15
The Tree, Throne, and Candle

After dinner I went to my room to rest. I lay on my bed some while, delaying my visit back to the Boot and Thorn. I nearly fell asleep, but finally I put my wig and hat back on my head and went out. It was dark night by then.

The Square was empty, as far as I could tell, it was so dark. There was only one light to be seen anywhere, if it could be called light. The windows of the Boot and Thorn seemed to pulse red. Somehow I didn’t see anything of the Barefoot Church.

As I came close to the Inn, I felt its heat. I stepped across the threshold and all outside vanished. I didn’t think I could have gone back out. The streets I’d left had been empty, but now the Common Room was full and bubbling. The smell was sharper, too, earthy and hot and damp. I couldn’t make out any one person at the tables, but every bench was full and nothing was still, every hand and shoulder and head were moving. The sound was like the smell, sudden and overwhelming and of too many parts to distinguish any one. Only the light was low and undersaturated. It was just the fire in the hearth. There were no candles and no lamps. It was just red, and orange, and throbbing. Chthonic Charon nodded to me and his eyes were red as the fire.

I stood in the doorway and then in the room, unseen. I might have been seeing what was invisible any other time, and I would be invisible to it. But there were crossings between two different worlds, and nephilim who straddled both. All along the walls the tankards and steins were jostling and striving against each other for space on their shelves. They shoved with their thin legs and arms, and I could hear them grunting. Their fat eyes, though, slowly fixed on me, one by one, and they went still. Then Old Gustavus saw them watching me, and they watched him come to me in the door. “Welcome, Master,” he said, and he seemed curious to find me in this dark half of the world.

“Gustavus. I said I’d return.”

“Come.”

He led me. I followed. Down that hall that twisted and amazed, ignoring the stairs and doors and side passages that grew from it, we stayed in the taproot, down and into. The heat and pressure increased, yet I shivered; and we finally came to a door framed in bedrock. There was no latch or lock. He pushed and it opened.

It was a cellar, a cave, a meat cooler, a larder, a pantry. Hooks held sides of cattle and shelves great barrels of ale, a close, crowded place, with walls not of stone but living rock, and floor and ceiling, also, and it wasn’t carved by human hand. Part of one wall was only a void and a bottomless roar. Anyone in Basel would have known it was the Birsig Flow that rushed by in that black hole, the stream buried in ancient times beneath the city, and this room was some eddy of its old course, worn into the rock by its constant force. I could have put my hand into its cold water. Beside the foodstuffs, there were other things stored here: a few very old wooden chests with locks on them, fitted into the rock as if it had grown around them.

The room was cool and mossy damp, yet even here there was fire. An oil lantern was mounted on a shelf and it danced and flickered in the whirling air that was no more still than the water that troubled it. In the center of the small open floor were three chairs, and Gustavus gestured to one, and I sat. He sat facing me. I’d advanced from commoner, to Master, and now to equal. “Yes, Master Leonhard,” he said, as respectful as always but now, not as a servant, “what do you want to say?”

“I’ve been nominated for the Chair of Physics.”

“I have heard so.”

Then we waited. I listened to the constrained waters. Finally I heard what he may have heard before, or had been waiting for, the sound of quick steps in the corridor outside. The door opened and the light dimmed before black capes and robes.

“What is he saying?” we were asked, and I answered.

“I’ve come to pay,” I said. “For use of Master Jacob’s papers.”

He was pleased. “What payment have you brought?”

“What payment are you asking for them?”

Magistrate Caiaphas answered, “That you tell me what they mean.”

“The Mathematics? To explain it?” That was not what I’d expected.

And it wasn’t what he’d meant. “Not that! Tell me their meaning!”

Then I did understand. “They don’t have great value. Everything in them is known and published. They’re twenty years old.”

“Then why were they sent to me?” He was angry.

“Why did you bring them to me?” I asked. “Why not to a great Mathematician?”

“I was told you were to be great.”

It had been a test. But it was beyond him to comprehend if I’d passed. And he would never have understood the one page I’d kept for myself.

“I’ve been nominated for the Physics Chair,” I said.

“I know you have.” He nodded, less angry. So he was satisfied enough with me.

“I want the Physics Chair, Magistrate Caiaphas.”

“Yes,” Gustavus said, a deep rumble to Caiaphas’s crackle and tearing. “It is what I told you.”

“I already knew it,” the Magistrate said. “Why have you come to me? What are you asking me?”

“Why have I come?” I said. “Because Master Johann came to you, and Master Gottlieb, and Master Desiderius, and now Master Daniel. All of them came. I have, too.”

“Why would you say they came?”

“They believed you had it in your power to give them their Chairs.”

“And you also believe that?”

“I also do.”

“Then you must also believe that Master Daniel has already been given the Chair of Physics.”

“I am more able than he is,” I said. “And he’s ruing the gift. He’d give it up if he could. He’s asked me how to renege on a bargain even when he’s given his word on it.”

“What is that to me?” His voice was still cracked and cracking, but like parched ground that was eager for water.

“I will offer you more than he does.”

“And what has he offered me?”

“He doesn’t know,” I said. “Only to repay you whatever you say.”

“And you would take a blind bargain?”

“I wouldn’t be blind. I know what you want. And I know I can offer more than he can.”

Magistrate Caiaphas stood, and I was in his shadow. “What can you offer?”

I looked up into his knifelike face. “All the renown and all the fame of the greatest Mathematician who will ever live.”

“That is what you believe of yourself?” he asked.

“I could be,” I said. “I need the chance of this Chair to make my start.”

He was still standing over me and he seemed to grow as a covering. “And what use is that to me? You’re offering me your fame?”

“I am.”

“Then who do you take me for? What would your fame be for me?”

“It’s what you want.”

“Why would I want it?”

“To give Basel to France.”

He backed away, or receded, and he was sitting again. “Basel to France?”

“You plan for Basel to leave its independence and come into France. You want the University to lead and pull and force the city. The University has that power in Basel.”

“Why do you believe this?”

“That was how Strasbourg was brought into France.”

He waited a long time before answering. He was still and I waited with him. “So, for the Physics Chair,” he said, “you would do this. Betray your city?”

“It wouldn’t be a betrayal.”

“And the promise already made to Master Daniel?”

“He regrets having made the bargain.”

“You say he does.”

“And he doesn’t want the Chair. He only wants to offend Master Johann. He’ll give it up once he has it.”

“You speak for him? I won’t believe you.”

“I would still be more valuable to you than he would as the Chair.”

“Daniel is a persuasive man in this City. But you would be greater?”

“Yes. Before many years, I would be.”

“And you mean me to choose between you?” He was silent again, and for a very long time. I couldn’t see his face at all. “Then this is how I will decide. I will let you decide.”

“Me? How?”

“Daniel has this Chair. It is his. But it will be yours if he doesn’t take it.”

“That would be his decision,” I said, “not mine.”

“Then he will win the Chair.”

Then I understood. “I must keep him from taking it.”

“If he doesn’t take it, it will be yours.”

I thought through all that his words implied. “Did Master Johann cause the Mathematics Chair to be open? Did he cause Master Jacob to not be in it? And Gottlieb caused Master Grimm to leave the Logic Chair? And Daniel the Physics Chair, now? They caused those Chairs to be empty?”

“If a man is worthwhile to me to have a Chair, I will give him the Chair. But the Chair must first be open.”

“And Desiderius, also?”

“Daniel has this Chair,” Caiaphas said. “If the Physics Chair becomes open, you will have it.” He put his palms together, as if he was praying. “Do you accept the bargain?”

“If you give me the Chair, that I will serve your purposes. That is the bargain?”

“Yes, that is what I offer.”

“Then I accept,” I said. An image came to me, from a week earlier. “I saw a chase,” I said. “A white horse in pursuit of a black.”

“What do you mean?” This confused him. “What chase? What horse?”

“The white horse was swifter. And Daniel was too heavy a burden. I did see it.”

“You see what doesn’t exist,” he said, perplexed by my words, but very sure of his.

“It does,” I said. “I know what exists. Please help me find my way out of this cellar, Gustavus. I’m not sure I can.”

“Come with me.”

I did come with him. I only seemed to find myself farther in and more deeply lost. We passed corners and traversed passages, all so dimly lit as if the lanterns and torches were only part in these halls and a greater part in the halls of some other inn. That other inn might have been the one I knew. I didn’t know this one. All I could do was follow Gustavus.

The walls and rafters ended and I was out in the Square. I must have been. The sky and stars were above me and I saw the front of the Inn, but I didn’t see the Barefoot Church across the paving stones. In the dark I started toward home.

But it was so dark that I could hardly find my way through the Square. It seemed endless. Finally I stopped to gain my bearings. While I stood, in the pitch black, there was an abrupt galloping, from nowhere. I couldn’t find its source but it was coming onto me. I would have run but it was in every direction.

In an instant I threw myself to the stones and an iron hoof clove the air just over me. The horse reared and I threw myself again away from it and the shoes came down just where I’d been.

“Stop!” I cried and I scrambled back.

“What? Who’s that?” Daniel’s laugh rang over me. “Leonhard?”

“It is Leonhard,” I said.

“In the dark!” It sounded at least like Daniel. I couldn’t see him “Well, get out of the Square if you don’t want to be run over!”

“I am. It was dark.”

“The more reason to not wander! Home with you!”

“Yes,” I said. “I will. I am.” Even still on both hands and feet I fled the horse and voice until I finally reached the end of the Square, and found a street.

Then I was at my grandmother’s door and I went into a dark hall, though I seemed to smell the stables and see the red torches of the inn. I found stairs to my room.

And finally, I was in my bed, without memory of getting into it, still dressed. My candle was low on my desk and its gentle yellow glow told me I was fully home again, almost as if I’d never left.

I stayed close by my grandmother all of Sunday, as we two together were stronger than either apart. I kept away from the inn as I always did on the holy day. We didn’t talk much, only necessary words.

The sermon at Saint Leonhard’s had been concise and thorough, on God’s perfection: His own, and that of all He has created. Because of our imperfection, he provided a sacrifice to restore us.

I would deliver that message of perfection to the University. All Physics and all Mathematics were His creation. Mathematics was His command to the Universe. It was an important message and it was necessary that I should give it. It was important that I have a position whereby I could speak these truths, and that the academic universe would be attentive.

That night I wrote out my lecture. Writing was work, which wasn’t meant for the Sabbath, but it was contemplation of Deity, which was proper.

I wrote late into the night, which I often did, though never before on a Sunday.

There were many things to consider. I had to remember the opinions of the men who would sit under my lecture. It would be the first public statement of my own beliefs, and every word I spoke would be examined in the light of the controversies and disagreements of the day.

To lecture to this University, I must know to frown at mention of Descartes and harrumph at even the thought of Newton, who in Basel was a usurper and cad. All the while, though, I knew that their Mathematics and Physics were pure as light and water.

Basel’s University and Church still believed that God motivated His Creation, and rejected the notion that all the universe was just a machine operating on its own. My own thoughts were muddled. I didn’t believe that man abode in a clockwork. The Creator touched and moved every life, most certainly. But a great deal of nature did operate on a set path and by laws as rigid as Mathematics, and the laws were Mathematics. A dreidel given a spin would continue on its own without my further touch.

So I wrote, and wrote, and walked a perfect narrow path between cliff and abyss, juggling Leibniz with my right hand and Newton and Descartes behind my back.

And as I carefully trod that path, I ignored that the whole mountain it was on was shaking harder and harder to see if I was loose or fast on it.

Monday morning was very dry. The fountains were slack. Waiting to fill my buckets was my only delay as I rushed through the morning. Both my grandmother and Mistress Dorothea left me to myself as I did their chores; they seemed unsure of me.

As soon as I was able, I went out, black and white. Staehelin’s lecture would be at two o’clock in the afternoon and I had an errand I wanted to complete before that. That errand meant finding Daniel. I’d never had difficulty in doing that, but search Basel as I did that morning, I didn’t see him.

Instead, as I finally stood on the Rhine bridge, thinking where I hadn’t yet searched, I found a different candidate.

“Master Staehelin!” I said. “Well met. There’s an excellent lecture this afternoon I’m anxious to hear.”

“Master Leonhard,” he answered, and bowed, as I’d done. That was surely polite of him, to address as Master a child half his age. His hair was short and gray and rough, and his face square and blunt. He looked as much a stolid farmer as a University lecturer. “The lecture will be a plain one, not excellent, not poor. It’s on buoyancy, and one I’ve given often.”

We talked a few moments more. The River flowed beneath us, and boats on it were examples of Staehelin’s subject. I was about to bow again and resume my search when a startled cry captured both our attention.

We turned toward the Small Basel end of the bridge. In the same instant, I heard, and saw, and most of all felt, the pounding hooves and flying weight of a black horse without a rider.

In the next instant I saw that it was flying and pounding toward us. Its eyes were wild and its ears flat and vicious.

I had a sudden memory of the Barefoot Square on Saturday night, all dark, and the unseen horse riding me down. But that had been invisible. This horse was fully seen.

In the next, final instant all its force and fury were upon us.

The blow that struck us was from our side. We were smashed against the bridge’s railing, not by iron shoes but by a human shoulder. The horse went by.

But I sensed another motion. We were both leaned over the railing, and Staehelin was unbalanced and falling into the river. I grabbed hold of his black justaucorps coat and pulled down, and I was pulled by him up, until another hand grabbed my own coat.

And then there were three of us in a heap on the bridge.

We were all a jumble, then. I didn’t at first realize the oddity that one of us three was Desiderius. But then I did, and that it had been he who had thrown himself at us to knock us out of the horse’s way.

“Master Desiderius!” I gasped.

“And you, Leonhard,” he said, as out of breath.

“And Master Staehelin, too,” I said. That Master was not yet speaking, but seemed near to it.

“Whom we nearly lost into the river,” Desiderius said. “Oh, Leonhard, that was close! The horse would have ridden you down!”

“Both of us,” Staehelin said.

“And that would have been two Physics candidates with one crack!” Desiderius said. “Are you both well?”

“I am,” I said, and Staehelin nodded. But the mention of two candidates made me look to the rest of the bridge, for what had become of the horse, and who else might be close: for I had recognized the black horse.

And there, hurrying toward us, and his face a perfect fright of shock, was Daniel.

“Most intense apologies!” he cried. “Oh, Leonhard, Staehelin! What a crime I’ve done to you both! Fiercest apologies!”

Then it was all confusion. All the more we talked and described and explained, less was heard and understood. Staehelin gave up on it quick and went running to brush himself off for his Lecture. But finally Daniel and Desiderius and I had all exhausted our excitement.

“And Master Desiderius,” I said. “How was it that you were here on the bridge to rescue us?”

“By chance,” he said. When he saw the look in my eye, he added, reluctantly, “And just to see that no accidents might overtake anyone of the Election.”

He took his leave then, to also make himself presentable for the coming lecture. I needed to, as well, but I had another task first.

So I had found Daniel, which I’d meant to do. I walked with him as he led his horse toward the Boot and Thorn. “I don’t know what took him,” Daniel said, and many variations of that, but the panic and worry were faded. “I was in from my ride and Coal was serene as could be. Then just at the bridge, off he went! I can’t say what he saw. But he seems all right now.”

“I’m right enough,” I said. “I think Staehelin was the most dusty of us.”

“A dunking in the river would have cleaned him off.”

“Daniel! He’ll be pressed to make his lecture now.”

“He’ll make it. Or not, but it’ll be the same either way.” We’d reached the Inn, and Willi saw us and took Daniel’s horse. That left us at the front door, a few steps from the Common Room, which was as good a place as any to finish my errand.

“I’ll come in with you,” I said.

“You know me all too well,” he answered, and led the way.

Charon’s milky eyes were on me, and the steins on the wall seemed to be expecting us. The rolling of dice and murmuring voices made the room just as it always was, just common. We sat, and Daniel was as serene as his horse. The calamity on the bridge was already far forgotten.

“Look, Daniel,” I said as we were settled. “I need to give you something.”

“Then I’ll take it.”

“I was given it,” I said. “Rupert, the new coach driver came to me. Have you seen him?”

“I think I have. Jolly and round, isn’t he?”

“That’s him. But he’d met me and he hasn’t gotten to know many others in Basel. That was why he brought this to me, which he’d found in the post box of the coach. So it might have been there for weeks or months.”

As I was saying this, Daniel’s serenity was replaced by alert attention, then by narrow eyes and furrowed brow. “What?” he said. “A letter? Is it a letter? Leonhard! From Paris?”

It’s not often I have a higher roll of my dice then he of his. I was tempted some to tease him with it, but that was poor behavior for anyone, and most for a gentleman. So I took the letter right from my pocket and handed it to him. “Not from Paris. From Russia.”

“Russia!”

He was amazed at it, its beauty and its importance. “In the post box of the coach?”

“Rupert didn’t know how long it had been there.”

“But do you know what this is?! It’s from the University! In Saint Petersburg! It’s my invitation!”

“Open it first,” I laughed, amused at his amazement, “and see if it is.”

“But it’s been lost? For months, even. Oh that coachman! It’s worth his being murdered, if he can’t find a letter in his own post box!”

“Just open it,” I said, without amusement.

He broke the seal and took out the folded sheets, of the same ivory linen as the envelope. “Yes, yes it is! Ha! Leonhard, I’m invited to be Chair of Mathematics!” He showed it to me: half the first page was a gilded printing of a two-headed eagle beneath three crowns, with a scepter and orb in its two claws. “The Tsar’s own arms! How’s that, Leonhard? And look, it’s dated just two months ago, even less, so it’s not so late.”

We both stared at least a minute at the perfect French script and the final signature, of the Chancellor of the new University. And finally, I asked, “What will you do with it?”

“Do with it? With the letter?”

“No! With the invitation.”

“Take it, you mean? Or leave it? Which?” He started to laugh from joy of the opportunity. Then the laugh died in his throat as he looked at me, and the letter, and at me again. “Do with it?” he said. “What should I do with it? Take it, and throw Basel aside, is that what you mean?” He continued to stare at me, harder and harder. “And step out of your way, you mean? That’s what you mean?”

“Daniel! No!”

“And just found, is it? The letter was lost in the post box? And it comes at just this moment? To your hand! How is it, Leonhard? How is it?”

“Daniel,” I said. “You’re mad. What are you saying, that the letter’s forged? It’s from Saint Petersburg. Look at it! You think I called on the Tsar and asked him to take you out of Basel, as a notion to my favor? What are you saying?”

He took a deep breath. “Yes, then, it is from Russia. It’s no forgery. And it’s Rupert that gave it to you?”

“Ask him. He’ll come tomorrow night from Freiburg.”

“I’m sorry, then. Forgive me Leonhard. A base accusation and I apologize. But it’s two days until the Election and the Brute will do anything to keep me out of the Chair. Even to put you up against me, and that’s not your fault.”

“I forgive you, Daniel. Of course.”

“I’ll trust you. I always will. But if any other hand than yours had handed me this, I’d have known it was a plot from Brutus. And it’s he who should ask your forgiveness, to raise your hopes for nothing.”

I swallowed my first answer and said, “I’ll be better for the lesson of it.”

“It’s a good lesson, I’ve had it myself. And hey, there’s a gathering at the University, I hear. A minor Physics lecturer who’ll give a mediocre lecture. Shall we go to hear him?”

“I’ll go.”

“And dusty, too. A minor and dusty man. Why, he’d be perfect to replace Huldrych!”

We’d stood and I followed him out. But I made sure, before I was in the sunlight, to catch the eye of Gustavus, who’d heard the whole of our conversation from his shadow.

There was no trace of dust on Staehelin. The University hall was full and listless. The warm, dry air had come in with the audience, and everything inside was dreary as the streets outside. The lecture was just as the lecturer had said it would be, not excellent, not poor. The subject was buoyancy, the principle that an object will float or sink in a fluid based upon the relative densities of the two. He spoke specifically on wood and stone in water. He didn’t describe the Mathematics of buoyancy, that the force propelling the object up is equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces, while the force down is equal to the weight of the object itself. And my mind wandered, or floated. I considered that air was like water, gas instead of liquid but still a fluid, and that we sat on the surface of the earth because we sank through the air, while a cloud, or smoke, was buoyant and would float. Huldrych had always disagreed with my opinions on this, though we had good discussions, while Staehelin considered the idea useless. And I thought further, how the lesser could supersede the greater, how oil could make its way above water, and what strategies could be learned from Staehelin’s lesson.

Then the lecture ended and all the black robes floated up and out of the lecture hall.

“That was Physics?” Daniel said beside me as we came out to the street. “That was? A mutter, a splot, a twitch. And that makes a lecture?”

“It was adequate,” I said. “And more than.”

“Not an equation in it! Not even a number. Nothing that Huldrych himself wouldn’t have said.”

“Daniel, you’re like vitriol. You need more grace.”

“Oh, it’s all feathers. All floating and away with the breeze.”

We walked a while without speaking, both of us in thought. Then I felt a breeze, a chill draught. We’d reached the Barefoot Square. It was midafternoon and the sun was still high, but there were shadows. The place seemed full of them like cobwebs clinging to the buildings.

In the Common Room, where shadows were spun, Daniel finished his hoisting of Staehelin. “Can you defend him, Leonhard? What can you say?”

“I said it was adequate.”

“And that’s all. And that’s generous. You’ll hear my lecture tomorrow and call it adequate?”

“Yours will be magnificent, Daniel. It will be worth the Chair.”

“Oh, it will be.”

“It will even be worth the Tsar’s Chair.”

“That. Yes.” He took the letter from his pocket. “Would I take a Chair in Russia? If you didn’t get Basel’s, would you take the Tsar’s?”

“I would. It would be history,” I said. “The first man to hold the Mathematics Chair at the University of Saint Petersburg.”

He nodded in sympathy with me. “It would be. And I’d take it. I’d even take it gladly. But it wouldn’t be spite enough against Brutus, so I’ll keep Basel instead.”

“That’s the only reason?”

“It’s enough.”

“Then give me Russia!” I joked.

He held the paper out for me to take, then grabbed it away. “No. I’ll hold this. Maybe I’ll win Basel, then throw it off for the Tsar. How’s that? I might. Spite Brutus, spite them all.”

“You sound as if you don’t even want the Chair in Basel.”

“I want to win it. But keep it? That’s more a question, now.”

“You’d be obliged, wouldn’t you?”

He frowned at that. “Maybe. Maybe I would, maybe not. That’s to think about.”

“You’re the same as you’ve always been,” I said. “And you always will be.”

“Constant in my inconstancy. Now, where’s that keeper? I think I want my horse.”

“I’ll bring your horse.” Daniel started at the deep voice, nearly at his elbow. He hadn’t seen Gustavus in the shadows, but I’d seen him. Him, and more.

“He was nervy this morning. He nearly ran down poor Leonhard.”

“He’s been rested now,” Gustavus said.

“I’ll wait in the Square,” Daniel said. He wanted out of the dark. But I stayed in the room. The fire was drowsy but watchful, and the hundreds of eyes looking out from the shelves all seemed satisfied.

“Do you see?” I asked.

Caiaphas came out of the shadows where he’d been with Gustavus.

“I heard you,” he said.

“He won’t stay. He’s not here for the Chair or for Basel. He’s only wanting to tweak his father. Once he has the Chair he’ll leave it for something else. He’s already resigned his Chair in Padua.”

He studied me. “And you would stay?”

“This is my home. This is all I want.”

“This city is Daniel’s home, also.”

“If he wins the Chair,” I said, “I’ll convince him to leave it. The father and son are already set against each other. I’d know how to drive them so hard apart to break the University in halves.”

“You would ruin your own University?”

“You’ll lose everything you have here. Give me the Chair.”

I was searched. Like a wolf tears a fence to get the rabbits inside, I was torn and opened.

“Then I will give it to you,” he said. “But be careful with your treachery.” He still stared at me. “I think it more likely you’ll be thrown to the river than hold a Chair.”

I went out that night as I’d done four nights before. I waited in the alley behind Master Johann’s kitchen. It was a longer wait but the time came, and the door opened, and Master Johann came out with his candle. This time he didn’t leave it and return to the house. He descended into the cellar and closed its door behind him.

He was there for some ten minutes. I might have heard the box pulled out from the wall and the wall itself opened; or I might only have heard the noises of any night in Basel’s streets. Through slits in the door, the light from the candle moved, then was still, then moved again, back and around, and was held up and lowered.

Then the door was opened and the candle extinguished. He came out through the yard to the gate, and passed through it, just feet from me. He might have felt someone was there; or he might have felt the presences of any night in Basel’s streets.

Then he was silent and gone. His direction was toward the river, away from the Barefoot Square. I stayed.

The night was mainly timeless. Clocks sounded eleven but I had no measure of when he’d passed the gate. I’d left my house before ten.

But finally, in the quieter and quieter dark, I heard him returning, though only when he was already near. He opened and closed the gate, then his own door. Through the window I saw a candle lit in the kitchen and then taken on to the hall.

And then I went home.

A jitter vibrated the streets that Tuesday morning as I left my house toward Master Johann’s. Something unsettled, something jubilant, something uncontrolled was walking with me. Something anticipatory. I reached the back fence and gate at the usual time and found the usual activity inside: Mistress Dorothea pouring words, and her maid barely keeping her head above the tide of them, and still adding her own to the flood. And if one or two of the streams might have been pots or chickens or sheets, the majority was people. Then, given that they only used pronouns, the sentences become like a stew: “They told her mother to wash it himself, but he had his hat on her head and they boiled it, and she wanted them both, but she didn’t want either . . .” she was saying as I opened the door. I would rather have calculated a determinant of seven rows than calculate the meaning of those sentences! But when she saw me, she acknowledged me.

“You’re diligent, Leonhard. Diligent for a young man who might be made a Chair on the morrow.” It should have been a simple compliment or simpler statement. I couldn’t tell if there was some other meaning, perhaps suspicion.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Please do all you have time for. You’ve other duties today that are more important.” And that was certainly the first she’d ever said such.

“I’ll finish everything.”

“Thank you.”

Then later, when she was upstairs, Little Johann had more to say. “Daniel has the Russia letter, and you gave it to him.”

“I did.”

“He said the coach driver had found it?”

“The coach driver said that.”

Little Johann doubted. “What did you do? How did you get it? Did you take it from Poppa’s desk?”

“No. Rupert truly brought it to me and told me he’d found it.”

“You must have done it somehow, Leonhard.”

“I didn’t.” I hoped that was also true.

“And Mama’s not pleased that he has it.”

“Because he might leave?”

“I think so. I don’t know.”

“What about your father? Is he pleased?”

“Yes. I can tell. He even told Daniel, That was well done. Except it didn’t seem he was talking about Daniel being invited to Russia.”

“It was that I’d given him the letter,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

“What about the other letter, from Paris?”

“He’ll have that soon, too.”

“He’ll be a Chair tomorrow. Or you will.”

“Or Staehelin,” I said.

“No. Poppa’s decided.”

“It’s by chance. No one can decide or know.”

“It was to be Daniel. It’s the way they’d look at each other. Daniel smirking, and Poppa angry. But it’s changed. Daniel can’t tell, but I can. He was always angry that it would be Daniel.”

“How could your father force the Provost’s hand to pick a stone?”

“I think Poppa is stronger than chance.”

“I think, this time, chance will be stronger.”

“But Leonhard,” he said. “We don’t want it to be, if he’s chosen you.”

“But it can’t be by his choice.” I looked at him closely. “It has to be that God moves the Provost’s hand.”

I had never seen my grandmother as unsettled as that morning. It might have been the disorder in Basel’s air; it might have been the anxiety she felt for me as I prepared for my lecture. My blacks and whites were clean and pressed and my wig smelled of new powder. I didn’t touch my shoes and their buckles: I slid in my toes and heels, and my smudging fingers never came near the polished exterior.

In the kitchen she inspected me as always, but not at all as always. If I’d been in a burlap bag I don’t think she would have noticed. She was unsettled.

“What will you say in your lecture?” she asked.

“Just what I’ve practiced. Physics is only understood by Mathematics. The first is nearly a branch of the second.”

“Will they understand you? Will they disagree?”

“They will consider it respectfully,” I said. “I’ll be upright and serious, though they’ll think I’m too young to be a Chair. And it won’t matter because the choice is in the chance when the name’s picked tomorrow. All I need for this lecture is to not be challenged and disqualified.”

“Then God be with you, Leonhard.”

“He is, Grandmother. With you, also.”

“He is.” Then she was at peace.

I’d been in the Lecture Hall so many times, but it seemed I never had; or that I had but only in imagination; or this was the imagination. All the professors and officials, the students, the gentlemen of the city, all were entering and being seated as if . . . as if a real lecture were being given.

The division between whether this room and time were imaginary, or real, ran deepest through my own thoughts. For all my doubts and feeling of pretense, I also knew that the time and purpose of the lecture were very real. In my hands were notes that described great truths. I would profess them with all assurance that my words were worth being heard.

I was standing in the front, in a corner, waiting. I stepped to the lectern. The iron casket was there, and below, on a shelf, the wooden tray of unused stones.

Every seat was taken. I tried to comprehend the faces. There were many I knew. Daniel, Nicolaus, Gottlieb, Little Johann, Great Johann of course. Desiderius, Vanitas, all the men I’d sat under in five years. The Provost, the Deans, the Mayor had all come, and Magistrate Faulkner. A hundred of my fellow students. There were so many I couldn’t name them to myself as fast as I saw them.

I heard clocks strike the hour. I set my papers on the lectern.

Even a man was there that I was sure I knew, but whose face seemed shrouded. When I looked closer, I didn’t see him.

Instead, I began.

“Gentleman, my subject today is the importance of Mathematics in the study of natural philosophy, that philosophy to which we have given the name of Physics. It is my belief that the Creation in which we abide has been established by its Creator, established with a regulation by Mathematical principles, and these principles unfold with delightful intricacy and profound elegance.”

I’d opened my lecture with the strongest statement I could. I’d unfolded myself as a thorough Newtonian in a room sharply divided on his philosophy, but willing, even eager, to consider grounded arguments and valid assertions if they were presented clearly. As best I could, I did that.

I was not a man of gravity. I wasn’t imposing, as Master Johann was. I wasn’t formidable, nor solid. I didn’t have years of wisdom written on me. I was only somewhat tall and gangling, with a voice pitched like an old cat, and eyes too large and close about my angular nose.

But what I spoke to those men was full, great truth.

At the end I stood down. I was congratulated and my hand shaken. I’d shown that I was able to hold the Chair. I’d shown to myself that I was able.

Then in the sunlight, I recovered to my own self, but only nearly. I was surely different, and more than just the three corners of a hat could make me. Greatly learned men had listened to me and sat under my instruction.

Daniel and Nicolaus were jovial beside me. I breathed in the plain air and was relieved to be plain again. I was exhilarated but exhausted and I had a great yearning to be on a hillside, wearing brown, and running.

Only a half hour was to pass before the next lecture, hardly time for the listeners to return home, but a long wait in the hall. Daniel soon abandoned me and went back in. I took the time to walk the streets close by. Although I’d been often on each of those roads, I noticed small things I hadn’t before: gates and arches into yards and gardens. These houses, and even more their foundations, were very old, but there were still spaces between them, small pockets with rows of herbs and flowers and vines.

But then it was time to return. I was back just in time. I went up and shook Daniel’s hand and gave him some encouragement, and by the time I was looking for a seat, there were none. So I stood in the back with those too late to get chairs, and those to lowly to keep theirs.

Far in front of me were the others of the family. Nicolaus and Gottlieb were together, and in the second row was Master Johann. Little Johann was close beside him. Daniel at the podium was confident and sure; the only betrayal of his anxiety was his occasional glances at the iron casket placid on the shelf beneath him.

All eyes were on him as he began as I had. “Gentlemen, my subject today is the Mathematics of Hydraulics.” Which was the last word I heard as the door closed quietly behind me.