Montreuil-sur-Mer, 1832, April
...
In the middle of the town square, a black-clad figure got out of the carriage; that very moment he sun came out from behind a cloud. For a few dozen years the dwellers of Montreuil-sur-Mer kept telling that exactly at noon a spectre had appeared right in the middle of the town, in a cloud of sparkling smoke, yelling a curse. Rumour had it that the curse had probably concerned Monsieur Madeleine, the former maire of the town – probably because of his dark past – and the 'storytellers' from the local tavern kept making up more and more horrific hexes. Only an old drunkard, better known as Henri the Fence Hugger, stubbornly continued to claim that the exact words uttered by the frightening phantom had been: "Cursed be the blood of Cullens!"