favour he had at the court of the King, where he was vouched for by the intendant of his province M. Lallemant de Levignen. Public confidence in the d'Ennevals collapsed on 24 May during the popular fair at Malzieu. The Beast made its first attack of the day at Julianges, critically wounding twenty-year-old Marguerite Martin, who received extreme unction by the roadside from the vicar of Saint-Privat. A mile from this episode, in Amourettes, a boy of eleven was seized, but the Beast was put to flight by neighbors coming to his aid. It then fell upon a boy and girl as they entered a copse, devouring thirteen-year-old Marie Valét even as her companion attempted to fight off the assailant. When the boy brought help from local villagers, they found only a headless corpse from which most of the flesh had been eaten. A huntsman of d'Enneval was sent to set an ambush at the corpse of Valét, but the Beast did not return. Instead, it arrived in Lorciéres and attacked Marguerite Boney, eighteen, by the village of Marcillac, emerging from its hiding place in a juniper thicket and rending her clothes until she was naked from the waist up. To her aid came sixteen-year-old Pierre Tanavelle, whose aunt had been slain by the Beast on 23 February. Wielding an improvised spear he wounded the Beast, and it fled. News of these depredations reached the marketplace at Malzieu even as the Beast went about its business, prompting many to pack up their wares and head home. Louis XV, upon hearing of the events of 24 May, became furious and informed his court that he intended to replace the d'Ennevals, who had fared no better than Duhamel before them, with Antoine. The Royal Gunbearer departed for the Gévaudan on 8 June. Antoine and the d'Ennevals cooperated in the field until 18 July, when de Laverdy assented to the orders of Étienne Lafont, syndic of the estates of the Gévaudan and subdelegate to the intendant of Languedoc, to remove the Normans and give Antoine complete control of the hunt. D'Enneval and son soon returned to Normandy after they were mocked for their futile efforts at the court of the King. A contemporary was noted as saying the d'Ennevals bore "shame tantamount to that of a fox who has been caught by a chicken." July through September Antoine had been busy in the