But this was very
far from being the case. A learned professor of anatomy indeed
attended at the opening of the tomb, but instead of touching the
remains himself, or utilizing his science by handling them as they
ought to have been handled, he called a workman, and by him the bodies
were torn out from their resting-place in fragments. The clothes were
of course torn to pieces in the operation; the lace from the shirt of
Alexander was permitted to be stolen; and the same fate, as has been
stated, overtook his teeth. No sort of preparation had been made for
any possible examination of the remains to any good purpose. They were
laid out anyhow, as the phrase is, on a little marble bench in the
chapel. Those who remember the place will not need to be told how
perfect a sham any pretence of examination must have been under such
circumstances. When this pretence had been gone through, the bones
were cast back again into the marble sarcophagus by the workman,
"like"--as one eye-witness of the scene describes it--"the bones of
dogs." And when the same person looked into the sarcophagus after this
tossing back had been effected, he saw a mere confused heap of the
scattered bones of two skeletons undistinguishably mixed together.
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