"Edgar Allan Poe - The Premature Burial" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

instances. One of very remarkable character, and of which the
circumstances may be fresh in the memory of some of my readers,
occurred, not very long ago, in the neighboring city of Baltimore,
where it occasioned a painful, intense, and widely-extended
excitement. The wife of one of the most respectable citizens-a
lawyer of eminence and a member of Congress- was seized with a
sudden and unaccountable illness, which completely baffled the skill
of her physicians. After much suffering she died, or was supposed to
die. No one suspected, indeed, or had reason to suspect, that she
was not actually dead. She presented all the ordinary appearances of
death. The face assumed the usual pinched and sunken outline. The lips
were of the usual marble pallor. The eyes were lustreless. There was
no warmth. Pulsation had ceased. For three days the body was preserved
unburied, during which it had acquired a stony rigidity. The
funeral, in short, was hastened, on account of the rapid advance of
what was supposed to be decomposition.
The lady was deposited in her family vault, which, for three
subsequent years, was undisturbed. At the expiration of this term it
was opened for the reception of a sarcophagus;- but, alas! how fearful
a shock awaited the husband, who, personally, threw open the door!
As its portals swung outwardly back, some white-apparelled object fell
rattling within his arms. It was the skeleton of his wife in her yet
unmoulded shroud.
A careful investigation rendered it evident that she had revived
within two days after her entombment; that her struggles within the
coffin had caused it to fall from a ledge, or shelf to the floor,
where it was so broken as to permit her escape. A lamp which had
been accidentally left, full of oil, within the tomb, was found empty;
it might have been exhausted, however, by evaporation. On the
uttermost of the steps which led down into the dread chamber was a
large fragment of the coffin, with which, it seemed, that she had
endeavored to arrest attention by striking the iron door. While thus
occupied, she probably swooned, or possibly died, through sheer
terror; and, in failing, her shroud became entangled in some iron-
work which projected interiorly. Thus she remained, and thus she
rotted, erect.
In the year 1810, a case of living inhumation happened in France,
attended with circumstances which go far to warrant the assertion that
truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction. The heroine of the story
was a Mademoiselle Victorine Lafourcade, a young girl of illustrious
family, of wealth, and of great personal beauty. Among her numerous
suitors was Julien Bossuet, a poor litterateur, or journalist of
Paris. His talents and general amiability had recommended him to the
notice of the heiress, by whom he seems to have been truly beloved;
but her pride of birth decided her, finally, to reject him, and to wed
a Monsieur Renelle, a banker and a diplomatist of some eminence. After
marriage, however, this gentleman neglected, and, perhaps, even more
positively ill-treated her. Having passed with him some wretched
years, she died,- at least her condition so closely resembled death as
to deceive every one who saw her. She was buried- not in a vault,