"What object did you propose to yourself in committing these acts?"
"I cannot tell," replied Bertrand: "it was a horrible impulse. I was driven to it against my own will; nothing could stop or deter me. I cannot describe or understand myself what my sensations were in tearing and rending these bodies."
President.—"And what did you do after one of these visits to a cemetery?"
Bertrand.—"I withdrew, trembling convulsively, feeling a great desire for repose. I fell asleep, no matter where, and slept for several hours; but during this sleep I heard everything that passed around me! I have sometimes exhumed from ten to fifteen bodies in a night. I dug them up with my hands, which were often torn and bleeding with the labor I underwent; but I minded nothing, so that I could get at them. The guardians fired at me one night and wounded me, but that did not prevent my returning the next. This desire seized me generally about once a fortnight."
Strange to say, the perpetrator of all these terrors was "gentle and kind to the living, and especially beloved in his regiment for his frankness and gayety."
[From Blackwood's Magazine.]
MY NOVEL:
OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.
BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.
Continued from Page 582.
BOOK II.—INITIAL CHAPTER:—INFORMING THE READER HOW THIS WORK CAME TO HAVE INITIAL CHAPTERS.
"THERE can't be a doubt," said my father, "that to each of the main divisions of your work—whether you call them Books or Parts—you should prefix an Initial or Introductory Chapter."