I have also received since, another letter from Vienna in Austria, written the 3d of August, 1746, by a Lorraine baron,[[644]] who has always followed his prince. He tells me, that in 1742, his imperial majesty, then his royal highness of Lorraine, had several verbal acts drawn up concerning these cases, which happened in Moravia. I have them by me still; I have read them over and over again; and to be frank, I have not found in them the shadow of truth, nor even of probability, in what is advanced. They are, nevertheless, documents which in that country are looked upon as true as the Gospel.
Footnotes:
[[644]] M. le Baron Toussaint.
CHAPTER LX.
THE MORAL IMPOSSIBILITY OF THE REVENANS COMING OUT OF THEIR GRAVES.
I have already proposed the objection formed upon the impossibility of these vampires coming out of their graves, and returning to them again, without its appearing that they have disturbed the earth, either in coming out or going in again. No one has ever replied to this difficulty, and never will. To say that the demon 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.