"My poor Corso!" said Diego, and a bitter tear shone for a moment in his eyes; but instantly recovering himself he said, "We are sold: but, courage! and let us save ourselves. Down the river; to the frontier; to Ayamonte; to Portugal. Some day I shall find him, and on that day he will wish he had never been born!"
They were leaving, when the gipsy presented herself to claim her share of the money. All assailed her with questions respecting the disappearance of the convict; but she knew nothing, and manifested much uneasiness.
"You are not safe here, and ought to get away as soon as may be," she said. "The elder son of the Countess of Villaoran has sworn to avenge his brother. He has got a troop from the captain-general, and is out after you. I am afraid he has surprised the convict. As for me I am going, the ground burns under my feet."
"Oh! that it would burn you up!" exclaimed one.
"Oh! that it would swallow you!" exclaimed another.
The old hag silently disappeared among the olives, like a viper which crawls away, leaving its venom in the bite it has inflicted.
"A robbery in the house of God!" said the first.
"The sacrarium violated!" said the other.
"Come, hold your tongues!" shouted Diego. "Make the best of what can't be undone. Let's be off."
But now they heard the tramp of horses, and Perico, who had been stationed to watch, came hastily in and informed them that the convict was coming. His arrival was greeted with shouts of joy. He said that he had seen a troop of horsemen, and had hidden himself; that in order to return he had been obliged to make large circuits. "But, now," he added, "we have no time to lose, they are on our track. Here, captain, is Corso, I have taken good care of him for you; I know how fond of him you are."
Diego joyfully caressed the noble creature vowing within himself never again to be separated from him.
They hastened their departure, when, suddenly, before them, behind them, above their heads, resounded a formidable demand, "Surrender to the king!"
They were surrounded by a party of cavalry. Two pistols were pointed at Diego's breast, and a man held the bridle of his horse. Diego cast his eyes around him with no feigned composure! Knowing the ability of the horse, which he had trained to this end, he drew his dagger with the quickness of light, and cut the hands which held the reins, pressed his knees strongly against the animal's sides, and, caressing his neck, cried, "Hey! Corso, save your master!"
The noble and intelligent creature made one effort, but fell back upon his haunches powerless. He was hamstrung!
Diego comprehended the blow, and knew the hand that had dealt it. Frantic with rage, he sprang to the ground, but the traitor had disappeared among the troop which crowded the pass. They took Diego, who made no useless resistance. As they left the defile, the bandit turned his head, and cast a last look upon the horse, that, always immovable, followed him with his large liquid eyes.
The soldiers disarmed the bandits, and tied their arms behind their backs. "Which is the one?" asked the Count of Villaoran when he saw them together--"which is the one that killed my brother?"
The robbers were silent at a look from Diego, who, though a prisoner and bound, still awed them.
"Which was it?" asked the count again, in a voice choked with rage.
"It was I," said Perico.
The count turned toward the drooping youth, who had not before attracted his notice; but when he fixed his eyes upon him a cry of horror escaped his lips.
"You! Perico Alvareda! Iniquity without name! Perversity without example! Poor Anna! wretched mother that bore you! Unfortunate little ones! Unhappy Rita! Know, infamous man," continued the count with vehemence, "that your wife has worked with incessant zeal and activity to procure your pardon. She was always at the feet of the judges. Ventura forgave you before he died. Pedro has forgiven you. My poor brother was the zealous and tireless agent of your friends. He obtained your pardon of the king. All were anxiously seeking you, and he more than all the rest, and I--would to God I had never found you!"
Diego, who saw the immense grief which the coldness and pallor of death painted upon the changing countenance of Perico, and noticed that he was tottering, said to the count:
"Sir, do you see that you are killing him?"
"I will not anticipate the executioner," answered the count, mounting his horse.
"Courage!" murmured Diego in the ear of the sinking Perico. "Look at us. We are all going to die, and we are all serene."
They entered Seville amidst the maledictions of the populace, horrified by their recent crimes. But the indignation with which the crowd saw the vile traitor who had sold his companions, walking among them free, was beyond measure.
This traitor was the convict, who by betraying the others had bought his own pardon, and obtained the reward promised to the person who should secure the arrest of the notorious robber Diego, who had so long laughed at the efforts of his pursuers.
CHAPTER XX.
The prison of Seville was at that time badly situated, in a narrow street in the most central part of the city. It was an ill-looking structure, scaly and mean; wanting in its style the dignity of legal authority and the outward respect which humanity owes to misfortune, even when it is criminal. A few steps from this centre of hardened wickedness and beastly degradation the street ends in the grand plaza of San Francisco--an irregular oblong area, bounded by those edifices which make it the most imposing plaza of the famed deanery of Andalucia, On the right are the chapter-houses whose exquisite architecture renders them in the eyes of both Sevillans and strangers the finest ornaments of the city. On the left, forming a projecting angle, stands the regular and severe edifice of the Audiencia, the tribunal to which justice gives all power. Surmounting it, like a signal of mercy, is its clock--ten minutes too slow; venerable illegality, which gives ten minutes more of life to the criminal before striking the cruel hour named for his execution. Thus all the laws and customs of ancient Spain have the seal of charity. Ten minutes, to him who is passing tranquilly along the road of life, are nothing; but to him who is about to die, they are priceless. Upon the threshold of death, ten minutes may decide his sentence for eternity. Ten minutes may bring an unhoped-for but possible pardon. But even though these considerations, spiritual and temporal, did not exist; though this impressive souvenir of our forefathers were nothing more than the grant of ten minutes of existence to him who is about to die, it would still prove that, even to their most severe decrees, our ancestors knew how to affix the seal of charity. As such it is recognized by the people, who understand and appreciate it, for it is one of the customs which they hold in highest reverence. O Spain! what examples hast thou not given to the world of all that is good and wise! thou that to-day art asking them of strangers!
On one side of the town-hall, forming a receding angle, is seen the great convent of San Francisco with its imposing church. The other fronts form arches that, like stone festoons, adorn the sides of the plaza. At the end opposite the point first mentioned is an immense marble fountain, of which the flow of waters is as changeless and lasting as the material of the basin which receives it.
One day the plaza of San Francisco and the streets leading to it were covered with an unusual multitude. What drew them together? Why were they there? To see a man die--but no, not die; to see a man kill his brother! To die is solemn, not terrible, when the angel gently closes the sufferer's weary eyes and gives his soul wings to rise to other regions. But to see a man killed, by a human hand, in travail of spirit, in agony of soul, in tortures of pain, is appalling. And yet men go, and hasten, and crowd each other, to witness the consummation of legal doom. But it is neither pleasure nor curiosity that attracts the awe-struck multitude. It is that fatal desire of emotion which takes possession of the contradictory human heart. This might have been read in those faces, at once pale, anxious, and horrified. An indistinct murmur ran through the dense multitude, in the midst of which rose that pillar of shame and anguish; that usurper of the mission of death; that foothold of the forsaken, which no one but the priest treads voluntarily--the fearful scaffold, built at night, by the melancholy light of lanterns, because the men who raise it are ashamed to be seen by the light of God's sun and the eyes of their fellowmen. The crowd shuddered at intervals at the mournful strokes of the bell of San Francisco, pealing for a being who no longer existed except to God, for the world had blotted him from the list of the living. Its notes, now rising to God in supplication for a soul, now descending to mortals in expressive admonition, forming part of the overwhelming solemnity which was inhaled with the air and oppressed the breast, seemed to say, Die, guilty ones die in expiatory sacrifice for this sinful humanity. Only the pure and limpid fountain continued its sweet and monotonous song, unconscious as childhood and innocence of the terrors of the earth. O innocence, emanation of Paradise, still respired in our corrupted atmosphere by children and those privileged beings who have, like faith, a bandage upon their eyes, that they may believe without seeing, and another upon their hearts, that they may see and not comprehend; who have, like charity, their heart in their hand, and, like hope, their eyes fixed on heaven, thou art always surrounded by reverence, love, and admiration, which, as the daughter of heaven, thou meritest.
There are two classes of charity: one relieves material sufferings in a material way, and with money--this is beautiful and liberal, but easy, and a social obligation. The other is that which relieves moral anguish, morally. This is sublime and divine. Of the latter class, one that has not been sufficiently praised by society, which finds so many occasions for censure and so few for eulogy, is the Brotherhood of Charity. And who compose this admirable congregation? Those, perhaps, who waste so much paper and phraseology in favor of humanity, philanthropy, and fraternity? No, not one of them condescends to enter this corporation, which is formed principally of the aristocracy of those places where it has been established. The truth is, that between theory and practice, as between saying and doing, there is a great space.
In Seville, a short time after the events related in the last chapter, several gentlemen of distinction were seen passing through the streets, each holding out a small basket, as he repeated in a grave voice, "For the unfortunates who are to be put to death."
Diego and his band were assembled in the chapel of the prison, constantly attended by some of the brotherhood, who, leaving their homes, their pleasures, and their occupations, came to take part in this prolonged agony, consoling the last moments of these sinful men; anticipating their wishes with more attention than those of kings are anticipated, and pouring balsam into the wound inflicted by the sword of justice.
Two of the most zealous and devoted of the brotherhood, the Count of Cantillana and the Marquis of Greffina, had been to the tribunal, which is established and remains in session in the jail while the condemned are being prepared and led to the scaffold, and during the execution, to ask of it the bodies of those who were to suffer. The following is the formula adopted by this noble and affecting Catholic institution:
"We come, in the name of Joseph and of Nicodemus, to ask leave to take the body down from the place of punishment." The judge grants the prayer, and they withdraw.
Each prisoner was accompanied by his confessor--a blessed staff to sustain the steps that are turned toward the scaffold.
When Perico had finished his sacramental confession, he said to the venerable religious who assisted him: "My name is not known; they call me 'Perico the Sad;' but, since between earth and heaven nothing is hidden, my family will, sooner or later, know my fate. Have the charity, father, to fulfil my last desire, and be yourself the one to carry the news to my mother. Tell her that I died repentant and contrite, and not so criminal as I appear. An evil life is a ravine into which one is drawn by the first crime. That crime which has weighed and is weighing so heavily upon me, I committed because I preferred a vain thing which men call honor, and which has sometimes to be bought with blood, to the precepts of the gospel, which make a virtue of forbearance and command us to forgive. O father! how different appear the things of life on the threshold of the tomb! Tell my poor sister, whose bridegroom I killed, that I commend her to another and immortal One, who will never deceive her. Tell Pedro that I know he has forgiven me, as did his son, and that I carry this consolation to the grave, and my gratitude to God. Tell Rita that I lived and died loving her, and that, if I had lived, I never would have reminded her of the past, since she has repented of it. Ask my mother-in-law, who is so good, to recommend me to God . . . . and my poor children . . . my orphans . . . . Oh! if it were possible that they might never know . . . . the fate of their father . . . . who . . . . blesses them . . ."
Here his bursting heart found vent in sobs.
The priest who heard him, convinced of the innocence of his heart, seeing how he had been surprised into crime by all that exasperates and blinds the reason of a husband, a brother, and a brave man, and forced into an evil life by circumstances, necessity, and his natural want of firmness, felt as one who without means or power to save it sees a fair vessel dashing to pieces at his feet.
Rita's constant and energetic movements to discover the whereabouts of Perico, whose pardon, with the assistance of charitable souls, she had obtained from the king, brought her, with her mother, that day to Seville. Attempting to pass the plaza of San Francisco they encountered the great crowd which had gathered there, and, asking the cause of the tumult, were shown the scaffold. They would have retired, but could not for the press behind them.
One of the condemned is approaching; all burst into exclamations of pity--"Poor boy! This is the one they call 'Perico the Sad;' they say that his wife, a good-for-nothing, was the ruin of him."
Rita's heart beats violently--the criminal passes--she sees--she recognizes him. A shriek, another such was never uttered, rends the air--heard in all the market-place.
Perico stops: "Father," he says, "it is she! it is Rita!"
"My son," replies the priest, "think only of God, in whose presence you are going to appear, contrite, reconciled, and happy, carrying with you your expiation."
"Father, if I could only see her before I die?"
"My son, think of the bitter punishment and of the glorious illumination you are going to receive from man, who is the instrument of God in your destiny." Perico wishes to turn "Forward!" orders the sergeant.
He mounts the scaffold and kneels to the spiritual father, who with a calm face, but a heart sorely oppressed, blesses him. He kisses the crucifix, that other scaffold, upon which the Man-God expiated the sins of others, still turning his eyes toward the place from which the voice sounded that pierced his heart; seats himself upon the bench; the executioner, who stands behind him, places the garrote around his neck; the priest intones the creed; the executioner turns the screw, and a simultaneous cry, "Ave Maria purissima!" sounds in the plaza. With this invocation to the Mother of God, humanity takes leave of the condemned at the moment that he is separated from it by the hand of the law.
The executioner covers the face of the victim with a black cloth, and the black shadow of the wings of death falls upon the hushed multitude.
Some compassionate persons carried Rita away senseless. Her situation was terrible beyond expression. The convulsions which shook her left her but few moments of consciousness, and in these moments she gave way to her despair in a way so frightful that they were obliged to hold her as if she had been mad. For some days it was impossible to move her. At length her relatives brought a cart to take her away. They laid her in it, upon a mattress, but not one of them would accompany her for shame. Maria went alone with her child, sustaining her head upon her lap. Rita's long black hair fell around her like a veil, covering her from the glances of the indiscreet and curious. "There goes," they said, as they saw her pass, "the wife of the criminal, who by her indiscretion sent him to the scaffold." But the oxen did not hasten their deliberate steps. It seemed as if they also had a mission to fulfil, in prolonging the punishment of reprobation to her who hid provoked it with so much audacity. Maria went like a resigned martyr. Her gentle heart had been made as it were elastic, in order to contain without bursting an immensity of suffering. From time to time Rita shuddered and broke into lamentations, pressing convulsively her mother's knees. The latter said nothing, for even she found no words of consolation for such grief.
They reached the village as night was coming on. The cart stopped before their house, and Rita was lifted out.
She sees a window wide open in her mother-in-law's house; through this window an unusual light is shining. She breaks away from the arms that sustain her and rushes to the grating. In the middle of the room which she inhabited in happy times, stands a bier. Four wax candles throw their solemn light upon the calm form of Elvira. She is as white as her shroud; her hands are crossed, and through her right arm passes a palm branch--emblem consecrated to virginity. Thus in simple grace, and in the attitude of prayer, lies the pious village maiden.
In the front part of that melancholy room were still seen the withered plants which on a happier day had formed the mimic Bethlehem. At the extremity of the room sits Anna, as pale and motionless as the corpse itself. On one side of her is Pedro, and on the other the priest who accompanied Perico to the scaffold.
Years after the events we have related, the Marquis of ---- went to spend some days at one of the haciendas of Dos-Hermanas. One evening, when he was returning from the estate of a relative, he noticed as he passed near an olive-tree that the overseer and the guard who accompanied him uncovered their heads. He glanced upward, and saw nailed to the tree a red cross. "Has there been a murder in this quiet place?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," answered the guard, "here was killed the handsomest and bravest youth that ever trod Dos-Hermanas."
"And the murderer," added the overseer, "was the best and most honorable young man of the place."
"But how was that?" questioned the marquis.
"Through wine and women, sir, the cause of all misfortunes," replied the guard.
And as they went along they told the story we have repeated, with all its circumstances and details.
"Do any of the family still live in the place?" asked the marquis, extremely interested in the recital.
"Uncle Pedro died that year; Perico's wife would have let herself die of grief, but the priest that assisted her husband persuaded her to try to live to fulfil the will of God and her husband, by taking care of her children; but to stay here where every one knew and loved her husband, she must have had a brazen face indeed; she went with her mother to the sierra, where they had relatives. One who came from there awhile since, and had seen her, says that she does not look like the same person. The tears have worn furrows in her cheeks; she is as thin as the scythe of death, and her health is destroyed. Poor aunt Anna died only the day before yesterday. She looked like a shadow, and walked bent as if she were seeking her grave as a bed of rest."
They had now reached the village, and as they were passing a large gloomy building, the overseer said, "This is her house."
The marquis paused a moment, and then entered. An old woman, a relation of the deceased, lived alone in the sad and empty house, over which, at that instant, the moon cast a white shroud.
"How these vines are dying!" said the marquis.
"They were not so," answered the woman, "when that poor dear child took care of them. They used to be covered with flowers that flourished like daughters under the hand of a mother. But she closed her eyes, never again to open them in this world, the day she heard of her brother's fate."
"Oh!" exclaimed the gentleman, "what a pity! this magnificent orange-tree is dead."
"Yes; it is older than the world, sir, and was used to a great deal of petting and care. After poor Anna lost her children, neither she nor any one else minded it, and it withered."
"And this dog?" asked the marquis, seeing a dog, old and blind, lying in one comer.
"The poor Melampo, from the time he lost his master he grew melancholy and blind. Anna, before she died, begged me to take care of him; it was almost the only thing the dear soul spoke of; but there will be no need; when they took away her corpse he began to howl, and since then he will not eat." The marquis drew nearer. Melampo was dead.
"It may be asserted without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well calculated to inspire the supremeness of bodily and mental distress as is burial before death. The unendurable oppression of the lungs; the stifling fumes of the damp earth; the clinging to the death-garments; the rigid embrace of the narrow house; the blackness of the absolute night; the silence like a sea that overwhelms; the unseen but palpable presence of the conqueror worm--these things, with thoughts of the air and grass above, with memory of dear friends who would fly to save us, if but informed of our fate, and with consciousness that of this fate they can never be informed; that our hopeless portion is that of the really dead--these considerations, I say, carry into the heart which still palpitates a degree of appalling and intolerable horror from which the most daring imagination must recoil." [Footnote 187]
[Footnote 187: E.A. Poe's "Premature Burial."]
I have chosen this sentence from a writer whose forte is the terrible and mysterious for my introduction, because it sums up, in a few expressive words, the thoughts which arise in our minds on hearing or reading the words "Buried Alive." To avert so fearful a doom from a fellow-creature would surely be worth any trouble; and yet it is to be feared that the very horror which the thought inspires causes most of us to turn aside from it, and to accept the comfortable doctrine that such things are not done now, whatever may have formerly been the case. Were this true, I should not feel justified in bringing before the readers of the "Month" a ghastly subject, which could be acceptable only to a morbid curiosity; but it is unfortunately but too certain that persons are now and then buried alive, and that, therefore, this fate may be possibly our own. The subject is one which naturally excites more attention abroad; for in England the custom of keeping deceased relatives above ground for many days after their death, has long prevailed, and incurs the opposite danger of injuring the health of the survivors who thus indulge their grief. We believe no important work has ever been published in this country on the subject; for Dr. Hawe's pamphlet is not up to the present standard of medical information, and contains instances of very doubtful authenticity. The tales of premature interment which can be collected in conversation, or occasionally noticed in the public journals, are not very numerous; few of them are circumstantial enough to have any scientific interest; and some prove the supposed fact by the hair or nails having grown, and the body having moved when in its coffin-- things which are well known to happen now and then after death has undoubtedly taken place, and being therefore no proofs at all. After examination, I have, then, come to the conclusion that no estimate of the frequency of premature interment can be obtained. Indeed, the only statistics which we possess are from Germany, and they are not very reassuring. In some of the largest towns of that country, mortuary chambers (in which the dead are placed for some days before burial) have long been established; and we learn from a report of one in Berlin, that in the space of only thirty-months ten people, who had been supposed dead, were there found to be alive, and thus saved from true death {806} in its most horrible form. But in France and Italy, especially during the summer months, the dead are buried so very early that fears are frequently entertained. In France, indeed, the law prescribes a delay of twenty-four hours after death before interment, and also requires a certificate of death from an inspector, who in large towns is usually a physician with no other employment (le médecin des morts;) but so many instances of carelessness and of incapacity on the part of the country inspectors have been noticed, that the Chamber of Peers, during Louis Philippe's reign, and lately the Senate of the Empire, have received many petitions praying for an inquiry, and for further precautions. To these the answer has generally been, that the existing law provides sufficient safeguards; and in this the Senate only followed the prevailing opinion of men of science in France.
For, some years ago, Dr. Manni, a professor in the University of Rome, offered a prize of 15,000 francs, to be given by the French Academy of Sciences to the author of the best essay on the signs of death and the means to be taken to prevent premature interment. The prize was obtained in 1849 by M. Bouchut, an eminent physician in Paris, who, after a very detailed examination of the question, came to these two conclusions: first, that when the action of the heart could be no longer heard by means of the stethoscope, death was certain; and secondly, that not a single case of interment before death has ever been clearly and satisfactorily made out: and the learned body, who awarded the prize to him, entirely assented to these opinions. Since that time, however, cases have been quoted, by some French doctors of note, in which the action of the heart could not be detected, and yet life was in the end restored. Their observations have been summed up in a pamphlet by M. Jozat. This gave a fresh impulse to the subject; and on the 27th of February last, M. de Courvol presented a petition to the Senate of the same tenor as those mentioned above. This would have received the same answer as they did, and the matter would have been again shelved, if several of the senators present had not quoted instances which had fallen under their own observation, and in which death was escaped only by some happy accident. The most remarkable of these was narrated by Cardinal Donnet, as having happened to himself; and his story was copied into most English newspapers at the time. It is, however, so much to the purpose of this paper, that I make no apology for quoting it in his own words:
"In 1826, a young priest was suddenly struck down, unconscious, in the pulpit of a crowded cathedral where he was preaching. The funeral knell was soon after tolled, and a physician declared him to be certainly dead, and obtained leave for his burial next day. The bishop of the cathedral where this event had occurred, had recited the 'De Profundis' by the side of the bier; the coffin was being already prepared. Night was approaching; and the young priest, who heard all these preparations, suffered agonies. He was only twenty-eight years old, and in perfect health. At last he distinguished the voice of a friend of his childhood; this caused him to make a superhuman effort, and produced the wonderful result of enabling him to speak. The next day he was able to preach again."
This remarkable account, coming almost from the grave, produced a very great impression; and, as is not unusual in deliberative assemblies, the Senate yielded to striking individual cases what it had before refused to argument, forwarding the petition to the Minister of the Interior, and so implying that it considered the existing law insufficient. The plan which finds most favor in France is the establishment of "mortuary houses," like those in Germany. Although some of the highest authorities in {807} France are opposed to them, there can be no doubt, if the statistics quoted above are to be believed, that they would be the means of saving many lives, especially in cases where (as in hotels and lodging-houses) the funeral is now hurried as much as possible. The only precautions which need be taken in England are of a simple kind, and will be more evident after the description I shall now proceed to give of the two diseased states which most nearly simulate death.
In the first of these, called catalepsy, the patient lies immovable and apparently unconscious; the limbs are rigid and cold; the eyes are fixed, sometimes remaining open; and the jaw sometimes drops. But the resemblance to death goes no farther; the face has not a corpse-like expression; although the limbs are cold, the head continues to be warm, or is even warmer than when in the usual state; the pupils are never completely dilated, and are, sometimes at least, contracted by exposure to light. The pulse and breathing, although slow and irregular, can always be noticed; and the muscles are so far stiffened as to keep the limbs, during the whole course of the attack, in the position (however constrained and inconvenient) in which they chance to be at the time of seizure, or may be placed in by bystanders during the fit. This state of the muscular system is a decisive proof that the case is one of catalepsy.
Were this rare and curious disease the only cause of error, the physician called upon to discern in a given case between life and death would have a comparatively easy task; but there is a still rarer condition, which gives rise to most of the lamentable mistakes that are made; the state of trance or prolonged syncope, is a far more perfect counterfeit of death. The patient is motionless, and apparently unconscious, although he is usually aware of all that is passing around him; the pulsation of the heart and arteries, and the breathing gradually diminish in force and frequency, until they become at last quite imperceptible; the whole surface of the body grows cold; and all this may last even for many days. How is one in such a condition known not to be dead? In the first place, it is noticed that this disease is rare in a previously healthy person; it has been generally preceded by some cause producing great weakness, (especially long-continued fevers, great loss of blood, severe mental affliction, or bodily pain.) It almost invariably, too, occurs suddenly, without any preparation, and of course without the signs which immediately precede death.
Sometimes mere inspection will convince the physician that the person is still alive. Thus, the face, although fixed, may not have the look of death; the mouth may be firmly closed, the eye not glazed, and the pupil not entirely dilated. Supposing, however, that every one of these signs of life is absent, and that the pulse and breathing are imperceptible by the ordinary means of observation, careful examination of the chest with a stethoscope will detect the heart-sounds, if life be not quite extinct, in almost every case. I dare not, in view of the cases cited by M. Jozat, say that absence of the heart-sounds in this state never occurs; but all medical men will agree with me that it must be exceedingly rare. It also seems to me probable that, in the cases on which M. Jozat relies, the movements of the heart were so few and far between that the chest happened to be ausculted only during the intervals; at any rate, it would of course be advisable to make frequent and prolonged examinations before deciding that no sound could be heard. The late Dr. Hope suggested that the second sound of the heart might be detected, although the first was quite inaudible; but this is merely theoretical. Again, although the surface of the body be quite cold, it is probable that a thermometer introduced far into the mouth would show that some internal warmth {808} remained in every case of trance. At a variable time after death the muscles lose their "irritability," (that is, their power of contracting under galvanic stimulation;) and this change is speedily followed by another--the stiffness which is noticed all over the body. It is to be remembered that loss of muscular irritability, and rigidity of the whole body, may both be noticed and yet the person be alive; still, if these two symptoms are not present at first, and only appear soon after supposed death, they will afford strong presumption that the person is dead; which will be strengthened if the skin be slightly burned, and yet no bleb forms in consequence.
Every one, however, of the signs enumerated is open to exceptions; although, of course, the concurrence of many, or of all, tending in the same direction, will make death or life almost certain; but the only absolutely conclusive evidence of death is putrefaction, which is sometimes much delayed by the previous emaciation of the deceased, or by cold dry weather, but which sooner or later removes all doubt. The first indications of decay are in the eyeball, which becomes flaccid, and in the discoloration of the skin of the trunk; its later ones are well known to every one. One M. Mangin (who contributed a notice of this subject to the "Correspondant" for March 25th last, to which I am indebted for several facts I have mentioned) supposes that the buzzing, humming noise which is heard over all the body of a living person would furnish a certain means of distinguishing real from apparent death. He does not seem to be aware that M. Collongues, the principal authority for what is called "dynamoscopy," has found that this noise is absent in some cases of catalepsy and trance, for which it is proposed as a test. Certain authorities, both in England and France, have thought that microscopal examination of the blood would be decisive; but unfortunately irregularity in shape and indentation of the red disks (on which they would rely) occur sometimes during life, and are only among the earliest signs of putrefaction after death.
These, as far as I know« are the only means which science has hitherto suggested for distinguishing a living body from a corpse; and we have seen that none of them, save putrefaction, are invariably certain. In a doubtful case, therefore, time should always be allowed for this change to take place, so that the body may be interred in perfect security. If this is done under the direction of a medical attendant of ordinary information, relatives and friends may be convinced that no mistake is possible; and their plain duty is to urge this salutary delay in the very few cases where it can possibly be required.
It is particularly important to urge this delay, when necessary, in the case of persons who have apparently died of some contagious disease, and who might otherwise have been buried alive. It is indeed, much to be feared that persons in the collapse stage of cholera have been sometimes buried as dead; especially (Cardinal Donnet remarks) when they are attacked in hotels or lodgings, where a death from such a cause would be particularly prejudicial.
M. Mangin mentions one such case of a medical student in Paris, who apparently died of cholera in 1832, and for whose funeral all preparations were made, when a friend applied moxas to the spine. He recovered consciousness at once, and survived many years; and there is something grimly amusing in reading that he told the narrator: "Je me suis chauffé avec le bois de mon cercueil!" Those, again, who have read Mr. Maguire's "Life of Father Mathew," will not soon forget his graphic description of a similar case, in which Father Mathew rescued a young man from the hospital dead-house during the same epidemic at Cork, just as he was being wrapped in a tarred sheet and placed in his coffin.
Poe, in the tale from which I have quoted above, gives an instance of burial during typhus fever, probably in one of the long periods of unconsciousness and immobility occasionally occurring in that disease. The unfortunate man remained in the grave for two days, when his body was disinterred by the "body-snatchers," for the purpose of enabling his medical attendants to make a post-mortem examination. A casual application of the galvanic current revived him, and he was soon after restored to his friends, alive and in good health. This is said by Poe to have happened to a Mr. Edward Stapleton, a London solicitor, in 1831. I have been unable to obtain any verification of this marvel, but give it for what it may be worth.
It is very remarkable that the state of prolonged syncope, or trance, can sometimes be produced by a mere effort of the will. One of the best-described cases is given by St. Augustine. [Footnote 188] It is that of a priest named Restitutus, who used frequently, in order to satisfy the curiosity of friends, to make himself totally immovable, and apparently unconscious, so that he did not feel any pricking, pinching, or even burning; nor did he appear to breathe at all. He used afterward to say that "he could hear during the attack what was said very loud by bystanders, as if from afar." He brought on the attack "ad imitatas quasi lamentantis cujuslibet voces;" a sentence which is unfortunately of rather uncertain meaning. Another case is recorded by Dr. Cheyne, a fashionable Bath physician of the last century. A patient of his, one Colonel Townsend, in order to convince Dr. Cheyne's incredulity, one day voluntarily induced this state of death-like trance "by composing himself as if to sleep." He then appeared perfectly dead; and neither Dr. Cheyne nor another physician. Dr. Bayard, nor the apothecary in attendance, could detect any pulsation at the heart or wrist, or any breathing whatever. They were just about to give him up for dead, when, at the end of half an hour, he gradually recovered.
[Footnote 188: "De Civ. Dei," xiv. cap. 24. ]
But these performances are quite thrown into the shade by those of certain fakeers in India. Mr. Braid, in his very interesting "Observations on Trance, or Human Hybernation," collected several of these almost incredible tales from British officers, who spoke as having been themselves eye-witnesses of them in India. In the most wonderful of them Sir Claude Wade (formerly Resident at the court of Runjeet Singh) says that he saw a fakeer buried in an underground vault for six weeks: the body had been twice dug up by Runjeet Singh during this period, and found in the same position as when first buried. In another case, Lieutenant Boileau (in his "Narrative of a Journey in Rajwarra in 1835") relates that he saw a man buried for ten days in a grave lined with masonry and covered with large slabs of stone; and the fakeer declared his readiness to be left in the tomb for a twelvemonth. In all these cases it is said that the body, when first disinterred, was like a corpse, and no pulse could be detected at the heart or the wrist; but warmth to the head and friction of the body soon revived the bold experimenter. Supposing that the watch (which was carefully kept up during each of these curious interments) was not eluded by some of the jugglery in which Indians excel, we have here proofs that the state of trance cannot only be voluntarily induced, but prolonged over a very long time.
The rationale of such phenomena is not very difficult to comprehend. St. Augustine was undoubtedly right when he explained the case that fell under his own observation by the supposition that some persons have a remarkable and unusual power of the will over the action of the heart. Dr. Carpenter suggests that the state of syncope could be kept up much longer {810} in a vault in a tropical climate, where the body would not lose too much of its natural heat, than in more temperate countries; and Mr. Braid compares this condition to the slowness of respiration and circulation during winter in hybernating animals. But whatever may be the explanation, I cannot at least be accused of digression in ending this gloomy paper with an account of men who are voluntarily buried alive.
I was one day walking in the country with a book in my hand. It was in a district of that land where La Fontaine has said, "fate sends men when it wishes to make them mad." Fate had not, however, sent me there in order to make me mad. I found, on the contrary, in the charming scenes which on all sides presented themselves to my view, and in the original population which surrounded me, a thousand reasons for not sharing the sentiment of the morose narrator of fables. A peasant accosted me in the familiar but at the same time respectful style habitual to those of that country, and, pointing to my book with his finger:
"Is it the Lives of the Saints," he said to me, "'that you are reading there?"
A little surprised at this address, which, however, by no means explained my reading, I remained silent, thinking of this opinion of the Breton peasants, according to whom the "Lives of the Saints" is the usual reading of all those who know how to read; and, as my interlocutor repeated his question,
"Well, yes," I replied, to humor his thought, "there is sometimes mention made of the saints in this book."
"And what one's life are you reading now?" he continued obstinately.
I mentioned at random the name of some saint, and thought I had quieted his curiosity, but I had not satisfied his faith.
"What was he good for?" he asked.
For an instant I stopped short; what reply to offer to a man who judged the saints by their practical utility? I turned upon him: "And your own patron," I replied, "what maladies does he care?"
"Oh! a great number," he said; "those of men as well as those of animals. Although during his life he was only a poor blind singer, he has a beautiful place in paradise, I assure you. The day he entered heaven the sky was all illuminated." And, accompanying it with commentaries, he chanted for me the legend of the patron of his parish.
I knew it already by Latin and French publications; but I was well pleased to collect it fresh from the living spring of popular tradition. By the aid of this later source and of the written record, I have reconstructed the account about to be read. It presents, if I do not deceive myself, a somewhat interesting page in the history of Christian civilization in Armorica, in the sixth century; so judged the great historian, my teacher and my friend, to whom I dedicate it. Moral truth shines through all the legend as a light shines through a veil. [Footnote 189]
[Footnote 189: The most ancient compilation of this legend, written six hundred years after the death of Saint Hervé, which is placed on the 22d June in the year 568, exists in the Imperial Library, in the portfolio of the "Blanc-Manteaux." No 38, p. 851: the two more modern are, one of P. Albert le Grand, who has taken for his model Jacques de Voragine; the other by Dom Lobineau, who has fallen into the contrary extreme.]
I.
It was the custom of the Frank kings to have a large number of poets and musicians at their court; they often had them come from foreign countries, taking pleasure, mingled with a barbarous pride, in listening to verses sung in their honor, of which they understood not a word. Among them were seen Italians, Greeks, and even Britons, who, uniting their discordant voices with the singers of the German race, emulated each other in flattering the not critical ears of the Merovingian princes. Welcomed to their palace, after having been driven from his own country by the Lombards, the Italian Fortunatus has preserved for us recollections of these singular concerts at which, lyre in hand, he performed his part while "the Barbarian," he says, "added the harp, the Greek the instrument of Homer, and the Briton the Celtic rote." The rote had the same fate as the lyre; it sought in Gaul an asylum from the invaders of the British Isle, of whom it might be said with equal truth as by the Italian poet of the conquerors of his country, that they did not know the difference between the gabble of the goose and the song of the swan. The Merovingian kings piqued themselves on having more taste.
Among the Britons who took refuge with them, and who continued to play in Gaul nearly the same part that they played in the dwellings of their native chiefs, there was a young man, named Hyvarnion. This name, which signifies just judgment, had been given him in his own country on the following occasion: He was in a school where he was only known as the petit savant, and had for his teacher one of the sages of the British nation, both monk and poet, named Kadok, now known in Armorica as Saint Cado. At the end of the fifth century this successor of the last Latin rhetors of Albion, instructed the young islanders in grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, poetry, and music, mingling, as it appears, with the methods of instruction transmitted by classic antiquity, the traditions of the ancient Druids. The master disputed one day with his little scholar after the manner of the Druids, the subject of debate being: What are the eighteen most beautiful moral virtues? Kadok indicated eighteen, but he purposely omitted the principal, wishing to leave to his pupil the pleasure of finding them out for himself.
"For my part," said the scholar, "I believe that he possesses the eighteen virtues par excellence, who is strong in trials and in tribulations; gentle in the midst of suffering; energetic in execution; modest in glory and in prosperity; humble in conduct; persistent in good resolutions; firm in toil and in difficulties; eager for instruction; generous in words, in deeds, and in thoughts; reconciler of quarrels; gracious in his manners and affable in his house; on good terms with his neighbors; pure in body and in thought; just in words and deeds; regular in his manners; but above all, charitable to the poor and afflicted."
"Thine the prize!" cried Kadok, "thou hast spoken better than I."
"Not so," replied the petit savant, "not so; I wished to carry it over thee, and thou hast given a proof of humility; thou art the wiser, and thine the palm." [Footnote 190]
[Footnote 190: "Myvyrian archaeology of Wales," iii. p. 45.]
This just judgment brought good fortune to the young scholar. It procured for him the fine name by which he was afterward designated, and under which he is presented to us in the Armorican legends.