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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, but in an ordinary grave in the
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