The Sketch Book. The Sexton of Cologne
Anon
Genre: | Regular Feature, Extract, Short Fiction |
Publications extracted: | Monthly Magazine |
Subjects: | Death, Putrefaction, Superstition, Supernaturalism, Fear, Disease |
Narrates the burial in a trance of a rich burgomaster's wife, and her revival after her coffin was opened by the sexton. When the sexton came to rob the coffin, he fancied that he smelt 'the pestilential breath of decay, though it was full early for corruption to have begun is work' (446). The supposed corpse seizing his hand, he fled; he trembled all over 'as if shaken by an ague-fit' (447). |
© Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Project, Universities of Leeds and Sheffield, 2005 - 2020
Printed from Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical: An Electronic Index, v. 4.0, The Digital Humanities Institute <http://www.sciper.org> [accessed ]