"The gendarme thinking, no doubt, he ought to have a say in the matter, muttered something to the effect that children were a great deal too forward nowadays, and that it would be time enough for the boy to see a corpse when he broke his mother's heart--which, following the precedence of all spoilt boys, he was certain to do sooner or later; and this opinion found ready endorsement. The boy suppressed, my case began to look hopeless, and the poignancy of my suspense became such that I thought I should have gone mad. François was already persuaded into setting to work with his pick, and, I should most certainly have been speedily interred, had it not been for the timely arrival of a village wag, who, planking himself unobserved behind a tombstone close to my coffin, burst out laughing in the most sepulchral fashion. The effect on the company was electrical; the majority, including the women, fled precipitately, and the rest, overcoming the feeble protests of the doctor, wrenched off the lid of the coffin. The spell, cast over me by the occult brains, was now by a merciful Providence broken, and I was able to explain my condition to the flabbergasted faces around me. "I need only say, in conclusion, that the discomfiture of the doctor was complete, and that I took good care to express my opinion of him everywhere I went. Doubtless, many poor wretches have been less fortunate than I, and, being pronounced dead by unskilled physicians, have been prematurely interred. Apart from all the agony consequent to asphyxiation, they must have suffered hellish tortures through the agency of spirit brains."