Yet there could be no question that something did actually happen to little Arthur Vezin, something of the curious nature he described to Dr. Silence. Outwardly or inwardly, it happened beyond a doubt, and in spite of the jeers of his few friends who heard the tale, and observed wisely that “such a thing might perhaps have come to Iszard, that crackbrained Iszard, or to that odd fish Minski, but it could never have happened to commonplace little Vezin, who was foreordained to live and die according to scale.”