282 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONT ELY. 



up their last breath after a vain struggle to break out of their coffin ! 

 The facts collected by Bruhier and Lallemand in two works that have 

 become classic compose a most mournful and dramatic history. These 

 are some of its episodes, marked by the strange part that chance plays 

 in them. A rural guard, having no family, dies in a little village of 

 Lower Charente. Hardly grown cold, his body is taken out of bed, 

 and laid on a straw ticking covered with a coarse cloth. An old hired 

 woman is charged with the watch over the bed of death. At the foot 

 of the corpse were a branch of box, put into a vessel filled with holy 

 water, and a lighted taper. Toward midnight the old watcher, yield- 

 ing to the invincible need of sleep, fell into a deep slumber. Two 

 hours later she awoke surrounded by flames from a fire that had caught 

 her clothes. She rushed out, crying with all her might for help, and 

 the neighbors, running together at her screams, saw in a moment a 

 naked spectre issue from the hut, limping and hobbling on limbs cov- 

 ered with burns. "While the old woman slept, a spark had probably 

 dropped on the straw bed, and the fire it kindled had aroused both 

 the watcher from her sleep and the guard from his seeming death. 

 With timely assistance he recovered from his burns, and grew sound 

 and well again. 



On the 15th of October, 1842, a farmer in the neighborhood of 

 Neufchatel, in the Lower Seine, climbed into a loft over his barn to 

 sleep, as he usually did, among the hay. Early the next day, his cus- 

 tomary hour of rising being past, his wife, wishing to know the cause 

 of his delay, went to look for him, and found him dead. At the time 

 of interment, more than twenty-four hours after, the bearers placed 

 the body in a coffin, which was closed, and carried it slowly down the 

 ladder by which they had gained the loft. Suddenly one of the rounds 

 of the ladder snapped, and the bearers fell together with the coffin, 

 which burst open with the shock. The accident, which might have 

 been fatal to a live man, was very serviceable to the dead one, who was 

 roused from his lethargy by the concussion, returned to life, and hast- 

 ened to get out of his shroud with the assistance of those of the by- 

 standers who had not been frightened away by his sudden resurrection. 

 An hour later he could recognize his friends, and felt no uneasiness 

 except a slight confusion in his head, and the next day was able to go 

 to work again. At about the same time a resident of Nantes gave up 

 life after a long illness. His heirs made arrangements for a grand 

 funeral, and, while the performance of a requiem was going on, the 

 dead man returned to life and stirred in the coffin, that stood in the 

 middle of the church. When carried home, he soon regained his 

 health. Some time afterward, the cur'e, not caring to be at the trouble 

 of the burial ceremonies for nothing, sent a bill to the ex-corpse, who 

 declined to pay it, and referred the cur'e to the heirs who had given 

 orders for the funeral. A lawsuit followed, with which the papers of 

 the day kept the public greatly amused. A few years ago Cardinal 



