Note 26 — Chapter XXIII

This man, whose case I have read in some French Medical Memoirs, was a desperate fellow: he cared no more for an ounce of opium, than for a stone of beef, or half a bushel of potatoes: all three would not have made him a breakfast. As to children, he denied in the most tranquil manner that he ate them. ''Pon my honour,' he sometimes said, 'between ourselves, I never do eat children.' However, it was generally agreed, that he was pædophagous, or infantivorous. Some said that he first drowned them; whence I sometimes called him the pædobaptist. Certain it is, that wherever he appeared, a sudden scarcity of children prevailed.—Note of the Translator.