Being logical, he tried “unnatural” vices, just long enough to learn by experience what a gap lay between his strength and that of the rest of mankind.

His mother died, and among the family papers he found mention of a curious ancestor of his – more or less an ancestor, that is to say, as, being his maternal great-uncle, he had not contributed to his procreation. This relative had died before André’s time and must have bequeathed him “his powers.”

To this gentleman’s death certificate was appended a physician’s note which, in its ingenuous and incorrect style, we reproduce below. It was written in large black characters, like stitches of black thread on a bit of a shroud.

Auguste-Louis Samson de Lurance, died 15th April, 1849, aged twenty-nine months and thirteen days, following upon a continuous green vomiting; having retained to his last breath a firmness of character far beyond his years, and a much too fertile (sic) imagination, added to which his organism, over-precocious with relation to a certain development, greatly contributing to the sorrow in which he has plunged his family for all eternity. May God have mercy on his soul!

Dr. [illegible]

And now no monster or “human freak” hunted by a Barnum would have shown greater ingenuity in mingling with the crowd than André Marcueil. Conformity with the environment, or “mimesis,” is one of the laws of self-preservation. There is less security in killing creatures weaker than oneself than there is in imitating them. It isn’t the strongest who survive, for they are alone. There is great wisdom in modeling one’s soul on that of one’s janitor.

But why should Marcueil have felt the need at the same time to hide and to reveal himself? To deny his strength and to prove it? In order to test the fit of his mask, no doubt. . .

Perhaps, too, “the beast,” unbeknownst to him, was beginning to emerge.

It’s a Female, but a Very Strong One

IT’S A FEMALE, BUT A VERY STRONG ONE

The guests were leaving.

Flowing out in a double row, their fur-wrapped silhouettes scattered to left and right of the lofty flight of steps.

Then, beneath the electric bulbs on the five iron posts set at irregular intervals down the driveway, came the movement of other lights, the click of horses’ hoofs, the throbbing of several cars.

William Elson and his daughter, with the Goughs, moved off in a fantastic machine, scarlet and snorting, which disappeared in a few gliding bounds.

The various vehicles dispersed, and soon there was no other sound in front of the Chateau than the murmuring of the water flowing in the moat.