coats. There being no safer man to imitate in all such proceedings
than a courier, I buttoned mine.

The mountain in the sunset had stopped the five couriers in a
conversation. It is a sublime sight, likely to stop conversation.
The mountain being now out of the sunset, they resumed. Not that I
had heard any part of their previous discourse; for indeed, I had
not then broken away from the American gentleman, in the
travellers' parlour of the convent, who, sitting with his face to
the fire, had undertaken to realise to me the whole progress of
events which had led to the accumulation by the Honourable Ananias
Dodger of one of the largest acquisitions of dollars ever made in
our country.

'My God!' said the Swiss courier, speaking in French, which I do
not hold (as some authors appear to do) to be such an all-
sufficient excuse for a naughty word, that I have only to write it
in that language to make it innocent; 'if you talk of ghosts - '

'But I DON'T talk of ghosts,' said the German.

'Of what then?' asked the Swiss.

'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.