218 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



confines of Christian civilization at the present day, a grewsome stuff 

 more suitable as the staple of Othello's tales 



" — of the cannibals that each other eat, 

 The anthropophagi, and men whose heads 

 Do grow beneath their shoulders. 1 ' 



In the burglary just mentioned the murder and mutilation of the 

 maid were incidental to the robbery, and probably an afterthought, 

 but there are on record numerous instances of persons being way- 

 laid and killed for the sole purpose of making candles out of their 

 adipose tissue. No longer ago than November 15, 1896, two peasants 

 were convicted of this crime in Korotoyak, a city on the Don in 

 South Russia. Their victim was a boy twelve years of age, whom 

 they strangled and eviscerated in order to make candles from the 

 fat of the caul and entrails. It would be superfluous and tedious to 

 cite additional examples of this outrageous offense against humanity 

 and common sense, for, like the devils that entered into the Gadarene 

 swine, their name is Legion. 



A still more disgusting and dangerous superstition is the notion 

 that supernatural powers are acquired by eating the heart of an 

 unborn babe of the male sex, just as a savage imagines that by eat- 

 ing the heart of a brave foe he can become indued with his valor. 

 The modern European cannibal believes that by eating nine hearts, 

 or parts of them, he can make himself invisible and even fly through 

 the air. He can thus commit crime without detection, and defy all 

 efforts to arrest or imprison him, releasing himself with ease from 

 fetters, and passing through stone walls. This horrible practice has 

 been known for ages, and is still by no means uncommon. In the 

 first half of the fifteenth century the notorious marshal of France, 

 Gilles de Laval, Baron of Rayz, is said to have murdered in his 

 castle near Nantes one hundred and fifty women in order to get 

 possession of unborn babes. He was then supposed to have com- 

 mitted these atrocities from lewd motives, and was also accused of 

 worshiping Satan. A mixed commission of civilians and ecclesiastics, 

 appointed to examine into the matter, found him guilty and con- 

 demned him to be strangled and burned on October 25, 1440. In 

 1429, when he was thirty-three years of age, he had fought the Eng- 

 lish at Orleans by the side of Joan of Arc, and it was probably the 

 desire to acquire supernatural powers in emulation of the maid that 

 led him to perpetrate a succession of inhuman butcheries extending 

 over a period of fourteen years, the real object of which seems to have 

 been imperfectly understood by the tribunal which sentenced him to 

 death.* Lowenstimm cites several instances of this crime. Thus, in 



* A full account of the trial is given in a Latin manuscript preserved in the city 

 archives of Nantes. 



