"'But I was there too,' cried Theophrastus, 'and I swear to you that it wasn't!'
"'Dear! Dear! Do hold on to the right end of your Reason! You were at K; the express passed K; it must pass K; it must go and plunge into I, since it cannot be anywhere else. By a necessary chance, while the beginning of the train is engulfed in the mass of sand (I take it for granted that the line H I is too short for the engine-driver, having perceived the error of direction half-way up it, to have had the time to ward off the catastrophe), the couplings of the last carriage broke, and the carriage and the guard's-van began to descend the line which was on a slope since it went to this mass of sand. There, after having gone down the line to H and back up it to K, you saw the carriage and Signor Petito at the window. (Probably Signor Petito opened the window with the intention of jumping out, at the moment he grasped the imminent catastrophe, and as it happened the shock of it shut his head in the window.)'
"'That I understand; but what I don't understand...'
"'Let us first consider what we do understand: that is the right end of Reason. We will next consider what we do not understand. No one is found in the guard's-van. The shock undoubtedly hurled the guard into the sand. All that is certain. Now, after having stripped Signor Petito of his clothes, you sat down on the embankment and read his papers. When you raised your head, the railway-carriage was no longer there. Well, since there was a slope and since there was a wind, which waggled the head of M. Petito at the window, the carriage, after having glided down to H, found itself once more on the line A B a little higher up than H on the side of B, where the staff of the station have by now certainly found it. Do you understand now? Do you understand everything, except that you haven't seen the train pass K? Since everything is thus explained, it must be that that was how things happened. Now I only seek how you were not able to see the train pass K. That which it is impossible to explain in the case of five persons at A or at B may very well be explained in the case of one at K.'
"'I am waiting,' said M. Longuet.
"I chuckled—and truly there was reason to chuckle—and went on, 'There are moments when you are deaf, M. Longuet?'
"'There certainly are,' said M. Longuet.
"'Suppose you were deaf during the moment you were waiting for the train at K, then you would not have heard it.'
"'No, but I should have seen it.'
"We have already arrived at the fact that you did not hear it. That is a considerable advance! God bless you, M. Longuet! God bless you!' (M. Longuet was sneezing.)