[Dark Saint Alaick]

Upon seeing this I fell into a great rage, without exactly knowing why. "This thing," I
exclaimed, "is a contemptible falsehood--a poor hoax--the lees of the invention of some
pitiable penny-a-liner, of some wretched concocter of accidents in Cocaigne. These
fellows knowing the extravagant gullibility of the age set their wits to work in the
imagination of improbable possibilities, of odd accidents as they term them, but to a
reflecting intellect (like mine, I added, in parenthesis, putting my forefinger
unconsciously to the side of my nose), to a contemplative understanding such as I myself
possess, it seems evident at once that the marvelous increase of late in these 'odd
accidents' is by far the oddest accident of all. For my own part, I intend to believe nothing
henceforward that has anything of the 'singular' about it."