t he learnt that Adrastia, the
daughter of Jupiter and Necessity, left nothing unpunished, and that
she treated every one according to their merit. He then details all he
saw at full length, and relates the various punishments with which the
bad are tormented in the next world.

He adds that a man of his acquaintance said to him, "You are not dead,
but by God's permission your soul is come into this place, and has
left your body with all its faculties." At last he was sent back into
his body as through a channel, and urged on by an impetuous breeze.

We may make two reflections on this recital; the first on this soul,
which quits its body for three days and then comes back to reanimate
it; the second, on the certainty of the oracle, which promised
Thespisius a happier life when he should be dead.

In the Sicilian war[627] between Caesar and Pompey, Gabienus, commander
of Caesar's fleet, having been taken, was beheaded by order of Pompey.
He remained all day on the sea-shore, his head only held on to his
body by a fillet. Towards evening he begged that Pompey or some of his
people might come to him, because he came from the shades, and he had
things of consequence to impart to him. Pompey sent to him several of
his friends, to whom Gabienus declared that the gods of the infernal
regions favored the cause and the party of Pompey, and that he would
succeed according to his wishes; that he was ordered to announce this,
"and as a proof of the truth of what I say, I must die directly,"
which happened. But we do not see that Pompey's party succeeded; we
know, on the contrary, that it fell, and Caesar was victorious. But the
God of the infernal regions, that is to say, the devil, found it very
good for him, since it sent him so many unhappy victims of revenge and
ambition.[628]

Footnotes:

[621] Job xxvi. 5.

[622] Prov. ix. 18.

[623] Isa. xix. 9, _et seq._

[624] Ezek. xxxi. 15.

[625] Luke xvi. 26.

[626] Plutarch, de his qui misero a Numine puniuntur.

[627] Plin. Hist. Natur. lib. vii. c. 52.

[628] This story is related before, and is here related on account of
the bearing it has on the subject of this chapter.

CHAPTER LV.

INSTANCES OF CHRISTIANS WHO HAVE BEEN RESUSCITATED AND SENT BACK TO
THE WORLD--VISION OF VETINUS, A MONK OF AUGIA.

We read in an old work, written in the time of St. Augustine,[629]
that a man having been crushed by a wall which fell upon him, his wife
ran to the churc