"So they carried the vroucolaca, by order of the administration, to the point of the Island of St. George, where they had prepared a great pile made up with a mixture of tow, for fear that wood, however dry it might be, would not burn quickly enough by itself. The remains of this unfortunate corpse were thrown upon it and consumed in a very little time; it was on the first day of January, 1701. We saw this fire as we returned from Delos: it might be called a real _feu de joie_; since then, there have been no more complaints against the vroucolaca. They contented themselves with saying that the devil had been properly caught that time, and they made up a song to turn him into ridicule. "Throughout the Archipelago, the people are persuaded that it is only the Greeks of the Greek church whose corpses are reanimated by the devil. The inhabitants of the Isle of Santorin have great apprehensions of these bugbears; those of Maco, after their visions were dissipated, felt an equal fear of being punished by the Turks and by the Bishop of Tina. None of the papas would be present at St. George when this body was burned, lest the bishop should exact a sum of money for having disinterred and burned the dead body without his permission. As for the Turks, it is certain that at their first visit they did not fail to make the community of Maco pay the price of the blood of this poor devil, who in every way became the abomination and horror of his country. After this, must we not own that the Greeks of to-day are not great Greeks, and that there is only ignorance and superstition among them?"[517] So says Monsieur de Tournefort. Footnotes: [517] This took place nearly a hundred and fifty years ago. CHAPTER XXXIII. HAS THE DEMON POWER TO CAUSE ANY ONE TO DIE AND THEN TO RESTORE THE DEAD TO LIFE? Supposing the principle which we established as indubitable at the commencement of this dissertation--that God alone is the sovereign arbitrator of life and death; that he alone can give life to men, and restore it to them after he has taken it from them--the question that we here propose appears unseasonable and absolutely frivolous, since it concerns a supposition notoriously impossible.