The safest course would be to appear to make the most of his stay and move about, visiting and gaping. This would have them relaxing their surveillance and make furtive meetings more possible. He smiled wryly. Right at this moment he was where duty called— openly tasting the night life of Paris.
There was movement under the candlelight by the far wall as a raven-haired chanteuse and a darker central European violinist bowed together and opened with a soaring peasant air from the Auvergne which took Renzi back to long-past days of gaiety and passion. The singer made shameless play of her charms and held the room spellbound. Despite himself, Renzi was caught up in the charged atmosphere and applauded enthusiastically.
Then followed a sensual love lament. The tavern fell quiet as she held the audience with her tale of longing and suffering, loving and losing. Renzi couldn't help a sudden rush of feeling; for some reason she was reaching him with a message of humanity and grief that rose far above the gross distortions of war. As the urgent, pleading harmony enveloped him, his mind rebelled: he was furious at the pitiless logic that said the ultimate course for nations in disagreement was to throw themselves at each other in a struggle to the death.
He gulped at the intensity of his reaction but then an image of Teazer assailed him—the graceful being in whose bosom he had been borne while his theories had matured, destroyed without warning in a cataclysmic detonation, prey to a lurking submarine boat, her unsuspecting crew torn to pieces by the explosion.
It was horrific, an unthinkable fate that might come to pass unless . . . In the warm darkness it was all he could do to prevent his helplessness coming out in a storm of emotion and overwhelming him.
It was stultifying in the room: Haslip had resorted to a lengthy legal argument and was presenting it in a monotone. The French were led by an arrogant young firebrand, an earthy scion of the Revolution who clearly despised both the English and what he had to do, and did not bother to hide his impatience.
The presentation droned on, and when they broke for refreshments Renzi went to Haslip to show him his notes and express support. He met nothing but self-importance and a pompous disinclination to listen.
In the afternoon the French deployed their own man, an arid word-grinder whose lengthy, many-tailed points were almost impossible to follow and summarise on paper. Renzi despaired. It was as if the opposite party was under orders to obfuscate and delay, and he was relieved when an appeal to an obscure medieval case-law finding was interpreted in opposite ways and it was agreed to retire for study and deliberation.
His offer of assistance acidly declined, Renzi felt able to take time to get a hold on the situation. But before he did so he would indulge himself—just this once. He had noted a bookshop of some distinction further along the rue St. Honoré that it would be a sin to ignore, in this the Paris of Montesquieu and Diderot.
It was, in fact, a grand palace of learning, ramparts of books stretching away, alcoves and desks for enquirers and stiffly dressed assistants attending the browsing public. He reached for a Voltaire and was soon contentedly absorbed in its earnest and learned preface, written by another scholar, praising the author as an epitome of the Enlightenment.
An assistant came up to him. Renzi thought of his own studies. Clearly, now was the perfect opportunity to discover the works of lesser-known authors—and at source. In his best French he asked politely if it were known that the philosopher Johann Herder had published anything of note following the Ideen zur Philosophie which had so informed Renzi's earlier searches for historical origins.
"Je suis désolé, m'sieur," the man said sorrowfully, clearly untroubled by Renzi's English appearance.
An older man nearby removed his spectacles and cocked his head to one side. "Pardonnez-moi, monsieur," he said. "I could not but help overhearing. I rather feel he would be most offended were I not to make mention of his Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität recently to print."
"You are so kind, sir," Renzi said, with a bow. "I find Herr Herder at a refreshing distance from Goethe's classicism."
"Are you then a scholar, monsieur?" the gentleman said, with rising interest.
"In the slightest way, sir. I am as yet unpublished, still to mature my hypotheses on the human condition."
"Then surely the swiftest way to an enlightenment is disputing with the author himself."
"'Was ist Aufklärung?'" Then what is enlightenment? Renzi could not resist Kant's pungent epigram. Then he hurried on, "And I should wish it possible, sir."
The man's eyes twinkled. "Tonight you shall. It is the first Thursday of the month so there is a lecture at the Institut and I am sure your author friend will be there. Oh, may I introduce myself? Pierre Laplace, astronomer and mathematician."
Renzi was stunned. This was the very savant whose work on celestial mechanics and advanced mathematics had earned him the title of the French Newton—and, if he had heard aright, he was inviting him to the famous Institut to mingle with the finest minds of the age. "B-but I am English, sir," he said faintly.
"You may be a Hottentot for all I care. This night you shall be my guest, Monsieur . . . ?"
"Oh—er, Smith, Nicholas Smith."
"Quite so."
Close by, an anonymous individual continued to concentrate on his book—Renzi noticed it was upside-down.
The lecture, on the taxonomic peculiarities of seaweed, was persuasively delivered, and afterwards Laplace went in search of Herr Herder. However, it seemed that the elderly gentleman was ill and they dined alone.
For some hours Renzi had been able to throw off his feeling of hopelessness, and taste something of what it must be to reach a level of recognition that would find him welcomed into the company of great thinkers such as these. Would his own contributions to knowledge ever achieve such greatness? "Sir, I must express my deepest sensibility at your kindness in inviting me here," he declared sincerely.
"Nonsense, monsieur. You will go from here with renewed purpose, a higher vision. This is what la belle France is giving to humanity—a world where all are equal, each may enter the Temple of Learning as a consequence of their gifts of logic and scholarship, never the circumstances of their birth."
"Sir, our Royal Society—"
"Is prestigious but class-bound. In France we order things differently. Why, where would be your Genevan Rousseau, even your Pole Kosciusko had they not slaked their thirst for philosophies at the fountains of wisdom only to be found here in Paris?"
Renzi murmured an agreement, and Laplace continued expansively, "Why, there are sages and philosophes from all corners of the world flocking here to be recognised—I honour these savants—and even original thinkers, like the American who came here desiring, of all things, to create a submarine boat."
"A—a what?" Renzi could hardly believe his ears.
"A species of plunging boat that submerges completely under the water. A most amazing device. I have seen it myself, for I have the honour to count the inventor among my friends," Laplace said.
"It—it immerses under the water and stays there?" Renzi's mind was flailing wildly. "Come, come, sir, this is hard to accept."
"No, it is true, monsieur, you have my word. I was able to intercede on his behalf to secure the funding—I have the ear of the Emperor, you know, and he was concerned even in these busy times to allow the gentleman to realise his undersea dreams."
"How generous," Renzi said, as heartily as he could. "Can you conceive of it? A boat that swims freely in the realm of the creatures of the deep and allows the brave Argonauts aboard to view their disporting in safety and comfort. This is a marvel indeed."