Note 107 — Chapter VII

Madame de Genlis mentions this fearsome monster in her Mémoires: 'Tout le monde a entendu parler de la hyène de Gévaudan, qui a fait tant de ravages.' The point of Walpole's allusion to Pitt is explained in one of his hitherto unpublished letters to Lady Mary Coke at this date: 'I had the fortune to be treated with the sight of what, next to Mr. Pitt, has occasioned most alarm in France, the Beast of the Gévaudan' (Letters and Journals, iii. [1892], xvii). In another letter, to Pitt's sister Ann, maid of honour to Queen Caroline, he says: 'It is a very large wolf, to be sure, and they say has twelve teeth more than any of the species, and six less than the Czarina' (Fortescue Corr., Hist. MSS. Commission, 13th Rept., App. iii., 1892, i. 147).