then put them to death in
various ways, that he might witness their agonies and bathe in their
blood; experiencing after each occasion the most dreadful remorse,
but led on by an irresistible craving to repeat the crime. When this
unparalleled iniquity was finally brought to light, the castle was found
to contain bins full of children's bones. 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. She was slain, carried to the beggar's hovel, and
eaten. In the course of three years thirteen other children mysteriously
disappeared, but no one knew whom to suspect. At last an innkeeper
missed a pair of ducks, and having no good opinion of this beggar's
honesty, went unexpectedly to his cabin, burst suddenly in at the door,
and to his horror found him in the act of hiding under his cloak a
severed head; a bowl of fresh blood stood under the oven, and pieces of
a thigh were cooking over the fire. [79]

This occurred only about twenty years ago, and the criminal, though
ruled by an insane appetite, is not known to have been subject to any
mental delusion. But there have been a great many similar cases, in
which the homicidal or cannibal craving has been accompanied by genuine
hallucin