Vito Viti frankly
admonished him to put his faith in heaven, affirming that something
worth while would yet turn up in the cruise to render the enterprise
memorable; it being a habit with the magistrate to say an ave or two on
all trying occasions, and then trust to God.
"You never knew a miracle, vice-governatore," said Vito Viti one day,
when they were discussing the matter by themselves; "you never knew a
miracle come to pass that another was not close on its heels; the first
being a mere preparation for the last, and the last always proving to be
the most remarkable. Now, when Anina Gotti fell off the cliffs, it was a
miracle she didn't break her neck; but, when she rolled over into the
sea, it was a much greater she wasn't drowned!"
"It is better to leave these things to the church, neighbor Vito," was
the vice-governatore's answer; "nor do I see that there has been any
miracle in the affair to start with."
"How!--Do you not call it a miracle, Signor Andrea, that two such men as
you and I should be deceived, as we were beyond all doubt, by this knave
of a French corsair? I look upon it as so great a miracle myself, that
it ought to follow instead of going before its companion."
To this Andrea made an answer suitable to his greater information, and
the discourse took its usual direction toward the means of doing
something to relieve the two functionaries from the stigma that they
mutually felt now rested on their sagacity, and that, too, as this
sagacity might be considered conjointly or individually.
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