We will give below the three versions which have been presented to us.
A magician, a pupil of Merlin, declared that if at the moment of dying the culprit has had the will to disappear and the ability to absorb his body into his will, the will being an immaterial thing, invisible, and impalpable, the body, which finds itself absorbed by it, and consequently hidden in it, becomes by that means also impalpable, immaterial, and invisible, and that if the body of a thief has reappeared at the end of a month, and at the end of a rope, it is because at that supreme moment his will, troubled by his conscience, has not had sufficient force for eternal absorption.
This may not be a good version, but it is one.
The theologians affirm that the culprit did succeed in vanishing, but that, pursued by remorse and being in haste to reconcile himself with God, he could not endure the life longer than one month, and, full of repentance, came to execute upon himself that justice which he had escaped the first time.
That, perhaps, is not the true version, but it is always Christian logic, and as a Christian we will not dismiss it altogether.
Finally, they declared that our two peasants in returning home that evening, and passing close to the gibbet, heard lamentations, a rattling, and something like a prayer; that they piously crossed themselves and demanded what was the matter; that they received no reply, but the lamentations continued, and it seemed to them that they came from the corpse that was above their heads. Then they took the ladder that the hangman had left at the foot of the scaffold, rested it against the arm of the gibbet, and the son, having mounted to the level of the condemned, said to him:
“Is it you who are making these complaints, poor man?”
The condemned gathered all his strength together and said:
“Yes.”
“Then you are still alive?”