The fact that the village is a long way from any railway line can hardly serve as an excuse. Many people came there out of curiosity from far away, some even from abroad; yet those who should have showed a little more than curiosity failed to come. Yes, if it hadn’t been for ordinary people, people whose daily round barely gave them a moment to catch their breath, if it hadn’t been for the selfless efforts of such people, then the rumour of the phenomenon would probably have scarcely left the confines of the parish. It should be admitted that even rumour, something ordinarily so hard to brake, in this particular instance was positively sluggish, and if it hadn’t been given a nudge or two, it might never have got going at all. But not even that was any reason not to take time with this phenomenon; the thing simply deserved to have been investigated.

Instead of which, the only written account was left to an old village schoolmaster, an excellent man in his profession, no question, but whose gifts, like his training, were hardly such as to permit him to offer so much as a basic description, much less any explanation. His treatise was printed and sold in many copies to the then inhabitants of the village, where it met with a measure of praise, but the teacher was sensible enough to see that his isolated and unsupported efforts were basically valueless. If he nevertheless chose to persist in them and made of the affair, in spite of its annually increasing difficulty, his life’s work, then that goes to prove, on the one hand, the importance the phenomenon might have had, and on the other, the degree of stamina and unwavering conviction that can be found in an old unregarded schoolmaster.

The fact that he suffered badly from his rejection by influential parties is demonstrated by a short postscript he appended to his monograph, admittedly after an interval of some years, at a time, therefore, when hardly anyone could remember the original matter. In this postscript he attacks – his accusation hardly persuasive by its deftness, but by its honesty – the incomprehension he met with in people where it should have least been expected. Of these people he remarks aptly: ‘It is they, not I, who talk like an old village schoolmaster.’ And he cites, among other things, the reaction of an expert whom he sought out in the matter. The expert is not named, but it is not difficult to guess his identity. After the schoolmaster had overcome great difficulties to gain admission from the expert, to whom he had announced his visit several weeks previously, he noticed from the moment of their meeting that the expert harboured invincible prejudices regarding the affair. The degree of inattention with which he heard the lengthy report the schoolmaster made on the basis of his monograph may be judged by a remark he passed after some apparent pause for reflection.

‘Yes, moles come in all types and sizes. There where you live, the earth is especially rich and black. Well, it stands to reason that the nutrition it gives to moles will be especially abundant, and it’s only to be expected that they will grow to an unusual size.’ ‘But not as big as that!’ exclaimed the schoolmaster, and exaggerating a little in his rage, he paced off some seven feet along the wall. ‘Oh, yes,’ said the expert, to whom the whole business obviously felt a little ridiculous, ‘why ever not?’ Thus snubbed, the schoolmaster went home. He tells how, that evening in the falling snow, his wife and six children came to meet him on the road, and he was compelled to acknowledge the final failure of all his hopes.

At the time I read about this treatment afforded to the schoolmaster, I was not yet acquainted with his opus. But I decided straightaway to collect and assemble all the materials I could in the case. Since I could hardly shake my fist in the expert’s face, I wanted my writing at the very least to speak up for the schoolmaster, or, better, not the schoolmaster per se so much as the good intentions of an honest man with little influence. I will admit I later regretted this decision, because I soon came to feel that putting it into effect could not but put me in a false position. On the one hand, my own influence was hardly such as to be able to bring the expert, much less public opinion on the whole, round to the teacher’s views; on the other, the teacher was bound to notice that I was less concerned with his principal goal, the proof of the appearance of the giant mole, than with the unasked-for defence of his good name, which would seem to him to stand in no need of my defence.

So, as was bound to happen, in seeking to associate myself with the teacher, I met with his incomprehension, and probably instead of helping, soon stood in need of a new helper myself, whose appearance on the scene was highly unlikely. Moreover, my engagement on his behalf involved me in a great deal of work. If I wanted to convince people, I couldn’t rely on the teacher who, it seemed, had little power to convince. Knowledge of his monograph would only have muddied the water, and I therefore avoided reading it until my own work was completed. I didn’t even get in touch with him. Of course, through intermediaries, he got to hear of my inquiries, but he had no idea whether I was with him or against him. He perhaps thought the latter, though he was to deny this later on, because I have proof that he tried to put obstacles in my path. This was not at all difficult for him, seeing as I was obliged to carry out all the investigations he had already conducted, and he was able to anticipate me at every turn. But this was the only objection that could reasonably be made to my approach; an unavoidable objection, and limited as much as possible by the self-denying scrupulousness of my conclusions. Other than that, my paper was free of any influence on the part of the teacher; it is possible I was even over-scrupulous in this regard. It really was as though no one had yet investigated the case at all, as though I were the first to interview the witnesses, the first to collate the accounts, the first to draw conclusions.

When I subsequently read the teacher’s treatise – it had the terribly cumbersome title: A Mole Larger Than Any Yet Seen – I found a number of differences, even though we both thought we had proved our main thesis, which is to say the mole’s existence.