n subtilizes and
spiritualizes the bodies of vampires, is a thing asserted without
proof or likelihood.

The fluidity of the blood, the ruddiness, the suppleness of these
vampires, ought not to surprise any one, any more than the growth of
the nails and hair, and their bodies remaining undecayed. We see every
day, bodies which remain uncorrupted, and retain a ruddy color after
death. This ought not to appear strange in those who die without
malady and a sudden death; or of certain maladies, known to our
physicians, which do not deprive the blood of its fluidity, or the
limbs of their suppleness.

With regard to the growth of the hair and nails in bodies which are
not yet decayed, the thing is quite natural. There remains in those
bodies a certain slow and imperceptible circulation of the humors,
which causes this growth of the nails and hair, in the same way that
we every day see common bulbs grow and shoot, although without any
nourishment derived from the earth.

The same may be said of flowers, and in general of all that depends on
vegetation in animals and plants.

The belief of the common people of Greece in the return to earth of
the vroucolacas, is not much better founded than that of vampires and
ghosts. It is only the ignorance, the prejudice, the terror of the
Greeks, which have given rise to this vain and ridiculous belief, and
which they keep up even to this very day. The narrative which we have
reported after M. Tournefort, an ocular witness and a good
philosopher, may suffice to undeceive those who would maintain the
contrary.

The incorruption of the bodies of those who died in a state of
excommunication, has still less foundation than the return of the
vampires, and the vexations of the living caused by the vroucolacas;
antiquity has had no similar belief. The schismatic Greeks, and the
heretics separated from the Church of Rome, who certainly died
excommunicated, ought, upon this principle, to remain uncorrupted;
which is contrary to experience, and repugnant to good sense. And if
the Greeks pretend to be the true Church, all the Roman Catholics, who
have a separate communion from them, ought then also to remain
undecayed. The instances cited by the Greeks either prove nothing, or
prove too much. Those bodies which have not decayed, were really
excommunicated, or not. If they were canonically and really
excommunicated, then the question falls to the ground. If they were
not really and canonicall