Another case of this kind is connected with a curious token of gratitude exhibited by the gratified victim. A president of the Parliament of Toulouse, returning from Paris towards the end of the seventeenth century, was compelled by an accident to stop at a poor country tavern. During the night there appeared to him an old man, pale and bleeding, who declared that he was the father of the present owner of the house, that he had been murdered by his own son, cut to pieces, and buried in the garden. He appealed to the president to investigate the matter and to avenge his murder. The judge was so forcibly impressed by his vision that he ordered search to be made, and lo! the body of the murdered man was found, and the son, thunderstruck by the mysterious revelation, acknowledged his guilt, was tried, and in course of time died on the scaffold. But the murdered man was not satisfied yet; he showed himself once more to the president and asked how he could prove his gratitude? The latter asked to be informed of the hour of his death, that he might fitly prepare himself, and was promised that he should know it a week in advance. Many years afterwards a fierce knocking was heard at the gate of the president's house in Toulouse; the porter opened but saw no one; the knocking was repeated, but this time also the servants who had rushed to the spot found nobody there; when it was heard a third time they were thoroughly frightened and hastened to inform their master. The latter went to the door and there saw the well-remembered form of his nightly visitor, who told him that he would die in eight days. He told his friends and his family what had happened, but only met with laughter, as he was in perfect health and nothing seemed more improbable than his sudden death. But as he sat, on the eighth day, at table with his family, a book was mentioned which he wished to see, and he got up to look for it in his library. Instantly a shot is heard; the guests rush out and find him lying on the floor and weltering in his blood. Upon inquiry it appeared that a man, desperately in love with the chamber-maid and jealous of a rival, had mistaken the president for the latter and murdered him with a pistol (De Ségur, _Galérie morale et politique_, p. 221).