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.
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