One result of the doubts thus expressed as to the credibility of Von Zach's report was to draw out a testimony to Mezzofanti's familiarity with a language for which he had not before publicly gotten credit, the Czechish or Bohemian. A correspondent of the Baron at Vienna, having read his statement in the Corres- pondance, expressed his satisfaction at the confirmation which it supplied of what he had before regarded as incredible.

" I was very glad," he writes, " to see confirmed by you what the Chevalier d'Odelga, colonel and commandant of Prince Leopold of Naples'regiment, told me of that marvellous man. Chevalier d'Odelga, who is a Bohemian, conversed in that language with M. Mezzofanti, and assured me that he would have taken him for a countryman had he not known him to be an Italian. I frankly confess that until now, I only half believed the tale, for I regard the Bohemian language as the very rack of an Italian tongue."^{Note 1}

Notes