arful 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.

He declared that on the 18th of April preceding, when he was going
through the village of Noysi