As I write this Father Edouard is preparing to ride south as chaplain of a French army with Marechal de Catinat at its head. They will go into Savoy whether the Duke likes it or not, and enter the valleys of the Protestants and kill everyone they see. Do you know of any way to send warnings to that part of the world?
The King and all who know of his late sufferings take comfort in the understanding that Father Edouard has brought us: namely that the measures taken against the R.P.R., cruel as they might seem, are more painful to the King than to anyone; but that this pain must be endured lest the whole body perish.
I must go-I have responsibilities below. My next letter will come from Dunquerque, God willing.
Your most affectionate student and servant,
Eliza
Philosophy is written in this immense book that stands ever open before our eyes (I speak of the Universe), but it cannot be read if one does not first learn the language and recognize the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without the means of which it is humanly impossible to understand a word; without these philosophy is confused wandering in a dark labyrinth.
–Galileo Galilei, Il Saggiatore
(The Assayer) in Opere, v. 6, p. 197,
translation by Julian Barbour
THE AIR IN THE COFFEE-HOUSEmade Daniel feel as if he’d been buried in rags.
Roger Comstock was peering down the stem of his clay pipe like a drunken astronomer drawing a bead on something. In this case the target was Robert Hooke, Fellow of the Royal Society, visible only barely (because of gloom and smoke) and sporadically (because of table-flitting patrons). Hooke had barricaded himself behind a miniature apothecary shop of bottles, purses, and flasks, and was mixing up his dinner: a compound of mercury, iron filings, flowers of sulfur, purgative waters from diverse springs, many of which were Lethal to Waterfowl; and extracts of several plants, including the rhubarb and the opium poppy. “He is still alive, I see,” Roger mused. “If Hooke spent any more time lingering at Death’s door, Satan himself would have the man ejected for vagrancy. Yet just as I am wondering whether I can make time for his funeral, I learn from Sources that he is campaigning like a French regiment through every whorehouse in Whitechapel.”
Daniel could think of nothing to add.
“What of Newton?” Roger demanded. “You said he was going to die. ”
“Well, I was the only way he ever got food,” Daniel said weakly. “From the time we began rooming together until my ejection in ’77, I kept him alive like a nursemaid. So I had good reasons for making that prediction.”
“Someone else must have been bringing him food since then-one of his students?”
“He has no students,” Daniel pointed out.
“ But he must eat,” Roger countered.
Daniel glimpsed Hooke stirring up his concoction with a glass rod. “Perhaps he has concocted the Elixir Vitae and is immortal now.”
“Judge not lest ye be judged! I believe that is your third helping of usquebaugh,” Roger said sternly, glaring at the amber dram in front of Daniel. Daniel reached out to guard it in the curled fingers of his left hand.
“I am entirely serious,” Roger continued. “Who looks after him?”
“Why does it matter, as long as someone does?”
“It matters who the someone is,” Roger said. “You told me that when he was a student Newton would lend out money, and keep track of his loans like a Jew!”
“Actually I believe that Christian lenders also prefer to be paid back…”
“Never mind, you know what I mean. In the same way, Daniel, if someone is providing for Newton’s upkeep and maintenance, they may be expecting favors in return.”
Daniel sat up straighter. “You think it’s the esoteric brotherhood.”
Roger raised his eyebrows in a cruel parody of innocence. “No, but evidently you think so.”
“For a while Upnor was trying to get his barbs into Isaac,” Daniel admitted, “but that was a long time ago.”
“Let me remind you that among people who keep track of debts-as opposed to forgiving ’em-‘a long time ago’ means ‘lots and lots of compound interest.’ Now, you told me he vanishes several weeks out of each year.”
“Not necessarily for sinister purposes. He has land in Lincolnshire that needs looking after.”
“ Youmade it sound sinister, when you told me of it.”
Daniel sighed, forsook his dram, clamped his temples between the thumb and fingertips of one hand. All he could see now was his pink palm-cratered from smallpox, now. The disease had converted perhaps a quarter of Tess’s body to pustules, and removed most of the skin from her face and torso, before she’d finally given up the ghost. “To be quite honest with you, I do not care,” he said. “I tried to hold him back. Tried to turn his attention toward astronomy, dynamics, physics-natural philosophy as opposed to unnatural theology. I failed; I left; here I am.”
“You left? Or were ejected?”
“I misspoke.”
“Which time?”
“I meant it in a sort of metaphorical way, when I used the word ‘ejected.’ “
“You are a damned liar, Daniel!”
“What did you say!?”
“Oh, sorry, I was speaking in a sort of metaphorical way.”
“Try to understand, Roger, that the circumstances of my break with Isaac were-are-complicated. As long as I try to express it with a single verb, videlicet, ‘to leave,’ ‘to be ejected,’ I’ll be in some sense a liar, and inasmuch as a liar, damnable.”
“Give me more verbs, then,” said Roger, catching the eye of a serving-girl and giving her a look that meant I have him going now, keep it coming and keep the sleeve-tuggers away from us. Then he leaned forward, looming in an alarming way through the smoke above the table, catching the light of a candle on the underside of his chin. “It is sixteen seventy-six!” Roger thundered. “Leibniz has come to London for the second time! Oldenburg is furious with him because he has failed to bring the digital computer, as promised! Instead Leibniz has devoted the last four years to fooling around with mathematics in Paris! Now he is asking extremely awkward questions about some maths work that Newton did years ago. Something mysterious is afoot-Newton has you, Doctor Waterhouse, copying out papers and encrypting arcane mathematical formulae-Oldenburg is beside himself-Enoch Root is mixed up in it somehow-there are rumors of letters, and even conversations, between Newton and Leibniz. Then Oldenburg dies. Not long afterwards there is a fire in your chambers at Trinity, and many of Newton’s alchemical papers go up in particolored flames. Then you move to London and refuse to say why. What is the correct verb? ‘To leave’ or ‘to be ejected?’ “