saved from death.” Great were the rejoicings, and Messer Pietro was summoned from his house of mourning to a home of gladness. So when the whole truth had been told him and he welcomed back not only his dead daughter but her husband also with a joyful heart and with thanksgiving, he blessed the young couple, and on the morrow morn Holy Church with solemn rite hallowed the bond of matrimony whose joys had already been sweetly consummated.
The parallels between the two adventures are very striking. Our main interest in the sad story of de Serres and his love, which assuredly might have ended far otherwise, lies in the fact that the unfortunate Gabrielle du Bourg was actually buried as dead in her coffin, and only restored to life after several days had passed. Occasionally epitaphs may be seen both abroad and in England, which record some premature burial. Such a one was placed over the tomb of a Mrs. Blunden in the cemetery of Basingstoke, Hampshire, and this tells how the unfortunate lady was prematurely interred, but the original inscription is to a large extent obliterated.[74] Unfortunately overwhelming evidence proves that such terrible accidents are far from rare, for Mr. William Tebb, in his authoritative work Premature Burial[75] had collected of recent years from medical sources alone two hundred and nineteen narrow escapes from being buried alive; one hundred and forty-nine premature interments that actually took place; ten cases of bodies being dissected before life was extinct; three cases in which this shocking error was very nearly made; and two cases where the work of embalmment had already begun when consciousness returned.
There is no greater mistake than to suppose that most cases of premature burial, and of escape from premature burial, happened long ago, and that even then the majority of these took place under exceptional conditions, and for the most part in small towns or remoter villages on the continent. Amazing as it may appear in these days of enlightenment, the number of instances of narrowest escapes from premature burial, and also of this terrible fate itself, has not decreased of recent years, but it has, on the contrary, increased. In a letter on page 1,104 of the Lancet, 14th June, 1884, the witness describes in detail the appearance presented by two bodies which he saw in the crypt of the cathedral of Bordeaux, when
