XLVIII.

ARE THE VAMPIRES OR REVENANS REALLY DEAD?

The opinion of those who hold that all that is related of vampires is
the effect of imagination, fascination, or of that disorder which the
Greeks term _phrenesis_ or _coribantism_, and who pretend by that
means to explain all the phenomena of vampirism, will never persuade
us that these maladies of the brain can produce such real effects as
those we have just recounted. It is impossible that on a sudden,
several persons should believe they see a thing which is not there,
and that they should die in so short a time of a disorder purely
imaginary. And who has revealed to them that such a vampire is
undecayed in his grave, that he is full of blood, that he in some
measure lives there after his death? Is there not to be found in the
nation one sensible man who is exempt from this fancy, or who has
soared above the effects of this fascination, these sympathies and
antipathies--this natural magic? And besides, who can explain to us
clearly and distinctly what these grand terms signify, and the manner
of these operations so occult and so mysterious? It is trying to
explain a thing which is obscure and doubtful, by another still more
uncertain and incomprehensible.

If these persons believe nothing of all that is related of the
apparition, the return, and the actions of vampires, they lose their
time very uselessly in proposing systems and forming arguments to
explain what exists only in the imagination of certain prejudiced
persons struck with an idea; but, if all that is related, or at least
a part, is true, these systems and these arguments will not easily
satisfy those minds which desire proofs far more weighty than those.

Let us see, then, if the system which asserts that these vampires are
not really dead is well founded. It is certain that death consists in
the separation of the soul from the body, and that neither the one
nor the other perishes, nor is annihilated by death; that the soul is
immortal, and that the body destitute of its soul, still remains
entire, and becomes only in part corrupt, sometimes in a few days, and
sometimes in a longer space of time; sometimes even it remains
uncorrupted during many years or even ages, either by reason of a good
constitution, as in Hector[584] and Alexander the Great, whose bodies
remained several days undecayed;[585] or by means of the art of
embalming; or lastly, owing to the nature of the earth in which they
are