He carries out his theory.  The work of Monsignor Perrelli is, above all things, a human document—­the revelation of a personality cultured and free from prejudice.  Indeed, when one considers the religious situation of those days, he seems to be sailing perilously near the wind in some of his theological reflections; so much so, that Mr. Eames often wondered whether this might not account for our ignorance of his later life and the manner of his death.  He held it possible that the scholar may have fallen into the clutches of the Inquisition, never again to return to the surface of society.  It would explain why the first edition of the antiquities is so extremely rare, and why the two subsequent ones were issued, respectively, at Amsterdam and Bale.

Incidentally, the book contains in its nine hundred pages all that could possibly interest a contemporary student about the history and natural products of Nepenthe.  It is still a mine of antiquarian information, though large sections of the work have inevitably become obsolete.  To bring the antiquities up to date by means of a revised and enlarged version enriched with footnotes, appendixes and copious illustrations, was the ambition, the sole ambition, of Mr. Ernest Eames, R.A. . . .

It was not true to say of this gentleman that he fled from England to Nepenthe because he forged his mother’s will, because he was arrested while picking the pockets of a lady at Tottenham Court Road Station, because he refused to pay for the upkeep of his seven illegitimate children, because he was involved in a flamboyant scandal of unmentionable nature and unprecedented dimensions, because he was detected while trying to poison the rhinoceros at the Zoo with an arsenical bun, because he strangled his mistress, because he addressed an almost disrespectful letter to the Primate of England beginning “My good Owl”—­or for any suchlike reason; and that he now remained on the island only because nobody was fool enough to lend him the ten pounds requisite for a ticket back again.

He came there originally to save money; and he stayed there originally because, if he had happened to die on his homeward journey, there would not have been enough coppers in his pocket to pay for the funeral expenses.  Nowadays, having solved the problem of how to live on 85 pounds a year, he stayed for another reason as well:  to annotate Perrelli’s antiquities.  It sweetened his self-imposed exile.

He was a dry creature, almost wizened, with bright eyes and a short moustache; unostentatiously dressed; fastidious, reserved, genteel, precise in manner, and living a retired life in a two-roomed cottage somewhere among the vineyards.