Leibniz knew who he was, and asked, “Is Wilkins still alive?”
“Yes…”
“Thank God!”
“Though very ill. If you would like to visit him I would suggest doing it now. I’ll escort you gladly, Dr. Leibniz… may I have the honor of assisting you with that box?”
“You are very civil,” Leibniz said, “but I’ll hold it.”
“If it contains gold or jewelry, you’d best hold it tight. ”
“Are the streets of London not safe?”
“Let us say that the Justices of the Peace are mostly concerned with Dissenters and Dutchmen, and our cutpurses have not been slow to adapt.”
“What this contains is infinitely more valuable than gold,” Leibniz said, beginning to mount the stairs, “and yet it cannot be stolen.”
Daniel lunged forward in an effort to keep step. Leibniz was slender, of average height, and tended to bend forward when he walked, the head anticipating the feet. Once he had reached the level of the roadway he turned sharply and strode towards the City of London, ignoring the various taverns and shops.
He did not look like a monster.
According to Oldenburg, the Parisians who frequented the Salon at the Hotel Montmor-the closest French equivalent to the Royal Society of London-had begun using the Latin word monstro to denote Leibniz. This from men who’d personally known Descartes and Fermat and who considered exaggeration an unspeakably vulgar habit. It had led to some etymological researches among some members of the R.S. Did they mean Leibniz was grotesquely misshapen? An unnatural hybrid of a man and something else? A divine warning?
“He lives up this way, does he not?”
“The Bishop has had to move because of his illness-he’s at his stepdaughter’s house in Chancery Lane.”
“Then still we go this way-then left.”
“You have been to London before, Dr. Leibniz?”
“I have been studying London-paintings.”
“I’m afraid most of those became antiquarian curiosities after the Fire-like street-plans of Atlantis.”
“And yet viewing several depictions of even an imaginary city, is enlightening in a way,” Leibniz said. “Each painter can view the city from only one standpoint at a time, so he will move about the place, and paint it from a hilltop on one side, then a tower on the other, then from a grand intersection in the middle-all on the same canvas. When we look at the canvas, then, we glimpse in a small way how God understands the universe-for he sees it from every point of view at once. By populating the world with so many different minds, each with its own point of view, God gives us a suggestion of what it means to be omniscient.”
Daniel decided to step back and let Leibniz’s words reverberate, as organ-chords must do in Lutheran churches. Meanwhile they reached the north end of the Bridge, where the racket of the water-wheels, confined and focused in the stone vault of the gatehouse, made conversation impossible. Not until they’d made it out onto dry land, and begun to ascend the Fish Street hill, did Daniel ask, “I note you’ve already been in communication with the Dutch Ambassador. May I assume that your mission is not entirely natural-philosophick in nature?”
“A rational question-in a way,” Leibniz grumbled. “We are about the same age, you and I?” he asked, giving Daniel a quick inspection. His eyes were unsettling. Depending on what kind of monster he was, either beady, or penetrating.
“I am twenty-six.”
“So am I. We were born about sixteen forty-six. The Swedes took Prague that year, and invaded Bavaria. The Inquisition was burning Jews in Mexico. Similar terrible things were happening in England, I assume?”
“Cromwell crushed the King’s army at Newark-chased him out of the country-John Comstock was wounded-”
“And we are speaking only of kings and noblemen. Imagine the sufferings of common people and Vagabonds, who possess equal stature in God’s eyes. And yet you ask me whether my mission is philosophick or diplomatic, as if those two things can neatly be separated.”
“Rude and stupid I know, but it is my duty to make conversation. You are saying that it should be the goal of all natural philosophers to restore peace and harmony to the world of men. This I cannot dispute.”
Leibniz now softened. “Our goal is to prevent the Dutch war from growing into a general conflagration. Please do not be offended by my frankness now: the Archbishop and the Baron are followers of the Royal Society-as am I. They are Alchemists-which I am not, except when it is politic. They hope that through pursuit of Natural Philosophy I may make contacts with important figures in this country, whom it would normally be difficult to reach through diplomatic channels.”
“Ten years ago I might have been offended,” Daniel said. “Now, there’s nothing I’ll not believe.”
“But my interest in meeting the Lord Bishop of Chester is as pure as any human motive can be.”
“He will sense that, and be cheered by it,” Daniel said. “The last few years of Wilkins’s life have been sacrified entirely to politics-he has been working to dismantle the framework of theocracy, to prevent its resurgence, in the event a Papist ascends to the throne-”
“Or already has done so,” Leibniz said immediately.
The offhanded way in which Leibniz suggested that King Charles II might be a crypto-Catholic hinted to Daniel that it was common knowledge on the Continent. This made him feel hopelessly dull, naive, and provincial. He had suspected the King of many crimes and deceptions, but never of baldly lying about his religion to the entire Realm.
He had plenty of time to conceal his annoyance as they were passing through the heart of the city, which had turned into a single vast and eternal building-site even as the normal business of the ‘Change and the goldsmiths’ shops continued. Paving-stones were whizzing between Daniel and the Doctor like cannonballs, shovels slicing the air around their heads like cutlasses, barrows laden with gold and silver and bricks and mud trundling like munition-carts over temporary walk-ways of planks and stomped dirt.
Perhaps reading anxiety on Daniel’s face, Leibniz said, “Just like the Rue Vivienne in Paris,” with a casual hand-wave. “I go there frequently to read certain manuscripts in the Bibliotheque du Roi.”
“I’ve been told that a copy of every book printed in France must be sent to that place.”
“Yes.”
“But it was established in the same year that we had our Fire-so I ween that it must be very small yet, as it’s had only a few years to grow.”
“A few very good years in mathematics, sir. And it also contains certain unpublished manuscripts of Descartes and Pascal.”
“But none of the classics?”
“I had the good fortune to be raised, or to raise myself, in my father’s library, which contained all of them.”
“Your father was mathematickally inclined?”
“Difficult to say. As a traveler comprehends a city only by viewing pictures of it drawn from differing standpoints, I know my father only by having read the books that he read.”
“I understand the similitude now, Doctor. The Bibliotheque du Roi then gives you the closest thing that currently exists to God’s understanding of the world.”
“And yet with a bigger library we could come ever so much closer.”
“But with all due respect, Doctor, I do not understand how this street could be anything less like the Rue Vivienne-we have no such Bibliotheque in England.”
“The Bibliotheque du Roi is just a house, you see, a house Colbert happened to buy on the Rue Vivienne-probably as an investment, because that street is the center of goldsmiths. Every ten days, from ten in the morning until noon, all of the merchants of Paris send their money to the Rue Vivienne to be counted. I sit there in Colbert’s house trying to understand Descartes, working the mathematical proofs that Huygens, my tutor, gives me, and looking out the windows as the street fills up with porters staggering under their back-loads of gold and silver, converging on a few doorways. Are you beginning to understand my riddle now?”