Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/411

 Another case in point is that of Cardinal Espinosa, sometime President 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 minister. 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 before 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 children.

But let us go back a century or two in these inquiries. We come upon the story of the Abbé Prévôt, author of "Manon Lescaut," and, earlier still, upon that of Petrarch.

Prévôt 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 post-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 Prévôt, deplores this event as a serious loss to literature. "Manon Lescaut," which Jules Janin complacently 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