The Count of Monte Cristo

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"Perhaps," returned the count, smiling.

"My dear count, you have no idea what pleasure it gives me to hear you
speak thus," said Morcerf. "I had announced you beforehand to my friends
as an enchanter of the 'Arabian Nights,' a wizard of the Middle Ages;
but the Parisians are so subtle in paradoxes that they mistake for
caprices of the imagination the most incontestable truths, when these
truths do not form a part of their daily existence. For example, here is
Debray who reads, and Beauchamp who prints, every day, 'A member of the
Jockey Club has been stopped and robbed on the Boulevard;' 'four persons
have been assassinated in the Rue St. Denis' or 'the Faubourg St.
Germain;' 'ten, fifteen, or twenty thieves, have been arrested in a cafe
on the Boulevard du Temple, or in the Thermes de Julien,'--and yet these
same men deny the existence of the bandits in the Maremma, the Campagna
di Romana, or the Pontine Marshes. Tell them yourself that I was taken
by bandits, and that without your generous intercession I should
now have been sleeping in the Catacombs of St. Sebastian, instead of