ce of his
clothing; for if, when the three days were over, he should come back in
wolf form and find them gone, there would be no hope for him: he must be
a wolf for the rest of his days. Now, the wife, as usually happens in
such tales, was a wicked wife, anxious to rid herself of her werewolf
husband and marry a knight who had long been her lover:

"Un chevalier de la cuntree,
Qui lungement l'aveit amee...
E mult dune en sun servise."

To him she sends at once, and the guilty pair steal away the clothes of
the poor werewolf at the very first opportunity. And thus was Bisclavret
betrayed by his wife, who married him who had loved her long. The
werewolf is condemned to continue in wolf form; but one must remember
that there are disenchantments as well as enchantments in fairy stories,
and that justice, of a kind which is frequently _sui generis_, is
generally meted out to the guilty. The giant, it is true, gobbles up
people and behaves horribly for a season, but there is always a giant
killer in training for him. And so here, it is only for "one whole year"
that Bisclavret remains transformed; for the king goes hunting in the
forest, and his hounds pursue Bisclavret till the poor wretch runs
straight to the feet of the king, kisses his feet, and asks mercy in
such pitiful and almost human dumb show that the king orders him spared.

Bisclavret, taken under royal protection, accompanies the court
everywhere, till, on the occasion of a special assemblage of the barons,
the man who had married his wife comes into his presence. Straight at
his throat leapt the wolf-man, and would have torn him to pieces on the
spot had not the king interfered. The obvious hatred of the wolf for
this particular man aroused the king's suspicions, and these suspicions
were still further intensified when, not long after, the wolf manifested
the same violent hatred toward his former wife, now the wife of the
knight, biting her and scratching her face in spite of all that could be
done. Then, upon the advice of an old knight who remembered the
mysterious disappearance of Bisclavret and who knew something of Breton
legends, the king put the false wife to torture, and forced from her the
confession of the truth. Bisclavret, shut up in a room with the clothes
he had worn as a man, is transformed into a man once more and reinstated
in his possessions. The unfaithful wife, accompanied by her paramour, is
driven from the land,