"We are not really from Orvinio," these people will tell
you. "We are from the lost castle of the Muretta." (There is not a
vestige of a castle left. But I found one brick in the jungle which
covers, on the further side of the summit, a vast rock-slide dating, I
should say, from early mediaeval days, under whose ruins the fastness
may lie buried.) Reasons enough for visiting Muretta.
As to taking measurements - well, a man is naturally accused of a good
many things in the course of half a century. Nobody has yet gone so far
as to call me a mathematician. These "calculations and instruments" were
a local mirage; as pretty an instance of the mythopoeic faculty as one
could hope to find in our degenerate days, when gods no longer walk the
earth. [27]
The official seemed to be impressed with the fact that my accuser was
director of a bank. He inquired what I had to say.
This was a puzzle. They had sprung the thing on me rather suddenly. One
likes to have notice of such questions. Tell the truth? I am often
tempted to do so; it saves so much trouble! But truth-telling is a
matter of longitude, and the further east one goes, the more one learns
to hold in check that unnatural propensity.
