made of iron and turned without remorse. The
executive is a screw that occasionally crunches
a whole nation. Poverty has a screw as big
as human life—a screw which presses down the
entire body from head to heel, leaving not a hair
in the crown, or a line of the foot, untouched. It
is a power that makes a man a mere slave, and
deprives him of every kind of manhood and
independence. Of all screws, the hardest, the
closest, and the most pitiless! The tally-
man's screw, the baker's screw, the screw of
the loan office, and the pawnbrokers—ah me!
the broken hearts and crushed lives that lie
therein like broken boulders, good for nothing
but for mending the highways! Riches, again,
work their own screw—a pretty stiff one in the
main; but loose in the thole, and of a wider
latitude than many. At all events, we
generally prefer the screw of wealth to the screw
of poverty, and seldom cry out under it.
Friends are screws, so are foes; so are chairs
and tables, for the matter of that—stationary
screws, that pin us to localities, as butterflies
are pinned to corks, with their wings
outspread and held down by paper wedges.
Indeed, I should be glad to know what is not
a screw in this arbitrary old world of ours,
and where is the corner where there is real
freedom of space, real latitude of movement,
real independence of action, without the screw-
press and its terrible handle intervening.

A FRENCH WOLF.

IN March of the present year, the chance of
continental travel brought under the writer's
personal notice the consummation of a history
of horror not perhaps to be surpassed in the
most carefully elaborated page of French
romance. The narrative of facts so frightful,
would indeed be a barren as well as painful
task, did not the case in question present
certain novel aspects worthy of attention.

The neighbourhood of Montluel—a small
town about twelve miles from Lyons, on the
road to Geneva—enjoys a traditionary ill repute.
Across the plain of Valbonne, on which it
stands, may be seen the glimmer of two white
houses—the Great and Little Dangerous—so
called from having been in former days the
scene of many deeds of lawless violence. The
country around is broken, sparsely inhabited,
and dotted with patches of dense and sombre
woodland, sometimes reaching almost to the
dimensions of forests. A better locality no
robber could desire.

Now, for six years, dating from February,
'fifty-five, the ancient bad reputation of this
precinct had been resuscitated. On the twenty-
eighth of February, 'fifty-five, some sportsmen,
threading the thickets of Montaverne, came
upon the corpse of a young female, covered
with blood, which had proceeded from six
terrible wounds in the head and face. The body
was stripped, and had been subjected to gross
outrage. A handkerchief, collar, black-lace cap,
and a pair of shoes, were picked up close at
hand. By the aid of these things, the deceased
was soon identified as Marie Baday, late a
servant at Lyons, which city she had quitted three
days before. She had stated as the reason for
her departure, that a man from the country
had offered her a good situation in the
neighbourhood, provided she could lake it at once.
Precisely similar proposals had been made on
the very same day, to another servant girl, Marie
Cart: the agent being a country-looking man,
aged about fifty, and having a noticeable scar or
swelling on the upper lip. Marie Cart
postponed her answer until the fourth of March: a
circumstance which probably induced the
suspected person to address himself, in the interim,
to Marie Baday.

On the fourth of March, the same man called
again upon Marie Cart, who finally declined his
offer, but introduced him to a friend of hers,
Olympe Alabert—also a servant who, tempted
with what she considered an advantageous
proposal, closed with it, and left Lyons under
the guidance of the supposed countryman.
Night was falling as they entered the wood of
Montaverne, in which, a few days before, the
body of Marie Baday had been found. Acting
on a sudden impulse, induced, perhaps, by
the gloomy solitude of the place, the girl
quitted her conductor, and sought refuge in a
neighbouring farm.

At this point—strange as it seems, considering
on what a stratum of crime they had touched—
the discoveries of the police ended for that time.

In the month of September following, a man,
answering in every point to the former description,
induced a girl, named Josephte Charlety,
to accompany him to a pretended situation as a
domestic servant, and both left the city together.
Their way led through cross roads; until, night
coming on, the girl—like Olympe Alabert—
oppressed with a nameless terror, fled to the nearest
house.

On the thirty-first of October, the wolf again
visited the fold, and selected Jeanne Bourgeois,
another servant girl. But once more an
opportune misgiving saved the intended prey.
In the succeeding month, the wolf made
choice of one Victorine Perrin; but, on this
occasion, being crossed by some travellers, it was
the wolf who took to flight, carrying with him the
girl's trunk, containing all her clothes and money.
None of these incidents seem to have
provoked much attention from the authorities;
and the horrible deeds actually in course of
commission were only brought to light by the almost
miraculous escape of another proposed victim,
Marie Pichon.

On the twenty-sixth of May, 'sixty-one, at
eleven o'clock at night, a woman knocked wildly
at the door of a farm, in the village of Balan,
demanding help against an assassin. Her
bruised and wounded face, torn garments, shoeless
feet, all bore testimony to the imminence of
the danger from which she had escaped.
Conducted to the brigade of gendarmerie at Montlael,
she made the following statement: listened
to at the subsequent trial with breathless