"Certain; that is to say, a man or a woman, I can’t be sure about the sex. But it was someone, for it walked and ran in front of me."
"Perhaps it was a rabbit?"
"Nonsense! A rabbit with nails in its shoes!"
"All this seems to me decidedly peculiar," said Férulus.
"There you see that it is peculiar," cried Jeannette, "and that we ought to be afraid."
"I don’t say that. Things which seem to us marvelous at a distance are often perfectly natural when examined at close quarters. Indeed, there are some which lose a good deal by being looked at too closely. But before pronouncing definitely upon this, I would like to assure myself with my own eyes of the truth, for pluris est oculatus unus quam auriti decem!"
"You see!" said Cunette, "that means that it’s all nonsense, and that you dreamed it all."
"No, it doesn’t mean that, at all!" continued Férulus. "My dear Cunette, you do not translate literally. I think, primo, that there is something or nothing. That is my principle, and I start from that, because one should start from a principle."
"Well! I say that there ain’t anything," said Mademoiselle Cheval, "and that they was frightened by their own shades!"
"Why!" said Jeannette, "monsieur is a scholar, you must know—for he has shown me a whole heap of things already, me——"