Jacques Roulet

Jacques Roulet is a historical figure from 16th century France who is mentioned in H. P. Lovecraft's story "The Shunned House"; the story implies that Jacques is the ancestor of the story's fictional villains, Etienne and Paul Roulet.
The story's narrator, discussing the history of Providence's Roulet family, recalls an "ominous item in the annals of morbid horror": the creature Jacques Roulet, of Caude, who in 1598 was condemned to death as a daemoniac but afterward saved from the stake by the Paris parliament and shut in a madhouse. He had been found covered with blood and shreds of flesh in a wood, shortly after the killing and rending of a boy by a pair of wolves. One wolf was seen to lope away unhurt.
Compare this to the nonfiction account given in a blog on social history in central France:One werewolf trial took place in the Touraine in Angers in 1598. In that year two hunters came across two wolves feeding on the body of a dead 15 year old boy. As they chased the wolves into the forest they came across Jacques Roulet with his clothing in tatters, his hands drenched in blood, and with shreds of human flesh under his fingernails.  Roulet was dragged before the court in Angers where he was charged with murder. During his questioning, when he may well have been tortured, Jacques Roulet claimed that he had been a werewolf ever since using a salve his parents had given him years before....
Roulet was sentenced to death on the grounds of murder, werewolfism, and cannibalism. He eventually appealed to the Parliament of Paris and his sentence was revoked and reduced to two years in a mental institution on the grounds that his testimony was taken under duress and during a time that he was not of a sound mind.Social History in the Touraine--Central France, "Werewolves in the Touraine--the Case of Jacques Roulet", by Jim McNeill, December 3, 2010.The narrator notes the "queer significance as to name and place", since the story's Roulet family also comes from Caude. He speculates that if the "Providence gossips" had "generally known of it...the coincidence of names would have brought some drastic and frightened action."
== References ==
Category:Characters Incorporated From Folklore, Myth & Religion
Category:Deceased (Real World)
Category:Deceased (In Mythos)