Alas, it didn’t. Perhaps it wasn’t well written or persuasive; commerce is my field and the composition of such a paper probably exceeded my gifts more than was the case with the teacher, even though in point of knowledge I was streets ahead of him. The failure of my paper can be explained in another way too: the timing of its appearance was perhaps unfavourable. The discovery of the mole, incompletely established at the time, was on the one hand not so remote as to have been forgotten, so that my paper might have had surprise on its side; on the other, sufficient time had passed to exhaust such slight interest as there had once been. People who took cognizance of my paper told one another with a kind of dismalness that had characterized the discussion for some years that these futile efforts in this arid matter were getting going again, and some even went so far as to confuse my work with the teacher’s.

A leading agricultural journal published the following note, luckily towards the end of the issue in question, and in small print: ‘The paper on the giant mole has been re-submitted to us. We remember how we laughed heartily at its first appearance years ago. The intervening time has not made it cleverer or ourselves more foolish. Only, we are unable to laugh at it a second time. So let us put the question to our teachers’ associations: has a village schoolteacher no more pressing task than to go chasing after giant moles?’ An unpardonable confusion! They had read neither the first nor the second paper, and the two terms they did manage to glean, ‘giant mole’ and ‘village schoolteacher’ were enough for the gentlemen to take sides in the predictable way. Various types of recourse suggested themselves, but want of communication with the teacher kept me from pursuing any of them. Rather, I tried to keep the publication secret for as long as possible. But he very quickly got wind of it, as I understood from a remark in a letter from him announcing a visit to me during the Christmas holidays. He wrote: ‘It’s a wicked world, and you’re making it easier for it,’ which was his way of saying that I formed part of it, and wasn’t content with my own inborn wickedness either, but was set on making things easier for the world, i.e. I was engaged in supporting a more general badness and helping it to triumph.

Now I had already taken the necessary decisions, I could calmly await his visit and calmly watch him draw up, greet me a little less politely than he liked to be, sit down mutely opposite me, carefully draw out the periodical from the breast pocket of his strangely wadded looking jacket, and push it across to me, open at the place. ‘I know, I’ve seen it,’ I said, pushing the periodical back to him unread. ‘You’ve seen it,’ he said with a sigh – he had the old teacher’s habit of repeating answers to questions. ‘Of course I won’t take this lying down,’ he carried on, rapping on the periodical with a finger and looking at me sharply, as though I disagreed with him; he probably had some clue as to what I might have wanted to say; also I was aware, not so much from his words as from other signs he gave, that he often had a very accurate sense of my intentions, but didn’t yield to it and allowed himself to be distracted.

I can repeat what I said to him then almost verbatim, since I made a note of it immediately after our conversation. ‘You can do as you like,’ I said, ‘as of today we will go our separate ways. I think this will neither surprise nor upset you. The note in the paper has not precipitated my decision, merely cemented it. The actual cause lies in the fact that I originally believed my appearance on the scene would assist you, whereas I am now forced to see that I have harmed you in every possible way. I can’t say why this has happened, factors governing success and failure are always complex, but you should avoid looking merely for those that seem to implicate me. Remember, you, too, set out with the best of intentions and when you look at the thing as a whole, you failed. Nor am I speaking in jest; it’s against myself after all, when I say that the connection with me is just another one of your failures. If I decide to withdraw from the affair now, it’s neither cowardice nor betrayal. It even takes a certain amount of resolve; my respect for your person is evident in what I have written, in a sense you have become my teacher too, and the mole is almost dear to me. And yet I will step aside. You are the discoverer and, try as I might, I still seem to get in the way of your possible fame, while I draw failure and pass it onto you. At least that’s your view. Enough.