shall be able to look at your beautiful works of art as perfectly at our ease as if we only knew Cosaks and Bashkirs from the descriptions of travellers.”
The counsellor seemed not of this opinion, he became somewhat absent, and the remarks of the professor on the antiquities of Germany, which had been reserved for this evening’s discussion, and which he uttered with all the enthusiasm of an antiquary, scarcely gained attention. The professor laughed repeatedly at the belief in forebodings which his friend’s anxiety manifested, and adduced many arguments, founded on natural history and experience, to prove its fallacy.
“I can object nothing to your reasoning,” said the counsellor at last, “except the numerous results of experience, which should seem to confirm the reverse of your doctrine, and which would open to us a temporary view into realms inaccessible to human knowledge.—We cannot entirely reject the testimony of men worthy of credit, and who must be acquitted of any attempt to deceive.”
“Why not,” replied the professor, “when the doctrine itself is opposed to all the laws of possibility? Men of the greatest veracity and sincerity, may be deceived themselves; it is, in truth, with these forebodings as with ignes fatui,—many tell you they have heard of them, but not one with whom I have ever spoken has, himself, witnessed them. Till I meet with a ghost-seer, who assures me seriously and on his word that he has experienced the truth of them himself, when wide awake, and in full possession of reason and consciousness—till then, I reject the whole as futile.”
“And if such a person were to be found,” said the Counsellor, “would you then believe?”
“Hum,” replied the professor, shrugging his shoulders, “only after a very close investigation. Deception is so easy—it is in all cases only a more apparent or more hidden deception, that cherishes this credulity.”
“In all cases!” repeated the other: “I cannot agree with you there, I myself was once a witness of a circumstance of this nature, which, though I have not thought of it for some years, now recurs to my memory, and which was neither a dream nor an illusion. I will narrate it to you. You will believe me when I assure it is not a fictitious adventure; and when you have heard the particulars, you may judge whether I could have been deceived.
“It must be now nearly ten years since I was appointed a counsellor in the chamber at M. I was then unmarried, and was fond of travelling; while my elder comrades, on the contrary, loved their ease, and I often undertook to transact business for them at a distance from home. Once when I was preparing for one of these expeditions, which would cause me to pass near the convent at Wallbach, one of the older counsellors requested me to take that opportunity of viewing the place for him. It had been for a long time changed into an Amthaus, and the officer who held the situation had often petitioned for a repair of the old building; but when the chamber agreed to the request, the then Amtman found the new building unnecessary, and stated that he would content himself with the habitable part of it, if, in recompense, some other conveniences were allowed him. In short, I was commissioned to survey the place narrowly, and report on the expediency of repairing the old, or of building altogether a new Amthaus.
