In their Paris apartments, Emile Toussaint and the general are lounging about after breakfast. It's Monday and a weekend storm is breathing its last over the gray, cold wet boulevards of the city of love.
Emile has busied himself with his latest hobby, deciphering hidden meanings in the pictographs of ancient Mayan hieroglyphics.
The general, restless as usual, has paced back and forth from his apartment to his comrade's, reading the daily gazette among plumes of blue smoke from a constant pipe dangling from his mouth...
"ah... Look here Toussaint... It says here in the 'trivia corner' that in the middle ages men were actually tortured and executed on the suspicion of being werewolves... Beastly don't you think " …show more content…
"beastly in what way... That they were werewolves, or that they were condemned as such?"
"ha!
That people were that obsessed with a superstition, that they could actually send an obviously innocent man to the gallows, or however they disposed of the poor souls"
"their methods were various... But I take it you don't believe in werewolves"
At this the general folded the periodical under the arm of his smoking jacket. Taking the pipe from his mouth, he makes a squinting observation of his colleague. Toussaint hasn't as yet looked up from his work. He understands the puzzlement his question has raise. Putting down his magnifying glass he turns towards his friend...
"it was a strange encounter I had in my younger years... Before our time"
"say... How's that?"
"I think I've confided to you the miserable experiences of my college years"
"yes... Why did you drop your classes... I mean, a man of your intellect...and a prestigious university as Cambridge"
"I think I explained it to..."
"what I gathered was that you were simply bored... That to me could hardly be sufficient. I mean London and all"
"so I'll elucidate further... Besides such institutions being prisons in architect,
The weather was insistently miserable. The enlighten mind needs an ample diet of natural light. Something merry England could never quite muster with any
consistency"
"now you jest... Just say you abhor our neighbors across the channel"
"then let it be as you say..."
The general sighs. Toussaint continues...
"But this has no bearing on our adventure, other than the fact it's where the events took place"
"events... As involve werewolves I take it?"
"what I learned upon the eternal island, that if there are no such things as a person being both man and wolf in appearance... They are certainly so in character.... Let me explain what I mean... I had all but packed my bags to leave England and Cambridge, to return to Paris to content myself with the prospects of becoming a professional thumb twiddler"
"Ha, capital old man!"
"yes... I thought so... But what has intrigued me more than academic studies, is the chance meeting of a genuine character... Like I find in yourself"
"I'm complimented monsieur"
"yes... I feel knowledge is best received when it is ravishingly sought for, rather than forced down the throat like some systemic feeding of animals... Anyway, as I prattled about, making arrangements for my departure, I bumped into a classmate I'd known only from hellos.
One Lord Alfred Carrington, though the title, as we became more intimate, was one he practically abhorred"