nonymous letter is without date, place, or signature. This writer
claimed that Father Borghesi had made many errors in his book,
presumably in the description of the clock's functions, and in the basic
theories upon which the priest had predicated his research. No complete
copy of the letter's text has been found for study, although it is
described at length in Tovazzi's _Biblioteca Tirolese_. Tovazzi noted
that four copies of the letter existed at that time, and that he
personally had filed one in the Biblioteca di Cles in Trent. However,
every attempt to locate a copy at the present time has been
unsuccessful.

If the anonymous letter was brought to the attention of Father Borghesi,
it must have introduced a disturbing note into his life and cost the
priest many unhappy moments. He was not, however, dissuaded from his
preoccupation with horology. Several years later, in 1773, Father
Borghesi was working on yet another astronomical clock, this time
presumably without the assistance of Bertolla. This third clock was
reported by Tovazzi to have been "of minimum expense but of maximum
ingenuity."

No subsequent information relating to it has come to light, and there is
no record that it was actually completed.

Again there is a period of silence in the life of Father Borghesi which
no amount of research has yet been able to pierce. Whatever the
circumstances may have been, it is reported by several of the sources
noted that both the first and the second clock did, in fact, become the
property of the Empress Maria Theresa in Vienna. The presentation was
made sometime during the period between the completion of the second
clock in 1764 and the year 1780. There is some discrepancy in the
contemporary accounts as to whether Father Borghesi presented one or two
clocks to the Empress, but all the sources with but one exception record
that both clocks were acquired by the Empress.

It is doubtful that Father Borghesi had originally intended to give his
clocks to the Empress at the time that they were made, for he would most
certainly have made some mention of such an intention in the two little
volumes which he published about them. If he saw the letter published by
the anonymous mathematician in late 1768 or 1769, it is possible that he
decided to make the presentation in expiation of his sense of guilt for
the amount of his time which the creation of the timepieces had
consumed. On the other hand, it is just as possible th