“If I knew of what then,” said the German, “I should probably know a great deal more.”
It was a good answer, I thought, and it made me curious. So, I moved my position to that corner of my bench which was nearest to them and leaning my back against the convent-wall, heard perfectly, without appearing to attend.
“Thunder and lightning!” said the German, warming, “when a certain man is coming to see you, unexpectedly; and, without his own knowledge, sends some invisible messenger, to put the idea of him in your head all day, what do you call that? When you walk along a crowded street—at Frankfort, Milan, London, Paris—and think that a passing stranger is like your friend Heinrich, and then that another passing stranger is like your friend Heinrich, and so begin to have a strange foreknowledge that presently you’ll meet your friend Heinrich—which you do, though you believed him at Trieste—what do you call that?”
“It’s not uncommon either,” murmured the Swiss and the other three.
“Uncommon!” said the German. “It’s as common as cherries in the Black Forest. It’s as common as maccaroni at Naples. And Naples reminds me! When the old Marchesa Senzanima shrieks at a card party on the Chiaja—as I heard and saw her, for it happened in a Bavarian family of mine, and I was overlooking the service that evening—I say, when the old Marchesa starts up at the card-table, white through her rouge, and cries, ‘My sister in Spain is dead! I felt her cold touch on my back!’—and when that sister is dead at the moment—what do you call that?”
“Or when the blood of San Gennaro liquefies at the request of the clergy—as all the world knows that it does regularly once a year, in my native city,” said the Neapolitan courier, after a pause, with a comical look, “what do you call that?”
“That!” cried the German. “Well! I think I know a name for that.”
“Miracle?” said the Neapolitan, with the same sly face.
The German merely smoked and laughed; and they all smoked and laughed.
“Bah!” said the German, presently. “I speak of things that really do happen. When I