"It is true," answered Pangloss, "you saw me hanged, though I
ought properly to have been burned; but you may remember, that it
rained extremely hard when they were going to roast me. The storm
was so violent that they found it impossible to light the fire; so
they hanged me because they could do no better. A surgeon purchased my
body, carried it home, and prepared to dissect me. He began by
making a crucial incision from my navel to the clavicle. It is
impossible for anyone to have been more lamely hanged than I had been.
The executioner was a subdeacon, and knew how to burn people very
well, but as for hanging, he was a novice at it, being quite out of
practice; the cord being wet, and not slipping properly, the noose did
not join. In short, I still continued to breathe; the crucial incision
made me scream to such a degree, that my surgeon fell flat upon his
back; and imagining it was the Devil he was dissecting, ran away,
and in his fright tumbled down stairs. His wife hearing the noise,
flew from the next room, and seeing me stretched upon the table with
my crucial incision, was still more terrified than her husband, and
fell upon him. When they had a little recovered themselves, I heard
her say to her husband, 'My dear, how could you think of dissecting
a heretic? Don't you know that the Devil is always in them? I'll run
directly to a priest to come and drive the evil spirit out.
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