To render it possible in the case of two chance animals as these must have been under the related circumstances, a biological coincidence is demanded so utterly unlikely and incredible that we are at once moved to treat the story with scorn, and reject it as a fiction.

Yet not one of those many writers who have retailed that story from Burchard's Diarium as a truth incontestable as the Gospels, has paused to consider this--so blinded are we when it is a case of accepting that which we desire to accept.
The narrative, too, is oddly--suspiciously--circumstantial, even to the unimportant detail of the particular gate by which the peasants entered Rome.

In a piece of fiction it is perfectly natural to fill in such minor details to the end that the picture shall be complete; but they are rare in narratives of fact.

And one may be permitted to wonder how came the Master of Ceremonies at the Vatican to know the precise gate by which those peasants came.

It is not--as we have seen--the only occasion on which an excess of detail in the matter of a gate renders suspicious the accuracy of a story of Burchard's.
Both these affairs find a prominent place in the Letter to Silvio Savelli.