The long stay of the lady in the death-chamber caused some uneasiness; but it was ascribed to the vehemence of her grief; and the officers on duty, fearful of disturbing the further effusion of it by their presence, left her alone with the corpse.  At length, finding that she did not return, they began to apprehend that some accident had befallen her, and the captain of the guard opened the door.  He instantly started back, with a face of the utmost dismay.  The other officers ran up, and plainly perceived, through the half-open door, the deceased queen standing upright in her coffin, and ardently embracing the countess.  The apparition seemed to move, and soon after became enveloped in a dense smoke or vapour.  When this had cleared away, the body of the queen lay in the same position as before, but the countess was nowhere to be found.  In vain did they search that and the adjoining apartments, while some of the party hastened to the door, thinking she must have passed unobserved to her carriage; but neither carriage, horses, driver, or footmen were to be seen.  A messenger was quickly despatched with a statement of this extraordinary circumstance to Stockholm, and there he learnt that the Countess Steenbock had never quitted the capital, and that she died at the very moment when she was seen in the arms of the deceased queen.

XLV

DENIS MISANGER

“The Phantom World”

On Friday, the first day of May 1705, about five o’clock in the evening, Denis Misanger de la Richardiere, eighteen years of age, was attacked with an extraordinary malady, which began by a sort of lethargy.  They gave him every assistance that medicine and surgery could afford.  He fell afterwards into a kind of furor or convulsion, and they were obliged to hold him, and have five or six persons to keep watch over him, for fear that he should throw himself out of the windows, or break his head against the wall.  The emetic which they gave him made him throw up a quantity of bile, and for four or five days he remained pretty quiet.

At the end of the month of May, they sent him into the country, to take the air; and some other circumstances occurred, so unusual, that they judged he must be bewitched.  And what confirmed this conjecture was, that he never had any fever, and retained all his strength, notwithstanding all the pains and violent remedies which he had been made to take.  They asked him if he had not had some dispute with a shepherd or some other person suspected of sorcery, or malpractices.