“A man of my tender age and meager accomplishments cannot give sufficient honor to the gentleman who once dined at this table-”
“Actually Descartes dined here many times-not just once!” Huygens put in gruffly.
“-and set out his proposal to explain physical reality with mathematics,” Fatio finished.
“You would not speak of him that way unless you were about to say something against him,” Eliza said.
“Not against him, but some of his latter-day followers. The project that Descartes started is finished. Vortices will never do! I am surprised that Leibniz still holds out any hope for them.”
Everyone sat up straighter. “Perhaps you have heard from Leibniz more recently than I have, sir,” Waterhouse said.
“You give me more credit than I deserve, Doctor Waterhouse, to suggest that Doctor Leibniz would communicate his freshest insights to me, before despatching them to the Royal Society! Please correct me.”
“It is not that Leibniz has any particular attachment to vortices, but that he cannot bring himself to believe in any sort of mysterious action at a distance.” Hearing this, Huygens raised a hand momentarily, as if seconding a motion. Fatio did not fail to notice. Waterhouse continued, “Action at a distance is a sort of occult notion-which may appeal to a certain sort of mentality-”
“But not to those of us who have adopted the Mechanical Philosophy that Monsieur Descartes propounded at this very table!”
“In that very chair, sir!” said Huygens, pointing at Fatio with a drumstick.
“I have my own Theory of Gravitation that should account for the inverse square relation,” Fatio said. “As a stone dropped into water makes spreading ripples, so a planet makes concentric disturbances in the c?lestial ?ther, which press upon its satellites…”
“Write it down,” Waterhouse said, “and send it to me, and we will print it alongside Leibniz’s account, and may the better one prevail.”
“Your offer is gratefully accepted!” Fatio said, and glanced at Huygens to make sure he had a witness. “But I fear we are boring Mademoiselle Eliza.”
“Not at all, Monsieur, any conversation that bears on the Doctor is of interest to me.”
“Is there any topic that does not relate to Leibniz in some way?”
“Alchemy,” Waterhouse suggested darkly.
Fatio, whose chief object at the moment was to draw Eliza into the conversation, ignored this. “I can’t but wonder whether we may discern the Doctor’s hand in the formation of the League of Augsburg.”
“I would guess not,” Eliza said. “It has long been Leibniz’s dream to re-unite the Catholic and Lutheran churches, and prevent another Thirty Years’ War. But the League looks to me like a preparation for war. It is not the conception of the Doctor, but of the Prince of Orange.”
“The Protestant Defender,” Fatio said. Eliza was accustomed to hearing that phrase drenched in French sarcasm, but Fatio uttered it carefully, like a Natural Philosopher weighing an unproven hypothesis. “Our neighbors in Savoy could have used some defending when de Catinat came through with his dragoons. Yes, in this matter I must disagree with the Doctor, as well-meaning as he is… we do need a Defender, and William of Orange will make a good one, provided he stays out of the clutches of the French.” Fatio was staring at Eliza while he said this.
Huygens chuckled. “That should not be difficult, since he never leaves Dutch soil.”
“But the coast is long, and mostly empty, and the French could put a force ashore anywhere they pleased.”
“French fleets do not sail up and down the Dutch coast without drawing attention,” Huygens said, still amused by the idea.
Continuing to watch Eliza, Fatio replied, “I said nothing about a fleet. A single jacht would suffice to put a boat-load of dragoons on the beach.”
“And what would those dragoons do against the might of the Dutch army?”
“Be destroyed, if they were stupid enough to encamp on the beach and wait for that army to mobilize,” Fatio answered. “But if they happened to light on the particular stretch of beach where William goes sand-sailing, at the right time of the morning, why, they could redraw the map, and rewrite the future history, of Europe in a few minutes’ work.”
Now nothing could be heard for a minute or so except the clocks. Fatio still held Eliza fast with his vast eyes, giant blue lenses that seemed to take all the light in the room. What might they not have noticed, and what might the mind in back of them not know?
On the other hand, what tricks could the mind not conjure up, and with those eyes, whom couldn’t he draw into his snares?
“It is a clever conceit, like a chapter from a picaroon-romance,” Eliza said. Fatio’s high brow shriveled, and the eyes that had seemed so penetrating a moment ago now looked pleading. Eliza glanced toward the stairs. “Now that Fatio has provided us with entertainment, will you elevate us, Monsieur Huygens?”
“How should I translate that word?” Huygens returned. “The last time one of your guests became elevated in my house, I had to look the other way.”
“Elevate us to the roof, where we may see the stars and planets, and then elevate our minds by showing us some new phenomenon through your telescope,” Eliza answered patiently.
“In company such as this we must all elevate one another, for I carry no advantage on these men,” Huygens said. This triggered a long tedious volley of self-deprecations from Fatio and Waterhouse. But soon enough they all got their winter coats on and labored up a staircase devious and strait, and emerged into starlight. The only clouds in this sky were those that condensed in front of their lips as they breathed. Huygens lit up a clay pipe. Fatio, who had assisted Huygens before, took the wraps off the big Newtonian reflector with the tense precision of a hummingbird, keeping an ear cocked toward Huygens and Waterhouse, who were talking about optics, and an eye on Eliza, who was strolling around the parapet enjoying the view: to the east, the Haagse Bos, woolly and black with trees. To the south, the smoking chimneys and glowing windows of the Hofgebied. To the west, the windy expanse of the Plein, stretching to the Grenadier’s Gate on the far side, which controlled access to the Binnenhof. A lot of wax and whale-oil was being burnt there tonight, to illuminate a soiree in the palace’s Ballroom. To the young ladies who had been invited, it must have seemed never so glamorous. To Huygens it was a damnable nuisance, for the humid air snared the radiance of all those tapers and lamps, and glowed faintly, in a way that most people would never notice. But it ruined the seeing of his telescope.
Within a few minutes the two older men had gotten embroiled in the work of aiming the telescope at Saturn: a body that would show up distinctly no matter how many candles were burning at the Binnenhof. Fatio glided over to keep Eliza company.
“Now let us set aside formalities and speak directly,” she said.
“As you wish, Mademoiselle.”
“Is this notion of the jacht and the dragoons a phant’sy of yours or-”
“Say if I am wrong: on mornings when the weather is not perfectly abominable, and the wind is off the sea, the Prince of Orange goes to his boat-house on the beach at Scheveningen at ten o’clock, chooses a sand-sailer, and pilots it northwards up the beach to the dunes near Katwijk-though on a clear day he’ll venture as far as Noordwijk-then turns round and is back in Scheveningen by midday.”
Not wanting to give Fatio the satisfaction of telling him he was right, Eliza answered, “You have made a study of the Prince’s habits?”
“No, but Count Fenil has.”
“Fenil-I have heard his name in the salon of the Duchess of Oyonnax-he originates in that place where Switzerland and Savoy, Burgundy, and the Piedmont are all convolved, yes?”