The
horrible details of the trial are to be found in the histories
of France by Michelet and Martin.
Going a step further, we find cases in which the propensity to
murder has been accompanied by cannibalism. In 1598 a tailor
of Chalons was sentenced by the parliament of Paris to be
burned alive for lycanthropy. "This wretched man had decoyed
children into his shop, or attacked them in the gloaming when
they strayed in the woods, had torn them with his teeth and
killed them, after which he seems calmly to have dressed their
flesh as ordinary meat, and to have eaten it with a great
relish. The number of little innocents whom he destroyed is
unknown. A whole caskful of bones was discovered in his
house."[78] About 1850 a beggar in the village of Polomyia, in
Galicia, was proved to have killed and eaten fourteen
children. A house had one day caught fire and burnt to the
ground, roasting one of the inmates, who was unable to escape.
The beggar passed by soon after, and, as he was suffering from
excessive hunger, could not resist the temptation of making a
meal off the charred body. From that moment he was tormented
by a craving for human flesh. He met a little orphan girl,
about nine years old, and giving her a pinchbeck ring told her
to seek for others like it under a tree in the neighbouring
wood.
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