PREMATURE BURIALS. 



391 



Another case in point is that of Cardinal Espinosa, sometime Presi- 

 dent of Castile, Philip II., King of Spain, one day, in a moment of 

 irritation, addressed him as follows : " Cardinal, take heed ! You are 

 speaking to the President of Castile." The Cardinal understood that 

 he was dismissed from office (the King being his own president), and 

 fell to the ground as if stunned. The pulse showed no signs of life ; 

 the parted lips emitted no breath — the King's wrath had slain his min- 

 ister. It was decided that the unfortunate Cardinal should be cut open 

 and embalmed. The surgeon arrived and commenced his operations, 

 when lo ! in the midst of the cutting the patient awoke, and, with 

 screams of agony, attempted to struggle with his operator ! But it 

 was too late. The wounds were mortal, and the Cardinal expired be- 

 fore the comforts of religion could be administered to him. 



In some instances the victims of trance have been known to rise 

 out of their coffins. A case is recorded of a young lady in Leipsic, 

 who, being reported dead during a nervous attack, was placed in her 

 coffin in her parents' house, and there kept duly dressed for the grave, 

 with the lid of the coffin still unnailed. While the family were at 

 supper she appeared in her winding-sheet at the parlor-door, pale and 

 frightened, but fair to see, as before her supposed death. Father and 

 mother and sisters started up with cries of horror, and rushed out of 

 the room by another door, believing her to be a ghost. It was only 

 after a long interval, during which they entered and found her at table, 

 eating and drinking, that they persuaded themselves that the girl still 

 lived. They found her coffin empty ; ergo, the ghost in the parlor 

 was a living soul ! The doctor, the priest, and the undertaker saw 

 the error of their ways, and the deed was canceled which declared the 

 lady a corpse. On the following year another deed was made out for 

 the same lady, and the same priest officiated, but not the doctor or the 

 undertaker. The lady was married, and lived to be the mother of 

 many childi-en. 



But let us go back a century or two in these inquiries. We come 

 npon the story of the Abbe Prevot, author of " Manon Lescaut," and, 

 earlier still, upon that of Petrarch. 



Prevot was found in a forest, one fine summer's day, in a state of 

 complete unconsciousness. The village doctor, who examined the body, 

 declared that life was extinct, and commenced what he was pleased to 

 term his j^ost-mortem examination. But at the first thrust of the knife 

 the unlucky author awoke, and, with a piercing shriek, gave up the 

 ghost. Bruchier, the biographer of Prevot, deplores this event as a 

 serious loss to literature. " Manon Lescaut," which Jules Janin com- 

 placently calls the " Paul and Virginia " of vice, might, he opines, 

 have had a successor, if not a rival, from the same pen. 



Petrarch, when a middle-aged man, lay in Ferrara twenty hours in 

 a state of trance, and was to be buried on the completion of the time 

 laid down by law, that is to say in four hours, when a sudden change 



