The heavens were not yet emptied when I sailed forth to Master Johann’s house. I cleaned my boots and took them off inside the kitchen door. By the faintness of the sound waves, I calculated that Mistress Dorothea was about two floors away. I knew my jobs without being told, though. There was dry wood aplenty in the shed, but I still had to keep the fire high enough to swallow wet logs.
I wasn’t alone anyway. Little Johann was at the table with his dough, and I knew when he needed a listening ear. “What’s it like now?” I asked. “They’ve been here a few days and settled in.”
“Just as bad.”
“How are they with you?”
“Daniel’s either hot or cold, and Nicolaus is lukewarm.”
“How are you to them?”
“Not better. I don’t care.”
“I think you care, Johann,” I said. “You’re brothers.”
“I won’t do anything for them. They won’t for me.”
I took a guess on what he was wanting to be asked. “Have you told Daniel about the letters you saw on your father’s desk?”
“I can’t! I’d be hated by Poppa if I did.”
“I could tell him.”
“I don’t care if he ever gets them. Poppa’s burned them anyway.”
“Burned them? I doubt he has. And they’re from Paris and Russia. I think he’d want them. I’ll tell Daniel, and no one will know you saw them. He can ask for them himself.”
“Poppa doesn’t want him to have them. What if Daniel asks for them? There’ll be a fight.”
That was true. “I’ll think on it,” I said. “And I won’t let you be hated for it.”
“I know you won’t, Leonhard.”
So I’d made a promise and Johann’s dough was given rest. Mistress Dorothea arrived and was quickly praising her son, and worrying for him, and pressing him with questions, kneading him with her words.
On Tuesday I was lectured to on Greek, in Greek. I would go to Saint Alban’s street where Saint Alban’s church stands within Saint Alban’s cloister, and just beyond was Saint Alban’s Gate beside the Rhine. This was the city’s easternmost gate, the closest of the gates to Greece. Standing on the wall beside the gate, I sometimes watched the river flowing in from closer eastern lands: from Wurttemberg, and Zurich, and the Bodensee where the Rhine is born. I’d never seen those places. Beyond them were Austria and Russia and Greece. And farther beyond were the Indies and China, and finally Basel again. Disciples of Natural Philosophy knew that the planet was round, and that a straight path was finally a circle. A day circles the planet and returns as a different day. I wondered what Basel would be like to return to.
The gate wasn’t immediately beside the river. There was a space, with the gate and Saint Alban’s street on one side, and the river on the other. In the space was the paper factory. This far corner of the city was Switzerland’s greatest center for the manufacture of paper; it produced much of the country’s supply. I liked to watch the workers shred and pound the rags and feed them into the stamps. These powerful presses were the reason the factory was here at the river: they were driven by water wheels and had been for nearly three centuries. The canal for the wheels was even older, dug long earlier by monks for Saint Alban’s flour mills.
The pulp was soaked and crushed in another press into sheets that were then dried, first between layers of felt, and then by hanging. Paper for writing was bathed in lime and dried again. I learned this especially when I tried to use the cheap un-limed stuff for writing and it drank ink from the pen like a thirsty horse at a trough, and made my equations into veined black spots and wriggles. The paper looked like the muddy road the horse trampled on its way to the trough!
All the paper I had in my room was from these mills, and I had so much paper! I’d known many geese, and if someday I could visit the place the ink was made, I’d have a good knowledge of my precious tools: paper, pen, and ink. I knew less about the ink except that it was made from ashes. I’d looked closely at it as it dried on the page, trying to see the flecks, but it was pure black. It seemed a worthy use of ash. A man would write, and what he’d written outlasted him: It was his ashes.
But the paper was dearest to me because it was what I started with. It was the promise and the potential and it was so pretty, just white.
Saint Alban’s street wasn’t only for paper. In the large houses facing the factory were the printers. What a greatness they were! Lieber had apprenticed in Frankfurt but was of a very old Basel family with generations of ink in his veins, and I thought his books to be the highest quality. He only printed books, not broadsides and flyers. But I wouldn’t have cared even if they were printed on burlap; it was the words written. I wrote because I read, and I needed to think when I read, and I needed to write when I thought. What others have written, though, was far more excellent.
And among the printers were the booksellers! I needed complete discipline to not peer into those shops. It was a very dangerous street for me.
But I had to go to Saint Alban’s Street on Tuesdays, despite the peril. Among the papers and books and words was the home of Master Desiderius, who held the University’s Chair of Greek.
Desiderius was a man not yet forty, and he held a special place in my admiration: He was the greatest read man I knew. Where my reading had covered an acre, his had covered a continent. Even the densest Mathematics I had on my shelves he had also read. I might have understood more of what I’d read than he did, but he had read more of what I understood than I had. And Mathematics, of course, was just a particle of his reading. He had read the Ancients and the Classics and the Moderns, he had read Philosophy and Theology, Anatomy and Botany, History and Logic, Rhetoric and Dialectic; he had read Virgil to make the mind tremble, and Homer to make the heart race, and Provencal romances to make the cheek blush. He was a very quiet man with a peaceful wife and studious children. They all read. He would read to each child in a different language depending on their age: first in German, then in Latin, then Greek, Italian, English, and I suppose in obscure Hebrew and Persian and Chinese! When they did speak, the family was hushed Babel.
His lecture room was small, for only a dozen students at most. His larger lectures were given at the University building in the Old Lecture Hall and were attended by the larger mass of beginning students who all were required to take Greek, and from whom I earned my pocket money tutoring. Those who came to his house were we who craved the language. The dozen seats were seldom full.
The Master himself entered and greeted us and we immersed ourselves in Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, and Aristotle. Every classic writer was fair game in our hunt, all save one. Plato was considered too vast and deep to even consider except on his own, and he was given his own special days.
The double thickness of Greek was the speaking and what was spoken. It seemed impossible to me to ride the wine dark Aegean with Odysseus, or visit bloody dark Thebes with Sophocles, in awkward thudding German. Even Latin was hollow. No, it must be Greek for the Greeks! And on other days, when Master Vanitas wasn’t looking, we discussed the New Testament. Vanitas held the Chair of Theology. He was a dismal man, very unlike Desiderius, and I’d sat under only one semester of his lectures, and though I respected his thoughtfulness, I would take my Theology in a sunlit church on a Sunday instead of under Vanitas’ clouds. But within the billowing cloak of a Greek lecture, there was ample room for almost anything, and I was especially glad that the Fathers wrote in the language that Desiderius taught.
When the lecture concluded, I stayed behind. Master Desiderius was not to be bothered with a wig, so his red and brown curls were like autumn leaves among his students’ snowy white headdresses.
“Master Desiderius,” I said. Unlike with Master Huldrych, I often stayed behind in this class. “May I borrow a book?” This was my usual reason.
“Only if you’ll read it, Leonhard.” This was his usual answer, and it was humorous. He knew I wouldn’t be able to walk home without my nose between the pages. “What b
ook do you want?”
“Any.”
“Come and we’ll choose one.”
Few words stirred a deeper joy in me.
Minutes later, many minutes, I stood at his door, my feet toward the street, my heart still among the shelves of his library, my fingers firm on Boccaccio, and my eyes on the Master’s face.
“And next, after that one,” he was saying, “I have a Faustbook for you. It’s a new telling, and when you read it I’ll lend you Paracelsus with it. And there’s also a new Homer. It’s an Englishman named Pope. Do you read English?”
“No,” I said, and I must have sounded less than enthusiastic.
“It would be a good text to learn it. There’s more than just Greek and Latin, Leonhard.”
“Yes, sir. There’s French that I hardly know, and Italian even less.” I held up the book in my hand. “And I think my brain is more than full already!”
“Then make some room. You could empty some of your numbers and Mathematics.”
“Oh, no, sir!”
“No, no, I wouldn’t, that, either. You have a gift for them, Leonhard, and I think there’s a purpose in that.”
“I hope there is,” I said. “Anyway, I think they’re stuck.”
“I’ve plenty wedged too tight myself. And there’s more to put in! With every lecture I give I find more I need to learn.”
“You’ve many more years of lecturing still.”
“I’ve already had five here and five in Strasbourg.”
Surely I’d known before he’d come from Strasbourg. “Why did you come here?”
“I was elected to the Chair.”
“How were you, though?” I asked. “Had you been asked? Did they know you’d come if it was offered?”
“Master Vanitas wrote me to say his committee would nominate me if I was willing. They prefer to have candidates from other universities as well as from Basel. I agreed that I was. And then, of the three candidates, it was my name drawn.”
“Had you known Master Vanitas, then?”
“By reputation and by correspondence. And I’d known Master Jankovsky.”
“Oh! Master Huldrych mentioned him. He said it was unfortunate what had happened to him.”
Master Desiderius looked away, as if something unpleasant had been thrust before him. “But that was five years ago. And I was in Strasbourg.”
That seemed a better subject. “What is the University in Strasbourg like?”
“It was once significant.”
“Basel is significant.”
“Very much. Strasbourg was worth leaving. When the city surrendered its independence and became part of France, many things declined.” He glanced about the room. “Such as books and printing. There are more books here in Basel! I remember asking the coachman to tell me about the city.”
“The coachman? Knipper?”
“Yes, it was. He brought me the letter from Master Vanitas, and I rode back with him on his return to give my nomination lecture.”
“Did Master Johann ever have the Chair of Greek?”
“Johann?” This surprised him. “But he has Mathematics! Why would he have Greek?”
“I was told he was considered for it, long ago. But then Mathematics came open.”
“He has never had the Greek Chair. His name is not on the list.” He seemed very surprised at the possibility, and even alarmed. So I asked about the Faustbook then, and perhaps I drove the memory of Master Johann from the Master’s thoughts.
It seemed worth finding Daniel to tell him a few things I’d learned, and as it was Tuesday afternoon, Willi would be back from Freiburg and Strasbourg, and that would also be worth attending. So I opened my eyes for Daniel and wandered toward the north, facing Saint John Gate. And when Daniel was in Basel he was hard to hide.
I went walking the Rhine Leap, the street which ran from the Munster Square at one end to Saint Martin’s Church and the Rhine Bridge at the other. The University Building itself faced the river beside the bridge, in front of Saint Martin’s. Centered between these pillars, Cousin Gottlieb lived in a house of the same quality as Master Johann’s and only somewhat less quantity. Daniel was there to be found, occupied with glaring at it. I tugged his sleeve.
“What?” Daniel said. “Who? Oh, is it you, Leonhard?”
“It is,” I laughed. “Are you calling on Gottlieb?”
He said blackly, “I’ll call on him, and see how he likes it.”
“No you won’t. Come with me. I see what you’re doing, you’re sulking.”
“Well, I am.” He brightened. He’d hold a grudge forever, but not tightly. “I was only strolling and I forgot where I was. It’s not fair for his house to stand in my path.”
“Ignore him,” I said.
“That I won’t. Not ever.” He said it with a smile. Lest I think he wasn’t part serious, though, he said, “It’s only logical that I wouldn’t.”
Two years before, when I was sixteen and beginning to understand the ways of the University, the Chair of Logic came open. It was an interesting Chair, tasked to lecture on Dialectic, Rhetoric, Logic, and Geometry. It had for many years been held by Master Grimm, whose lessons had so solidified over his tenure that I doubted they varied even by a word from one year to another. Of course, logic didn’t change.
But then he left. It may have been that he went to visit a sister in Leipzig. His absence became prolonged, and finally, undeniable. An Inquiry was held, which was a serious undertaking, and a request for information was sent to the Court in Leipzig. In the end his Chair had been declared vacant and an Election was held to fill it.
A University Election in Basel was the city’s most complex and obscure ritual.
The design was this: Three committees of professors and high University officials would be formed, with six in each committee. Each committee would then nominate a candidate to the empty Chair, and a stone, or lot, for each candidate was then placed in an iron box, to which only the Provost had a key. Each candidate then gave a lecture on the Chair’s subject; Anatomy, Physics, Law, Theology, or whatever. The lecture was only final proof of the candidate’s expertise. It had no bearing on the Election itself, except that a very poor lecture might disqualify a candidate. The lectures might take place in just the few days after the nominations, or over a longer period if a candidate wasn’t in Basel and must be notified, and travel to the city. Finally, after the lectures, the box would be opened and the Provost would blindly choose one lot from the three.
It would seem a reasonable and elegant procedure. Three qualified men, and one chosen at random. No bribes, no secretive bargains, no personal prejudices or nepotism could influence the selection of the Chair. Even if the winner wasn’t the most qualified man, he’d be one of the three-most.
In practice, factions did prevail within the committees, with each party advancing its own favorite. So, the random choice was meant to stymie those improper influences.
However, it was not certain that it did.
Three candidates were nominated that year for the Logic Election. Daniel was one, chosen by professors enamored of his charming ways. The thought of an invigorated, lively Chair of Logic was beguiling. I, of course, as lowly a student as I was, was all for his Election. It seemed so grand a picture, to have him pacing the streets in his black robe, his students tripping to keep up with him. But it wasn’t to be.
The two other candidates were an odd Polish gentleman from Cracow, as it has been customary to nominate at least one candidate from outside the city, and Cousin Gottlieb. Gottlieb was nominated by Master Johann. The committees’ deliberations were in secret, so it would never be known what was discussed. Gottlieb was a respectable and dry lecturer in Law, and generally avoided. I attended his lectures and considered them perfect specimens, competent and parched, as Gottlieb himself was. Actually, his real competence was Mathematics. Though his only book was his uncle’s Ars Conjectandi, he’d managed correspondence with most of Europe’s great Mathematicians: Hermann, de M
oivre, Montmort, and Leibniz himself. He finished his Doctorate in Mathematics under his uncle Master Johann before he took his Chair in Padua. But Gottlieb returned to Basel years ago, before I started at the University, and he made a poor comparison to his cousin Daniel.
When the lot was chosen, though, it was his.
I remembered very well the next few days. My Master’s house was like an armory of swords and maces, all at hand and often used. Then Daniel decided that a Basel with Cousin Gottlieb was worth less than an exile without Cousin Gottlieb. In only two weeks, Daniel announced his own Election to the Chair of Mathematics in Padua that had been vacated by his brother Nicolaus, and he was gone.
And now he was back, glowering at Gottlieb’s house. “It was by chance,” I said.
“Chance, you say?”
“The chance of the draw.”
“That is your conjecture, your Conjectandi. He wrote his book about chance, didn’t he? But I don’t believe in chance. Not when there’s a Chair at stake. Chance wouldn’t be given a chance.”
“The final choice for a Chair is meant to come from God’s hand,” I said.
“Sometimes His choice is predestined.”
“Then that makes it even more sure.”
“Predestined, but not by God. There were letters, Leonhard, there were whispers, there were glances, and it wasn’t the first Election that there were.”
“But the Provost’s blind hand chose the stone, Daniel. How could a whisper put one indistinguishable square in his fingers over another? It couldn’t even be done if he was trying to choose a specific one.”
“There’s seeing other than by sight.”
I shook my head at him. “Look, Daniel, I’ve learned more about Jacob.”
“Oh? Jacob?” He was uninterested. “Are you still on him?” He started walking with me, toward the river.
“It isn’t three days since you put me on him!”
“Well, don’t give it mind. Not anymore.”
“Daniel,” I said. “Is that your plan? That’s the only one thing you could say to make me want to give it my mind.”
An Elegant Solution Page 6
