Note 41 — Last Words of Distinguished Men and Women. (continued 3)

On some occasion of alteration in the church at Twickenham, England, or burial of some one in the same spot, the coffin of Pope was disinterred, and opened to see the state of the remains. By a bribe to the sexton of the time, possession of the skull was obtained for the night, and another skull was returned in place of it. Fifty pounds were paid for the successful management of this transaction. Whether this account is correct or not, the fact is that the skull of Pope figures in a private museum.—William Howitt.

The head of the celebrated Duc de Richelieu, like that of Pope, the Mahdi, and Swendenborg, is above ground. At the time of the revolution in France the body of the Duke was exhumed from its grave in the Church of the Sorbonne. This having been subjected to numerous indignities, the head was cut off, and the latter eventually came into the possession of a grocer, who afterward sold it to M. Armez, the elder. M. Armez, after the Restoration, offered the head to the then Duc de Richelieu, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who took no notice whatever of the offer. The son of M. Armez inherited the skull. In 1846 the illustrious Montalembert, when President of the Historical Committee of Arts and Monuments, at the instance of his colleagues, did his best to recover the head of the Duke, but without success. M. F. Feuillet de Conches, in his "Causeries d'un Curieux," makes this comment: "We accuse no one, still the fact is undeniable that this terrible head, the personification of the absolute monarchy killing the aristocratic monarchy, is wandering upon the earth like a spectre that has straggled out of the domain of the dead."