While scanning his countenance, during those
few moments, sundry thoughts flitted through my mind.
These then, I said to myself - these are the functionaries, whether
executive or administrative, whether Italian or English or Chinese, whom
a man is supposed to respect. Who are they? God knows. Nine-tenths of
them are in a place where they have no business to be: so much is
certain. And what are they doing, these swarms of parasites? Justifying
their salaries by inventing fresh regulations and meddlesome bye-laws,
and making themselves objectionable all round. Distrust of authority
should be the first civic duty, even as the first military duty is said
to be the reverse of it. We catch ourselves talking of the "lesson of
history." Why not take that lesson to heart? Reverence of the mandarin
destroyed the fair life of old China, which was overturned by the
Tartars not because Chinamen were too weak or depraved, but because they
were the opposite: too moral, too law-abiding, too strong in their sense
of right. They paid for their virtue with the extinction of their
wonderful culture. They ought to have known better; they ought to have
rated morality at its true worth, since it was the profoundest Chinaman
himself who said that virtue is merely etiquette - or something to that
effect.
I found myself studying the delegato's physiognomy. What could one do
with such a composite face? It is a question which often confronts me
when I see such types. It confronted me then, in a flash. How make it
more presentable, more imposing? By what alterations? Shaving that
moustache? No; his countenance could not carry the loss; it would
forfeit what little air of dignity it possessed. A small pointed beard,
an eye-glass? Possibly. Another trimming of the hair might have improved
him, but, on the whole, it was a face difficult to manipulate, on
account of its inherent insipidity and self-contradictory features; one
of those faces which give so much trouble to the barbers and valets of
European royalties.
He took down the names and addresses of all four of us, and it was then
that I missed my chance. I ought to have spoken first instead of
allowing this luscious director to begin as follows: -
"The foreign gentleman here was at Orvinio about a month ago. He admits
it himself and I can corroborate the fact, as I was there at the same
time. Orvinio is a small country place in the corner of Umbria. There is
a mountain in the neighbourhood, remote and very high - altissima! It is
called Mount Muretta and occupies a commanding situation. For reasons
which I will leave you, Signer Commissario, to investigate, this
gentleman climbed up that mountain and was observed, on the very summit,
making calculations and taking measurements with instruments."
Now why did I climb up that wretched Muretta? For an all-sufficient
reason: it was a mountain. There is no eminence in the land, from Etna
and the Gran Sasso downwards, whose appeal I can resist. A bare
wall-like patch on the summit (whence presumably the name) visible from
below and promising a lively scramble up the rock, was an additional
inducement. Precipices are not so frequent at Orvinio that one can
afford to pass them by, although this one, as a matter of fact, proved
to be a mighty tame affair. There was yet another object to my trip. I
desired to verify a legend connected with this mountain, the tradition
of a vanished castle or hamlet in its upper regions to whose former
existence the name of a certain old family, still surviving at Orvinio,
bears witness. "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. (Mankind has a natural love
of the lie itself. Bacon.) Which means nothing more than that one will
do well to take account of national psychology. An English functionary,
athlete or mountaineer, might have glimpsed the state of affairs. But to
climb in war-time, without any object save that of exercising one's
limbs and verifying a questionable legend, a high and remote
mountain - Muretta happens to be neither the one nor the other - would
have seemed to an Italian an incredible proceeding. I thought it better
to assume the role of accuser in my turn: an Oriental trick.
"This director," I said, "calls himself a patriot. What has he told us?
That while at Orvinio he knew a foreigner who climbed a high mountain to
make calculations with instruments. What does this admirable citizen do
with regard to such a suspicious character?
