“A gendarme was buried alive the other day in a village near Grenoble. The man had become intoxicated on potato brandy, and fell into a profound sleep. After twenty hours passed in slumber, his friends considered him to be dead, particularly as his body assumed the usual rigidity of a corpse. When the sexton, however, was lowering the remains of the ill-fated gendarme into the grave, he heard moans and knocks proceeding from the interior of the ‘four-boards.’ He immediately bored holes in the sides of the coffin, to let in air, and then knocked off the lid. The gendarme had, however, ceased to live, having horribly mutilated his head in his frantic but futile efforts to burst his coffin open.” [EVIDENCE OF UNDERTAKERS.] [HORRIFYING CASES.] The _Undertakers’ and Funeral Directors’ Journal_, July 22, 1889, relates the following cases:-- “A New York undertaker recently told the following story, the circumstances of which are still remembered by old residents of the city:--‘About forty years ago a lady living on Division Street, New York City, fell dead, apparently, while in the act of dancing at a ball. It was a fashionable affair, and being able to afford it, she wore costly jewellery. Her husband, a flour merchant, who loved her devotedly, resolved that she should be interred in her ball dress, diamonds, pearls, and all; also that there should be no autopsy. As the weather was very inclement when the funeral reached the cemetery, the body was placed in the receiving vault for burial next day. The undertaker was not a poor man, but he was avaricious, and he made up his mind to possess the jewellery. He went in the night, and took the lady’s watch from the folds of her dress. He next began to draw a diamond ring from her finger, and in doing so had to use violence enough to tear the skin. Then the lady moved and groaned, and the thief, terrified and conscience-stricken, fled from the cemetery, and has never been since heard from, that I know of. The lady, after the first emotions of horror at her unheard-of position had passed over, gathered her nerves together and stepped out of the vault, which the thief had left open. How she came home I cannot tell; but this I know--she lived and had children, two at least of whom are alive to-day.’ “Another New York undertaker told this story. The New York papers thirty-five years ago were full of its ghastly details. ‘The daughter of a Court Street baker died. It was in winter, and the father, knowing that a married sister of his dead child, who lived in St. Louis, would like to see her face before laid in the grave for ever, had the body placed in the vault, waiting her arrival. The sister came, the vault was opened, the lid of the coffin taken off, when, to the unutterable horror of the friends assembled, they found the grave-clothes torn in shreds, and the fingers of both hands eaten off. The girl had been buried alive.’