oning of Origen; but what he says of a
subtile body, which has the form of the earthly one which clothed the
soul before death, quite resembles the opinion of which we spoke in
Chapter IV.

That bodies which have died of violent maladies, or which have been
executed when full of health, or have simply swooned, should vegetate
underground in their graves; that their beards, hair, and nails should
grow; that they should emit blood, be supple and pliant; that they
should have no bad smell, &c.--all these things do not embarrass us:
the vegetation of the human body may produce all these effects. That
they should even eat and devour what is about them, the madness with
which a man interred alive must be transported when he awakes from his
torpor, or his swoon, must naturally lead him to these violent
excesses. But the grand difficulty is to explain how the vampires come
out of their graves to haunt the living, and how they return to them
again. For all the accounts that we see suppose the thing as certain,
without informing us either of the way or the circumstances, which
would, however, be the most interesting part of the narrative.

How a body covered with four or five feet of earth, having no room to
move about and disengage itself, wrapped up in linen, covered with
pitch, can make its way out, and come back upon the earth, and there
occasion such effects as are related of it; and how after that it
returns to its former state, and re-enters underground, where it is
found sound, whole, and full of blood, and in the same condition as a
living body? Will it be said that these bodies evaporate through the
ground without opening it, like the water and vapors which enter into
the earth, or proceed from it, without sensibly deranging its
particles? It were to be wished that the accounts which have been
given us concerning the return of the vampires had been more minute in
their explanations of this subject.

Supposing that their bodies do not stir from their graves, that it is
only their phantoms which appear to the living, what cause produces
and animates these phantoms? Can it be the spirit of the defunct,
which has not yet forsaken them, or some demon, which makes their
apparition in a fantastic and borrowed body? And if these bodies are
merely phantomic, how can they suck the blood of living people? We
always find ourselves in a difficulty to know if these appearances are
natural or miraculous.

A sensible priest relate