Bob had not noticed the skeleton before, and its sudden inclusion in the conversation made him uneasy. “I beg your pardon, sir, ’twas disgraceful-”
“Oh, stop!” Eliza hissed, “he is a Philosopher, he cares not.”
“Descartes used to come up here when I was a young man, and sit at that very table, and drink too much and discourse of the Mind-Body Problem,” Huygens mused.
“Problem? What’s the problem? I don’t see any problem,” Bob muttered parenthetically, until Eliza crowded back against him and planted a heel on his instep.
“So Eliza’s attempt to clarify your mental processes by purging you of imbalancing humours could not have been carried out in a more appropriate location,” Huygens continued.
“Speaking of humours, what am I to do with this?” Bob muttered, dangling a narrow bulging sac from one finger.
“Put it in a box and post it to Upnor as a down payment,” Eliza said.
The sun had broken through as they spoke, and golden light suddenly shone into the room from off the Plein. It was a sight to gladden most any Dutch heart; but Huygens reacted to it strangely, as if he had been put in mind of some tiresome obligation. He conducted a poll of his clocks and watches. “I have a quarter of an hour in which to break my fast,” he remarked, “and then Eliza and I have work to do on the roof. You are welcome to stay, Sergeant Shaftoe, though-”
“You have already been more than hospitable enough,” Bob said.
HUYGENS’S WORK CONSISTED OF STANDINGvery still on his roof as the clock-towers of the Hague bonged noon all around him, and squinting into an Instrument. Eliza was told to stay out of his way, and jot down notes in a waste-book, and hand him small necessaries from time to time.
“You wish to know where the sun is at noon-?”
“You have it precisely backwards. Noon is when the sun is in a particular place. Noon has no meaning otherwise.”
“So, you wish to know when noon is.”
“It is now!” Huygens said, and glanced quickly at his watch.
“Then all of the clocks in the Hague are wrong.”
“Yes, including all of mine. Even a well-made clock drifts, and must be re-set from time to time. I do it here whenever the sun shines. Flamsteed will be doing it in a few minutes on top of a hill in Greenwich.”
“It is unfortunate that a person may not be calibrated so easily,” Eliza said.
Huygens looked at her, no less intensely than he had been peering at his instrument a moment earlier. “Obviously you have some specific person in mind,” he said. “Of persons I will say this: it is difficult to tell when they are running aright but easy to see when something has gone awry.”
“Obviously you have someone in mind, Monsieur Huygens,” Eliza said, “and I fear it is I.”
“You were referred to me by Leibniz,” Huygens said. “A shrewd judge of intellects. Perhaps a bit less shrewd about character, for he always wants to think the best of everyone. I made some inquiries around the Hague. I was assured by persons of the very best quality that you would not be a political liability. From this I presumed that you would know how to behave.”
Suddenly feeling very high and exposed, she took a step back, and reached out with a hand to steady herself against a heavy telescope-tripod. “I am sorry,” she said. “It was stupid, what I did down there. I know it was, for I do know how to behave. Yet I was not always a courtier. I came to this place in my life by a roundabout path, which shaped me in ways that are not always comely. Perhaps I should be ashamed. But I am more inclined to be defiant.”
“I understand you better than you suppose,” Huygens said. “I was raised and groomed to be a diplomat. But when I was thirteen years old, I built myself a lathe.”
“Pardon me, a what?”
“A lathe. Down below, in this very house. Imagine my parents’ consternation. They had taught me Latin, Greek, French, and other languages. They had taught me the lute, the viol, and the harpsichord. Of literature and history I had learned everything that was in their power to teach me. Mathematics and philosophy I learned from Descartes himself. But I built myself a lathe. Later I taught myself how to grind lenses. My parents feared that they had spawned a tradesman.”
“No one is more pleased than I that matters turned out so well for you,” Eliza said, “but I am too thick to understand how your story is applicable to my case.”
“It is all right for a clock to run fast or slow at times, so long as it is calibrated against the sun, and set right. The sun may come out only once in a fortnight. It is enough. A few minutes’ light around noon is all that you need to discover the error, and re-set the clock-provided that you bother to go up and make the observation. My parents somehow knew this, and did not become overly concerned at my strange enthusiasms. For they had confidence that they had taught me how to know when I was running awry, and to calibrate my behavior.”
“Now I think I understand,” Eliza said. “It remains only to apply this principle to me, I suppose.”
“If I come down in the morning to find you copulating on my table with a foreign deserter, as if you were some sort of Vagabond,” Huygens said, “I am annoyed. I admit it. But that is not as important as what you do next. If you posture defiantly, it tells me that you have not learned the skill of recognizing when you are running awry, and correcting yourself. And you must leave my house in that case, for such people only go further and further astray until they find destruction. But if you take this opportunity to consider where you have gone wrong, and to adjust your course, it tells me that you shall do well enough in the end.”
“It is good counsel and I thank you for it,” Eliza said. “In principle. But in practice I do not know what to make of this Bob.”
“There is something that you must settle with him, or so it would appear to me,” Huygens said.
“There is something that I must settle with the world.”
“Then by all means apply yourself to it. Then you are welcome to stay. But from now on please go to your bedchamber if you want to roger someone.”
I find that men (as high as trees) will write Dialogue-wise; yet no man doth them slight For writing so; indeed if they abuse Truth, cursed be they, and the craft they use To that intent; but yet let truth be free To make her sallies upon thee, and me, Which way it pleases God.
–John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress
DANIEL WATERHOUSE, a Puritan.
SIR RICHARD APTHORP,a former Goldsmith, proprietor of Apthorp’s Bank.
ROGER COMSTOCK,Marquis of Ravenscar, a courtier.
JACK KETCH,chief Executioner of England.
EDMUND PALLING,an old man.
APTHORP’S MINIONS.
APTHORP’S HANGERS-ON AND FAVOR-SEEKERS.
JACK KETCH’S ASSISTANTS.