Gossip of the Century Volume 3; Personal and Traditional Memories--Social, Literary, Artistic, Etc (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 Excerpt: ...lodged--journeyed home, leaving him to finish his visit by himself. He had scarcely reached Malines, however, before he was attacked with very alarming symptoms, and on the surgeon who had attended him being sent for, he declared them to be indicative of neither more nor less than hydrophobia. The malady went on from bad to worse, and in two days the patient was not only beyond all hope, but dangerous to others, and there remained no choice but to stifle him between two feather beds." The old man ceased, and his little granddaughter, who had dropped her knitting in her eagerness to hear the story, looked up with terror in her face. "Yes, my child," said the old man, "it is even so; there is no one in the village who was living at the time, who does not shudder at the recollection of the fate of this unbelieving Baron, while the avocat, who piously trusted in the great St Hubert, went away completely restored to health." A more recent event of the same nature he proceeded to relate as having occurred at Frex, a parish in the canton of St-Hubert, as lately as the 18th April 1870, attested by M. l'Abbe Roupenfeld, "who," he said, "wrote an account of it to our cure." On that day, it appears, he was sent for in great haste to administer the last sacraments to a man in danger of approaching death; without delay he was at his side, but a strange sight presented itself to him. The patient was lying extended on the kitchen floor, breathing with difficulty, his eyes at once haggard and flashing, his jaws moving rapidly, and his teeth chattering, the power of speech gone, and instead of intelligible words his lips gave utterance to cries, yells, and barkin like that of a dog, while delirium was apparent in all his movement...