stag that day. The Marquis was the only one
of the guests who had not taken part in the chase.
He never hunted. During that long repast, we had talked
about hardly anything but the slaughter of animals. The ladies

(00:21):
themselves were interested in bloody and exaggerated tales, and the
orators imitated the attacks and the combats. Men against beasts
raised their arms romanced in a thundering voice. Monsieur D'Arville
talked well, in a certain flowery, high sounding, but defective style.
He must have told his story frequently, for he told
it fluently, never hesitated for words, choosing them with skill

(00:42):
to make his description vivid. Gentlemen, I have never hunted,
neither did my father, nor my grandfather, nor my great grandfather.
This last was the son of a man who hunted
more than all of you put together. He died in
seventeen sixty four. I will tell you the story of
his death. His name was Jean. He was married father

(01:04):
of that child who became my great grandfather, and he
lived with his younger brother Francois D'Arville, and our castle
in Lorraine, in the midst of the forest. Francois D'Arville
had remained a bachelor for love of the chase. They
both hunted from one end of the year to the other,
without stopping, and seemingly without fatigue. They loved hunting, understood
nothing else, talked only of that lived only for that

(01:27):
they had at heart. That one passion, which was terrible
and inexorable. It consumed them, had completely absorbed them, leaving
room for no other thought. They had given orders that
they should not be interrupted in the chase for any
reason whatever. My great grandfather was born while his father
was following a fox, and Jean D'Arville did not stop

(01:48):
the chase, but exclaimed the deuce. The rascal might have
waited till after the view halloo. His brother Francois was
still more infatuated. On rising, he went to see the
dog than the horses. Then he shot little birds about
the castle, until the time came to hunt some large
game in the countryside. They recalled Monsieur le marquis and

(02:08):
Monsieur le Cadet, the nobles then, not being at all
like the chance nobility of our time, which wishes to
establish an hereditary hierarchy in titles. For the son of
a marquis is no more account nor the son of
a viscount a baron, than a son of a general
as a colonel by birth. But the contemptible vanity of
today finds profit in that arrangement. My ancestors were unusually tall, bony, hairy,

(02:31):
violent and vigorous. The younger, still taller than the older,
had a voice so strong that, according to a legend
of which he was proud, all the leaves of the
forest shook when he shouted. When they were both mounted
to set out hunting, it must have been a superb
sight to see those two giants straddling their huge horses.
Now toward the midwinter of that year, seventeen sixty four,

(02:52):
the frosts were excessive, and the wolves became ferocious. They
even attacked belated peasants roamed at night outside the houses,
howled from some set to sunrise, and robbed his stables.
And soon a rumor began to circulate. People talked of
a colossal wolf with gray fur almost white, who had
eaten two children, not off a woman's arms, strangled all

(03:12):
the watchdogs in the district, and even come without fear
into the farm yards. The people in the houses affirmed
that they had felt his breath and that it made
the flame of the lights flicker, and soon a panic
ran through all the province. No one dared go out
any more after nightfall. The darkness seemed haunted by the
image of the beast. The brothers Darville determined to find

(03:33):
and kill him, and several times they brought together all
the gentlemen of the country to a great hunt. They
beat the forests and searched the coverts in vain. They
never met him. They killed wolves, but not that one,
And every night after a battu the beast, as if
to avenge himself, attacked some traveler or killed someone's cattle,
always far from the place where they had looked for him. Finally,

(03:57):
one night he stole into the pig pin of the
Chateau Darvay and ate the two fattest pigs. The brothers
were roused to anger. Considering this attack as a direct
insult and a defiance, they took their strong bloodhounds used
to pursue dangerous animals, and they set off to hunt,
their hearts filled with rage, from dawn until the hour

(04:17):
when the unpurpled sun descended behind the great naked trees.
They beat the woods without finding anything. At last, furious
and disgusted, both were returning, walking their horses along the
lane border with hedges, and they marveled that their skill
as huntsmen should be baffled by this wolf, and they
were suddenly seized with a mysterious fear. The elder said

(04:39):
that beast is not an ordinary one. You would say
it had a mind like a man. The younger answered,
perhaps we should have a bullet blessed by our cousin
the bishop, or pray some priests to pronounce the words
which are needed. Then they were silent. Jean continued, look,
how red the sun is. The great wolf will do
some harm to night. He had hardly finished speaking when

(05:01):
his horse reared that of Francois began to kick. A
large thicket covered with dead leaves opened before them, and
a mammoth beast entirely gray, jumped up and ran off
through the wood. Both uttered a kind of grunt of joy,
and bending over the necks of their heavy horses. They
threw them forward with an impulse from all their body,
hurling them on at such a pace, urging them, hurrying

(05:23):
them away, exciting them so with voice and with gesture
and with spur that the experienced strider seemed to be
carrying the heavy beasts between their thighs, and to bear
them off as if they were flying. Thus they went
plunging through the thickets, dashing across the beds of streams,
climbing the hillsides, descending the gorges, and blowing the horn
as loud as they could to attract their people and
the dogs. And now suddenly, in that mad race, my

(05:46):
ancestor struck his forehead against an enormous branch, which split
his skull, and he fell dead on the ground, while
his frightened horse took himself off, disappearing in the gloom
which enveloped the woods. The younger Darville stopped quickly feet
to the earth, seized his brother in his arms, and
saw that the brains were escaping from the wound with
the blood. Then he sat down beside the body, rested,

(06:08):
the head disfigured and red on his knees, and waited
regarding the immobile face of his elder brother. Little by little,
a fear possessed him, a strange fear which he had
never felt before, the fear of the dark, the fear
of loneliness, the fear of the deserted wood, and the
fear also of the weird wolf, who which just killed
his brother, to avenge himself upon them. Both the gloom thickened,

(06:32):
the acute cold made the trees crack. Francois got up, shivering,
unable to remain there longer, feeling himself growing faint. Nothing
was to be heard, neither the voice of the dogs
nor the sound of the horns. All was silent along
the invisible horizon. And this mournful silence of the frozen
knight had something about it terrific and strange. He seized

(06:56):
in his immense hands the great body of Jean, straightened it,
laid it across the saddle to carry it back to
the chateau. Then he went on his way softly, his
mind troubled as if he were in a stupor, pursued
by horrible and fear giving images. And all at once,
in the growing darkness, a great shape crossed his path.
It was the beast. A shock of terror took the hunter,

(07:19):
something cold like a drop of water, seeming to glide
down his back, and like a monk haunted of the devil,
he made a great sign of the cross, dismayed at
this abrupt return of the horrible prowler, but his eyes
fell again on the inert body before him, and, passing
abruptly from fear to anger, he shook with an indescribable rage.

(07:40):
Then he spurred his horse and rushed after the wolf.
He followed it through the copses of the ravines and
the tall trees traversing woods which he no longer recognized,
His eyes fixed on the white speck which fled before
him through the night. His horse also seemed animated by
a force and strength hitherto unknown. It galloped straight ahead,

(08:01):
and with outstretched neck, striking against trees and rocks. The
head and the feet of the dead man thrown across
the saddle. The limbs tore out his hair, the brow
beating the huge trunks spattered them with blood. The spurs
tore their ragged coats of bark. Suddenly, the beast and
the horsemen issued from the forest and rushed into a valley,
just as the moon appeared above the mountains. The valley

(08:22):
here was stony, enclosed by enormous rocks. Francois then uttered
a yell of joy, which the echoes repeated like a
peal of thunder, and he leaped from his horses, cutlass
in hand. The beast, with bristling hair the back, arched
awaited him, its eyes gleaming like two stars. But before
beginning battle, the strong hunter, seizing his brother, seated him

(08:45):
on a rock and placing stones under his head, which
was no more than a mass of blood. He shouted
in the ears as if he was talking to a
deaf man. Look, Jean, look at this. Then he attacked
the monster. He felt himself strong enough enough to overturn
a mountain to bruise stones in his hands. The beast
tried to bite him, aiming for his stomach, but he

(09:06):
had seized the fierce animal by the neck without even
using his weapon, and he strangled it gently, listening to
the cessation of breathing in his throat and the beatings
of his heart. He laughed wild with joy, pressing closer
and closer his formidable embrace, crying in a delirium of joy, look, Jean, look,
All resistance ceased. The body of the wolf became limp.

(09:27):
He was dead. Francois took him up in his arms
and carried him to the feet of the elder brother,
where he laid him, repeating in a tender voice, there there, there,
my little Jean, see him. Then he replaced on the
saddle the two bodies, one upon the other, and rode away.
He returned to the chateau, laughing and crying like Gargantua

(09:47):
at the birth of Pantoic rule, uttering shouts of triumph
and boisterous with joy as he related the death of
the beast, and grieving and tearing his beard, and telling
of that of his brother. And often, when he talked
again of that day, he would say, with tears in
his eyes, if only poor Jean could have seen me
strangle that beast, he would have died content that. I

(10:12):
am sure the widow of my ancestor spired her orphaned
son with that horror of the chase, which has transmitted
itself from father to son as far down as myself.
The Marquis D'Arville was silent. Some one asked that story
is a legend, isn't it, And the story teller answered,

(10:34):
I swear to you that it is true from beginning
to end. Then a lady declared, in a little soft voice,
all the same, it is fine to have passions like that.
End of the Wolf