"
To her, Orsola Steno, the case was clear: and she only wondered that
anybody could be so blind as not to see it.
But what if such a supposition were simply inconsistent with the
known facts? What if it were simply impossible that any person
should inflict on themselves such an injury as that which it was
evident the murdered woman had sustained; and more impossible still
that they should have been able to adopt the means for concealing
the wound which the assassin had adopted? What if such was the
perfectly unhesitating judgment and declaration of the medical
authorities? Such people as Orsola Steno, and those who shared her
opinion, are ordinarily impervious to any such reasoning. It is
remarkable that, in any case of doubt or circumstances of suspicion,
the popular mind--or, at all events, the Italian popular mind--is
specially disposed to mistrust the medical profession. They suspect
error exactly where scientific certainty is the most perfect, and
deception precisely in those who have the least possible imaginable
motive for deceiving. Probably it may be because the grounds and
means of the knowledge they mistrust are more wholly, than in any
other case, beyond the sphere of their own conceptions.
When old Orsola Steno was told that the doctors declared that it was
not within the bounds of possibility that La Bianca should have put
herself to death in the manner in which she had been put to death,
nothing could exceed the profundity of the contempt with which she
sneered in reply:
"Ah! they'll say anything to make out that they know more than other
folks, and, maybe, they often know a deal less.
Pages:
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576