In France a dead body must be belied within twenty-four
lours of decease, and a petition has recently been presented to the Senate praying that the time shoidd be enlarged to forty-eight hours. Cardinal Bonnet supported the petition, mentioned .several cases of premature interment, and related a story which produced a profound sensation. A. young priest in the summer of 1826 fainted in the pulpit and was given up for dead. He was laid out, examined, and pronounced dead, the Bishop reciting the De Profundis while the coffin was preparing for the body. All this while, and deep into the night, the "body," though motionless, :heard all that was going on in an agony of mind impossible to • describe. At last a friend known to the " deceased " from in- fancy came in, his voice aroused some dormant power, and next day the corpse was again preaching from the same pulpit. The -sufferer was the venerable Cardinal then telling the tale, and in spite of official resistance the Senate voted that the petition 'should be referred to the Minister of the Interior for action. The idea 4)f the French authorities is, that as the living and the dead are -among the poor forced to remain in the same room, interment ..caimot be delayed; but titefity,four hours is a horribly short awe -of time in a country where It in not sufficient to produce any
symptom of corruption. •
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