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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
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