WOMAN HERMIT IN A FOREST.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1117, 3 July 1913, Page 4

WOMAN HERMIT IN A FOREST.

A woman hermit named Marguerite Le Guillnot was taken to Fontainebleau Hospital lately in a dying condition. She had been found under a rock in the forest which is known as the “sponge rock.”

Marguerite Le Guilluot is an extraordinary character. She is believed to be forty-five years old, though no one is quite certain of her age. Five years ago, after an unfortunate love affair, she resolved to live a hermit’s life under more than usually rigorous circumstances, and retired to the Forest of Fontainebleau to do so. She had no house or hut of any kind, and lived like a savage, taking shelter under the “sponge rock’ : when the weather was unusually rough. She lived in the forest winter and summer, without any money, on such food as was given to her by casual passers-by, water from the ponds, and berries and fruits when she could find them. Her clothes were in tags, and she told the doctor at the hospital that she had neither washed herself nor combed her hair for five years.