It’s amazing how the man who collected the money is able to keep an eye on everyone.” ’

I had been listening to him quietly. The longer he went on, the quieter I became. On the table I had my pamphlet; I had bought up all the available copies. There were only a very few missing, because I had sent out a circular letter asking for all the copies I’d sent out to be returned to me, and most of them had indeed come back. From many people I received very polite letters, to the effect that they didn’t recall having been sent such a thing ever, and that if they had, then most regrettably it had been lost. That was fine too, I had nothing against that. Only one person asked me to be allowed to keep my pamphlet as a curio and in the spirit of my circular promised not to show it to anyone for the next twenty years. The village schoolmaster hadn’t seen this circular letter of mine, and I was happy that his words made it so easy for me to show it to him. Moreover, I could do so without the least anxiety because I had taken particular care with its composition, and kept my eye on the interest of the village schoolteacher and his cause at all times. The principal sentences ran as follows: ‘I am not asking for the return of my work because the opinions represented therein are no longer mine, or that I see them as erroneous or even unsusceptible of proof. No, the sole reasons for my request are personal, though very compelling. My view of the substance may not be inferred to any degree, I would like to stress this, and if appropriate, pass it on.’

For the moment I kept this letter out of sight, and said: ‘Are you complaining that these things have failed to come to pass? Why would you do that? Let’s not part in any spirit of bitterness. And please try and see that, while you have made a discovery, this discovery does not tower over everything else, and therefore the injustice done to you is not an injustice that towers over all others either. I am not familiar with the regulations of learned societies, but I don’t believe that even in an ideal case you would have been afforded a welcome that would have come close to what you outlined to your poor wife. If I hoped for anything from my pamphlet, then it was perhaps that some professor might have been alerted to the case, and that he would have got one of his young students to pursue the matter, that this student might have gone out to see you and would have checked through your and my investigations again in his own way, and that finally, if the result struck him as even worth mentioning – I should say at this point that students are renowned sceptics – then he might have put out a paper of his own in which what you described might have been given a scientific foundation. But even if such a hope had been realized, it still wouldn’t have meant much. A paper by a student on such a striking theme might itself have become an object of ridicule. You can see by the example of the agricultural journal how easy it is, and in that regard scientific publications are much more ruthless. Which is understandable, seeing as professors have such vast responsibilities – to science, to posterity – that they can hardly hurl themselves at every new sighting. In that regard, the rest of us have the advantage over them. But I will go on and just assume for now that the student’s paper had made its way. What would have happened then? Your name might have appeared a few times, it might have done something for your profession, people would have said: “Our village schoolmasters are renowned for their keen-sightedness”, and the magazine here, if magazines have such a thing as a memory or a conscience, would have had to issue a public apology, and then a helpful professor would have come forward to secure a scholarship for you. It’s a real possibility that efforts might have been made to draw you into the city, perhaps find you a job in a city elementary school and thus given you a chance to avail yourself of the supports that a city offers to your scientific training. If I am to be brutally honest, though, I must say they might not have got beyond the attempt. You would have been summoned here, and you would have come, too, as a supplicant among a hundred others, with no sort of festive welcome. They would have spoken to you, recognized your earnest endeavour, but would have seen that you are an old man, that to embark on a scientific study is a nonsense at such an age, and that you came to your discovery accidentally rather than deliberately, and have no particular plans to pursue it beyond that single case. So they would have ended up leaving you back in your village. Your discovery admittedly would have been taken forward because it’s not so small that once brought to attention it could ever be wholly lost from sight. But you wouldn’t have heard much more about it, and what you would have heard you would barely have been capable of understanding. Every discovery is straightaway incorporated into the body of science and then in a sense stops being a discovery, it is dissolved in the totality and disappears; it takes a scientifically trained eye to even recognize it.