If Hermann had arrived just one hand sooner or later in his first two games, he would have lost then as well. Hermann simply deluded himself into believing that a strange, guilt-induced dream was a vision from beyond the grave, even though it came to him when he was passed out drunk. There is no honest way for a person to know exactly which cards will be drawn when from a deck at which time, not including the last one, and the order is rarely ever the same as previous hands. With all of these facts in mind, it becomes impossible to believe that the countess ever really had a secret to winning at faro, thus making this a realistic story of the price of greed and over-ambition, and the ease with which one can be fooled if he or she wants to believe badly enough. There is not a single irrefutable piece of evidence which proves the truth of the countess's story, only rumor and hearsay. As such, this story cannot be considered anything but realistic, since the same limits of possibility apply within its reality as in our own.