ad established a military commission to examine
into the truth of all these circumstances.

Such was the declaration of the Hadnagi Barriarar and the ancient
Heyducqs; and it was signed by Battuer, first lieutenant of the
regiment of Alexander of Wurtemburg, Clickstenger, surgeon-in-chief of
the regiment of Frustemburch, three other surgeons of the company, and
Guoichitz, captain at Stallach.

Footnotes:

[463] This story is apparently the same which we related before under
the name of Haidamaque, and which happened in 1729 or 1730.

CHAPTER XI.

ARGUMENTS OF THE AUTHOR OF THE "LETTRES JUIVES," ON THE SUBJECT OF
THESE PRETENDED GHOSTS.

There are two different ways of effacing the opinion concerning these
pretended ghosts, and showing the impossibility of the effects which
are made to be produced by corpses entirely deprived of sensation. The
first is, to explain by physical causes all the prodigies of
vampirism; the second is, to deny totally the truth of these stories;
and the latter means, without doubt, is the surest and the wisest. But
as there are persons to whom the authority of a certificate given by
people in a certain place appears a plain demonstration of the
reality of the most absurd story, before I show how little they ought
to rely on the formalities of the law in matters which relate solely
to philosophy, I will for a moment suppose that several persons do
really die of the disease which they term vampirism.

I lay down at first this principle, that it may be that there are
corpses which, although interred some days, shed fluid blood through
the conduits of their body. I add, moreover, that it is very easy for
certain people to fancy themselves sucked by vampires, and that the
fear caused by that fancy should make a revolution in their frame
sufficiently violent to deprive them of life. Being occupied all day
with the terror inspired by these pretended ghosts or _revenans_, is
it very extraordinary, that during their sleep the idea of these
phantoms should present itself to their imagination and cause them
such violent terror? that some of them die of it instantaneously, and
others a short time afterwards? How many instances have we not seen of
people who expired with fright in a moment? and has not joy itself
sometimes produced an equally fatal effect?

I have seen in the Leipsic journals[464] an account of a little work
entitled, _Philosophicae et Christianae Cogitationes de Vampiri