(44). Item, the finger of a Frenchman, which I brought from Tholouse, the capital of Languedoc, in France. The occasion this: there is, amongst others, a great monastery of Franciscans, with a very fair large church and cloisters, the earth of which place is different from all others in this, that all the dead men and women’s corps that are buried there turn not into putryfaction and corruption, and so into earth, as in all other places; but, on the contrary, the bodies that are buried there in the space of 2 years are found in the posture that they were laid into the grave, dried into a kind of momy, being all entire and whole, dried to almost skin and bone,—the nerves or sinews and tendons stiffly holding all the body together, that you may take it and place it standing upright against a wall. And in the vaults whither these dried corps are removed there are abundance of them, like so many fagotts, and as stiff and strong. Among which they shewed us the corps of a souldier, that died by the wound of a stabb with a dagger in his breast, upon the orifice of which one of his hands lay flatt, and when they pulled away the hand, the wound was plainly seen; but let the hand go, and it returned to its place with force, as if it had a resort or spring to force it to its proper place. I pulled the hand away several times, and the nerves and tendons were so strong that the hand returned with a lusty clap upon the wound. There likewise they shewed us the corps of a physician (of their acquaintance), which, when they put a clean piece of paper into one hand and a pen into the other, when he stood in such a posture as if he had seriously been a-writing a dose or prescription. The monks told us that in one vault the principals of their order stood all in a row, in the habit of the order, according to their seniority. They proffered me the whole body of a little child, which I should out of curiosity have accepted of, if I had then been homeward bound; but I was then outward bound for the grand tour of France (or circle, as they call it), and so again into Italy.