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

but in an ordinary grave in the village of her nativity. Filled with
despair, and still inflamed by the memory of a profound attachment,
the lover journeys from the capital to the remote province in which
the village lies, with the romantic purpose of disinterring the
corpse, and possessing himself of its luxuriant tresses. He reaches
the grave. At midnight he unearths the coffin, opens it, and is in the
act of detaching the hair, when he is arrested by the unclosing of the
beloved eyes. In fact, the lady had been buried alive. Vitality had
not altogether departed, and she was aroused by the caresses of her
lover from the lethargy which had been mistaken for death. He bore her
frantically to his lodgings in the village. He employed certain
powerful restoratives suggested by no little medical learning. In
fine, she revived. She recognized her preserver. She remained with him
until, by slow degrees, she fully recovered her original health. Her
woman's heart was not adamant, and this last lesson of love sufficed
to soften it. She bestowed it upon Bossuet. She returned no more to
her husband, but, concealing from him her resurrection, fled with
her lover to America. Twenty years afterward, the two returned to
France, in the persuasion that time had so greatly altered the
lady's appearance that her friends would be unable to recognize her.
They were mistaken, however, for, at the first meeting, Monsieur
Renelle did actually recognize and make claim to his wife. This
claim she resisted, and a judicial tribunal sustained her in her
resistance, deciding that the peculiar circumstances, with the long
lapse of years, had extinguished, not only equitably, but legally, the
authority of the husband.
The "Chirurgical Journal" of Leipsic- a periodical of high authority
and merit, which some American bookseller would do well to translate
and republish, records in a late number a very distressing event of
the character in question.
An officer of artillery, a man of gigantic stature and of robust
health, being thrown from an unmanageable horse, received a very
severe contusion upon the head, which rendered him insensible at once;
the skull was slightly fractured, but no immediate danger was
apprehended. Trepanning was accomplished successfully. He was bled,
and many other of the ordinary means of relief were adopted.
Gradually, however, he fell into a more and more hopeless state of
stupor, and, finally, it was thought that he died.
The weather was warm, and he was buried with indecent haste in one
of the public cemeteries. His funeral took place on Thursday. On the
Sunday following, the grounds of the cemetery were, as usual, much
thronged with visiters, and about noon an intense excitement was
created by the declaration of a peasant that, while sitting upon the
grave of the officer, he had distinctly felt a commotion of the earth,
as if occasioned by some one struggling beneath. At first little
attention was paid to the man's asseveration; but his evident
terror, and the dogged obstinacy with which he persisted in his story,
had at length their natural effect upon the crowd. Spades were
hurriedly procured, and the grave, which was shamefully shallow, was
in a few minutes so far thrown open that the head of its occupant