THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. 323 
returned to life, and hastened 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 resi- 
dent of Nantes gave up life after a long illness. His heirs 
made arrangements for a grand funeral, and, while the per- 
formance of a requiem was going on, the dead man re- 
turned to life and stirred in the coffin, that stood in the 
middle of the church. When carried home, he soon re- 
gained his health. Some time afterward, the curé, 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 curé 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 Donnet, in the Senate, told his own story of 
the circumstances under which he narrowly escaped being 
buried alive. | 
Besides these instances of premature burial in which 
the victim escaped the fearful consequences of the mistake 
made, others may be cited in which the blunder was dis- 
covered only too late. Quite a number of such cases are 
known, some of which are told with details too romantic 
to entitle them to implicit belief, while, however, many 
of them show unquestionable signs of authenticity. There 
long prevailed a tradition, not easily traceable to any source, 
which attributed the death of the Abbé Prévost to a mis- 
take of this kind. All his biographers relate that the 
famous author of “ Manon Lescaut,” falling senseless from 
the effect of a rush of blood, in the depths of the forest of 
Chantilly, was supposed to be dead ; that then the surgeon 
of the village having made an incision into his stomach, 
by direction of the magistrate, to ascertain the cause of 
