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24 THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF
Supported on crutches, wrapped in a grey cloak, pale and feeble, Bertrand
was now brought forward for examination …
‘What object did you propose to yourself in committing these acts?’
inquired the president.
‘I cannot tell,’ replied Bertrand: ‘it was a horrible impulse. I was
driven to it against my own will: nothing could stop or deter me. I cannot
describe or understand myself what my sensations were in tearing and
rending these bodies.’
President. And what did you do after one of these visits to a
cemetery?
Bertrand. I withdrew, trembling convulsively, feeling a great desire
for repose. I fell asleep, no matter where, and slept for several hours;
but during this sleep I heard everything that passed around me! I have
sometimes exhumed from ten to fifteen bodies in a night. I dug them
up with my hands, which were often torn and bleeding with the labour I
underwent; but I minded nothing, so that I could get at them. 35
Because of the macabre nature of Bertrand’s activities, he was popularly
connected with various monstrous forms; indeed, in France, he
was frequently imaged in the press as a ghoul or a vampire. Crowe
acknowledges these other associations in her conclusion: ‘In relating
this curious case of the Vampyre, as he is called in Paris … I have
said enough to prove that, beyond a doubt, there has been some good
foundation for the ancient belief in ghoulism and lycanthropy.’ 36 As
a result of her article, however, Bertrand’s case was drawn into the
cycles of repetition that elaborated the werewolf theme. 37 Although he
conceded the account to be ‘anomalous’, Baring-Gould picked up the
story in The Book of Were-wolves, connecting Bertrand’s behaviour
with lycanthropy by suggesting that ‘[t]he fits of exhaustion which
followed his accesses are very remarkable, as they precisely resemble
those which followed the berserker rages of the Northmen’, and later,
that the case ‘scarcely bears the character of insanity, but seems to
point rather to a species of diabolical possession’. 38 Baring-Gould
also elaborated upon the horror of the case by detailing Bertrand’s
desecration of corpses: ‘Some he chopped with the spade, others he
tore and ripped with his teeth and nails. Sometimes he tore the mouth
open and rent the face back to the ears, he opened the stomachs, and
pulled off the limbs.’ 39