You see, Effi, one can pronounce the fearful word
without his appearing. What you saw or what, as you think, slipped
past your bed, was the little Chinaman that the maids pasted on the
back of the chair upstairs. I'll wager he had a blue coat on and a
very flat-crowned hat, with a shining button on top."
She nodded.
"Now you see, a dream, a hallucination. And then, I presume, Johanna
told you something last night, about the wedding upstairs."
"No."
"So much the better."
"She didn't tell me a word. But from all this I can see that there is
something queer here. And then the crocodile; everything is so uncanny
here."
"The first evening, when you saw the crocodile, you considered it
fairy-like--"
"Yes, then."
"And then, Effi, I can't well leave here now, even if it were possible
to sell the house or make an exchange. It is with this exactly as with
declining an invitation to Varzin. I can't have the people here in the
city saying that District Councillor Innstetten is selling his house
because his wife saw the little pasted-up picture of a Chinaman as a
ghost by her bed. I should be lost, Effi. One can never recover from
such ridiculousness."
"But, Geert, are you so sure that there is nothing of the kind?"
"That I will not affirm. It is a thing that one can believe or,
better, not believe. But supposing there were such things, what harm
do they do? The fact that bacilli are flying around in the air, of
which you have doubtless heard, is much worse and more dangerous than
all this scurrying about of ghosts, assuming that they do scurry
about, and that such a thing really exists.
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