Tiber's banks do not appear to have affected its occult courses. By
tradition handed down from father to son, certain workmen, chiefly
masons and always genuine Romans, claim to know more about it than
other people; but that is as much as can be said. It is known as the
"lost water," and it rises and falls, and seeks different levels in
unaccountable ways, as water will when it is confined under the earth
but is here and there confronted by the pressure of the air.

But though the old-fashioned Roman workman still looks upon all
traditional information about his trade as secret and never to be
revealed, that fact alone might seem insufficient to account for the
behaviour of Gigi the carpenter and of Toto the mason under the
particular circumstances here narrated, still less for the contempt
they showed for the snuffy expert who was apparently looking for the
"lost water." An invisible witness would have gathered that they had
something of more importance to conceal. To the expert, their conduct
and answers must have been thoroughly unsatisfactory, for the Vatican
was even said to have refused to pay the additional fifty thousand
francs, On the ground that the state of the foundations was doubtful
and that the timbers of the upper story were not sound.

Baron Volterra's equanimity was not in the least disturbed by this. On
the contrary, instead of setting the price lower, he frankly told all
applicants, through his agent, that he was in no hurry to sell, as he
had reason to believe that the land about the Palazzo Conti would soon
rise in value. He had settled with the representatives of the Conti
family, and it was said that he had behaved generously. The family had
nothing left after the crash, which might partially account for such
an exhibition of generosity; but it was hinted that Baron Volterra had
given them the option of buying back the palace and some other