[NPPF] Canto Four: Versipellis

[s~Z]

I was brought up by dear bizarre Aunt Maud,
A poet and a painter with a taste
For realistic objects interlaced
With grotesque growths and images of doom.
She lived to hear the next babe cry.

Such, according to the unanimous testimony of historians, was the celebrated
"Berserker rage," not peculiar to the Northland, although there most
conspicuously manifested. Taking now a step in advance, we find that in
comparatively civilized countries there have been many cases of monstrous
homicidal insanity. The two most celebrated cases, among those collected by
Mr. Baring-Gould, are those of the Maréchal de Retz, in 1440, and of
Elizabeth, a Hungarian countess, in the seventeenth century. The Countess
Elizabeth enticed young girls into her palace on divers pretexts, and then
coolly murdered them, for the purpose of bathing in their blood. The
spectacle of human suffering became at last such a delight to her, that she
would apply with her own hands the most excruciating tortures, relishing the
shrieks of her victims as the epicure relishes each sip of his old Cháteau
Margaux.

[...]

But the case of the Maréchal de Retz is still more frightful. A marshal of
France, a scholarly man, a patriot, and a man of holy life, he became
suddenly possessed by an uncontrollable desire to murder children. During
seven years he continued to inveigle little boys and girls into his castle
at the rate of about two each week, (?) and 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.

     --also from "Werewolves and Swan-maidens" by John Fiske
     http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/1871aug/fiskej.htm