I bid thee thanks, gentle friend, for the drink. And so, my thirst met, I shall continue on.
Now, as I said, our poor Bisclavret had been banished many years into the deep thickets of the wild forest, whilst his wife and her lover basked in his hard-earned wealth. Alone and ashamed, he saw nary a human face for such a time that he all but forgot himself.
But it so chanced that one day, the King on his morning hunt caught sight of a magnificent stag, and he with his men pursued it long and far, until they found themselves so deep into the forest that tree-limbs choked the sun from the ground.
In this darkness they lost sight of the stag, but before them they heard the howl of a great wolf, and from the shadows burst forth a beast so massive that the hearts of the king's men were seized at once with a terrible fear.
But the strangest thing occurred, my friends. The beast - who you and I know to be good Bisclavret, but who appeared for all the world to the hunting party as a monster in that tricky light and in his unhappy form - held a glint of recognition in his eye. By all good fortune, Bisclavret knew at once the face of the king who he had so loyally served, and he was reminded of the man he was inside. And so, coming to the king's foot, he bowed.
"What's this?" asked the king. "This great beast pays me fealty?"
At this, Bisclavret howled again, and bowed still deeper. The king was delighted with this strange creature, and bid him follow the party back to the palace.
Now, Bisclavret passed some time there, and so mighty was he, so magnificent, that he soon became well-loved by all those who graced the king's courts. Ne'er did Bisclavret leave the side of his master, nor did he again seek the solitude of the wood, and the king came to love him as a dear friend. In all this time, Bisclavret was nothing save gentle and good, and, beast though he was, not once did he venture even the slightest threat in the direction of any person in the king's home, neither to the noblest lord nor the humblest servant.
Some months went by, and the king's palace was set as the venue for a great banquet. Many a lord and lady arrived whom Bisclavret had known upon a time, and his heart was full with the sight of old friends.
But fate has its tricks, does it not?
In the midst of Bisclavret's joy, there walked into the palace another whom he recognized: the lord who had stolen his clothes and his wife. Our Bisclavret, seized by fury, let loose his wrath upon the man, and sank his great fangs into his very shoulder!
At the behest of the king, who was quite reasonably alarmed, Bisclavret loosed the man, but all the crowd was set to wonder how such a good and gentle beast had been swayed to violence. In light of Bisclavret's usual good nature and gentle temperament, the king's court concluded that this man must have done him some terrible wrong, and so the wolf escaped punishment, and the injured lord returned safely home that night.
Now again, a few days following, the King and his men, Bisclavret at their side, ventured out on a hunt which led them quite close to Bisclavret's old home to stay at a lodge nearby belonging to the king. The first morning of their stay, who should appear but the wife of Bisclavret herself, adorned in fine clothes and with a rich gift to offer the king! But upon her entry, Bisclavret was again seized with anger, and he sprang upon the lady, ripping her nose directly from her lovely face.
In the chaos which ensued, the king's men came very close to killing Bislavret in defense of the lady, but their hands were stayed when one counselor to the king spake thusly:
"Good sire," said he, "do we not know this beast to be good and gentle? And how strange it is that, though ne'er did he harm anyone, the two who stoked his fury were the wife of your dear friend Bisclavret, who has been missing these many years, and the lord who is now her husband. Surely, my lord, we must look into the matter further. Now then, put her to severe questioning, and do not let up until she reveals that which she hides."
And so the king took the lady and her husband, and he put them to questioning, subjecting them to much torment and torture to find out to what treachery they had conspired.
At last, the lady revealed all her story, much to the amazement of the king and his courts, and she was made to produce the clothes which she had caused to be stolen.
To spare him the shame of taking again his manly form in front of so great a crowd as the courts, the king placed the wolf in his own room with the vestments, and left him alone for a time. Upon his return, he found Bisclavret, man once more, sleeping there in his bed, and he woke him and embraced him joyfully. When Bisclavret had related his tale, the king wasted no time in exiling the faithless lady from the kingdom, along with her second husband, and he returned all of Bisclavret's land and wealth to him, along with many an exquisite gift.
Now you may think, my friends, that this tale is false, but I assure you all of its truth. And if you doubt me, seek thee the city to where Bisclavret's old wife took flight, for even now her descendants call it home. And, should you seek them, you shall know them on sight: not a one of them has been born but lacks a nose!
Author's Note:
This concludes my retelling of the story of Bisclavret, from Marie de France's "The Lay of the Were-Wolf." As usual, I have made a few changes to the story, although I kept this one fairly close to the original. Perhaps the most notable change that I made here was the mention of Bisclavret having nearly forgotten himself from his time spent alone in his wolf-form. In the original, there is no such note of this, but I added it for two reasons: first, I wanted to add a touch more drama to that part of the story, and I felt that the suspense of not knowing whether Bisclavret would react as man or beast to his king would help with that. Second, I wanted to deepen the consideration of the mental and emotional toll that this experience would have on a man, and I felt that this psychological element would aid that.
Another notable factor here is the ending - in the translation which I have used as my source material for this project, the line about the lady's descendants lacking noses does not exist. However, in the original French, Marie de France uses this line to conclude the lay (although in hers, it is only the female descendants who are born without noses). Though this may seem a small, even silly detail, I felt that it did an excellent job of answering the question I posed in the author's note in the previous part of this story: which would be more important to Marie de France - the rules of courtly love (not betraying one's true love, no matter the circumstances), or the avoidance of loves with a deservedly taboo nature (in this case, an element of bestiality)? I think Marie's answer rings clear here: in her eyes, the sacrificing of true love, even at the discovery that it involves, in some sense, bestiality, is still so abysmal a wrong that it is deserving of punishment - not only upon oneself, but for generations to come.
This is an interesting aspect to consider alongside the main query I hoped to address with these retellings, which is what kind of role adultery plays in Marie de France's lays. In The Lay of Guigemar, adultery is celebrated, as it is committed in the interest of courtly love. In The Lay of Sir Lanval, it is scorned and even ridiculed, because it is offered as a sin against courtly love. Finally, in The Lay of the Were-Wolf, Bisclavret's wife taking a new lover/husband is again portrayed as wrong, because she does so in defiance of and as an escape from the true love she and Bisclavret once shared.
Source story: "The Lay of the Were-Wolf" from Lays of Marie de France and Other French Legends, translated by Eugene Mason (1911). Web Source.