As to the functions of the soul, they advanced with the same pace and measure with those of the body.  I saw myself all bloody, my doublet being stained all over with the blood I had vomited.  The first thought that came into my mind was that I had a harquebuss shot in my head, and indeed, at the time there were a great many fired round about us.  Methought my life but just hung upon my, lips:  and I shut my eyes, to help, methought, to thrust it out, and took a pleasure in languishing and letting myself go.  It was an imagination that only superficially floated upon my soul, as tender and weak as all the rest, but really, not only exempt from anything displeasing, but mixed with that sweetness that people feel when they glide into a slumber.

I believe it is the very same condition those people are in, whom we see swoon with weakness in the agony of death we pity them without cause, supposing them agitated with grievous dolours, or that their souls suffer under painful thoughts.  It has ever been my belief, contrary to the opinion of many, and particularly of La Boetie, that those whom we see so subdued and stupefied at the approaches of their end, or oppressed with the length of the disease, or by accident of an apoplexy or falling sickness,

         “Vi morbi saepe coactus
          Ante oculos aliquis nostros, ut fulminis ictu,
          Concidit, et spumas agit; ingemit, et tremit artus;
          Desipit, extentat nervos, torquetur, anhelat,
          Inconstanter, et in jactando membra fatigat;”

["Often, compelled by the force of disease, some one as thunderstruck falls under our eyes, and foams, groans, and trembles, stretches, twists, breathes irregularly, and in paroxysms wears out his strength.”—­Lucretius, iii. 485.]

or hurt in the head, whom we hear to mutter, and by fits to utter grievous groans; though we gather from these signs by which it seems as if they had some remains of consciousness, and that there are movements of the body; I have always believed, I say, both the body and the soul benumbed and asleep,

“Vivit, et est vitae nescius ipse suae,”

               ["He lives, and does not know that he is alive.” 
               —­Ovid, Trist., i. 3, 12.]

and could not believe that in so great a stupefaction of the members and so great a defection of the senses, the soul could maintain any force within to take cognisance of herself, and that, therefore, they had no tormenting reflections to make them consider and be sensible of the misery of their condition, and consequently were not much to be pitied.