Somewhere in the same street there was that evening a public festivity
of the carnival. Suddenly, in the midst of the scholarly meeting, the
doors open, a clown in highly colored costume rushes in in mad
excitement, and a negro with a revolver in hand follows him. In the
middle of the hall first the one, then the other, shouts wild phrases;
then the one falls to the ground, the other jumps on him; then a shot,
and suddenly both are out of the room. The whole affair took less than
twenty seconds. All were completely taken by surprise, and no one, with
the exception of the president, had the slightest idea that every word
and action had been rehearsed beforehand, or that, photographs had been
taken of the scene. It seemed most natural that the president should beg
the members to write down individually an exact report, inasmuch as he
felt sure that the matter would come before the courts. Of the forty
reports handed in, there was only one whose omissions were calculated as
amounting to less than twenty per cent of the characteristic acts;
fourteen had twenty to forty per cent of the facts omitted; twelve
omitted forty to fifty per cent, and thirteen still more than fifty per
cent. But besides the omissions there were only six among the forty
which did not contain positively wrong statements; in twenty-four
papers up to ten per cent of the statements were free inventions, and in
ten answers--that is, in one fourth of the papers--more than ten per
cent of the statements were absolutely false, in spite of the fact that
they all came from scientifically trained observers.
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