Note 2 — Chapter XVI

This is what happened to me. In my younger days I had malignant typhus. I appeared to die. I was attended by two very clever doctors, who were with me at my supposed death, which they certified, and I was laid out. My mother's grief was so violent that my father judged it expedient to send for her confessor to give her some consolation. He happened to be the famous large-minded clever Jesuit and theologian, old Father Randal Lythegoe. He consoled my mother for some time, then he knelt down and prayed for me, and then he got up and put on his stole. "What are you going to do, Father?" said my mother. "I am going to give her Extreme Unction," he said. "But you can't; she has been dead several hours." "I don't care about that," he said. "I am going to risk it." He did so, and about two hours after he was gone I opened my eyes, and gradually came to.