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? He does nothing. Is there
not a barrack-full of carbineers at the entrance of the place ready to
arrest such people? But our patriotic gentleman allows the spy to walk
away, to climb fifty other mountains and take five thousand other
measurements, all of which have by this time safely reached Berlin and
Vienna.
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