The System of the World

MORNING OF 18 AUGUST 1714

For the sovereign is the public soul, giving life and motion to the commonwealth; which expiring, the members are governed by it no more, than the car-case of a man, by his departed, though immortal, soul.

-HOBBES, Leviathan

THE PLACE HAD NOT been fixed up in more than a hundred years, and was irredeemably Tudor: one could easily imagine Gloriana calling Sir Walter Raleigh on the carpet in here. No books by living authors were in evidence. The coastlines on the globe were hopelessly out of fashion.

Sir Isaac Newton did not have leisure to peruse this convex Artifact, however. He had been escorted to the library by young Johann von Hacklheber-a Leipziger baron. And so he was not extremely surprised to recognize a second North German baron-Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz-rising from a chair to bid him welcome. Newton’s face showed that he was annoyed to have been ensnared into yet another extraordinary and irregular meeting with his Nemesis, but that he would stiffen his upper lip and get through it. He glanced for only a moment at the young woman seated in an armchair near the globe. His eyes then snapped back to Leibniz. “I was led to believe I should be paying a call on the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm,” he began. But his protest trailed off as his eyes wandered back to behold the young woman. It was not just that she was good looking, though she more or less was. It was rather that she was turned out in clothing and jewels-especially, jewels-the likes of which Newton had not feasted his protruberant eyes on since the last time he had been summoned into the presence of Royalty. The woman was, in fact, wearing an actual tiara, and something in her bearing told Newton that it was no affectation, and that the sparkly bits were no rhinestones.

Johann von Hacklheber had already ducked out. Leibniz had the floor. “Your royal highness,” he said to the young woman, “this is Sir Isaac Newton. Sir Isaac, it is my honor to present Her Royal Highness Caroline, Princess of Wales, Electoral Princess of Hanover, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Stay! Do not move, Sir Isaac,” said Caroline, causing the savant to freeze in the opening of what promised to be a deep and lengthy formal bow. “We have heard already the story of how you were injured in our service-an inadvertent consequence of Baron von Leibniz’s heroics. You are in no condition for courtly bowing. Pray sit down.”

“You need not narrow your eyes thus at Freiherr von Leibniz,” said another voice, from the corner. Newton looked over to see Daniel Waterhouse, who had been delving into a brown and crusty Tome. “It is I, not the Baron, who related the story to her royal highness, and I who ought to be blamed for any misapprehensions I may have planted in her mind. True, it’s not every day that a German Baron has a go at Sir Isaac Newton with a great stick. Some might be tempted to make something out of it; but I suffered the same, and have forgiven him, and thanked him.”

“As do I,” said Newton easily, and then sat down-with conspicuous stiffness-in the side chair indicated by Caroline. Now it was Caroline in the big throne-like armchair next the globe, symmetrically flanked by Newton and Leibniz. Waterhouse prowled about the dim periphery, like a furtive librarian or, as it were, a philosophick Butler.

Caroline broke the ice-which was passing thick and cold-with small talk of the last days’ events in London. Were the rumors true?

This was just the gambit to use on Sir Isaac, who desired more than anything to set the new Dynasty’s mind at ease about the coinage of their Realm.

“Jack Shaftoe is ours!” he proclaimed. “The Coiner shall coin no more in this world.”

“If our understanding of the thing is correct,” said Caroline, “then this is momentous news indeed, and I am surprised I have not heard more of it.”

“Ah, but your royal highness, I did not know you were in London until I stepped over the threshold of this room-otherwise your royal highness should have been notified within the hour of Mr. Shaftoe’s arrest.”

“That is not what I meant. I refer to the fact that we have not heard anything of it from Grub Street.”

“He was taken in the back room of a certain Clubb, only a few minutes’ walk from here, frequented by Tories-many of whom, you may be sure, are sorely embarrassed. Certain Whigs would make political hay of it-and presently shall. I bear most of the men of this Clubb no ill-will and did not wish to expose them to obloquy. The true villain of the piece is a certain Tory Lord who was the first man in England for a time-”

“I know who you mean.”

“He may deserve exposure and shame, but this is not to be achieved without grave embarrassment to the entire Realm. The matter is delicate-” and here Isaac looked, uncharacteristically, to one who would know more about it: Daniel Waterhouse, Lord Regent.

Daniel responded by raising his voice in the direction of a side door of the library, which stood ajar. “Bring it in,” he commanded.

The door was drawn open by some unseen servant. Another servant, a butler, came in gripping a tray mostly covered by a blue velvet cushion. Bedded in that were two ingots of metal, deeply wrought with intricate circular depressions, made so that they could be clapped together like a huge locket. These were borne over to the Princess so that she could inspect them; Newton and Leibniz stole sidelong glances. “It is my honor,” said Daniel, “to present to your royal highness the Seals that are used by His Majesty’s Secretary of State on his official correspondence. Until yesterday these were, of course, in the possession of my lord Bolingbroke. But as your royal highness may have heard, Bolingbroke has decided to spend more time with his family.”

“Yes-in France,” said Caroline drily.

“He was last seen southbound at a speed normally seen only among men who have been projected from high cliffs,” Daniel allowed. “Of course, being a man of honor, he first gave the Seals of his former office to one of His Majesty’s Regents. I had the privilege of catching them when they slipped from his sweaty and trembling hands, and now present them to your royal highness. They are your family property. You may take them back to Hanover or-”

“They shall be ever so much more useful here,” said Caroline. “You and the other Regents will look after them, won’t you?”

“We shall consider it our honor and our privilege, highness.”

“Very well. Then since Bolingbroke appears to have departed the stage, I would that these be set aside, and I would hear more of Jack Shaftoe. Did he fight?”

The butler backed away and set the Seals on a library table near Daniel, then backed out of the room bowing. This gave Newton some moments to frame a response. Isaac, who until now had been at pains to respond instantly to the Princess’s every word and gesture, bated for a moment before answering. Daniel searched his face and thought he perceived a quiver of triumph-a rare self-indulgence for a Puritan. He was sitting at the right hand of the Princess of Wales telling the tale of how he’d caught the arch-villain Jack the Coiner, and, as a soupcon, the Seals of his most terrible persecutor had been brought in as a sort of trophy. Only Bolingbroke’s scalp on a stick would have given satisfaction more complete.

“Fight? No. Rather, he feigned a sort of boredom, or so I am told by the bailiffs who arrested him.”

“Boredom?”

“Yes, highness, as if he had known all along that he was walking into a trap.”

“Is he in the Tower of London, then?”

Isaac could not prevent a patronizing smile from spreading across his face. “As Mr. Shaftoe is a traitor and an important one, your royal highness anticipates, correctly, that he shall be held in the Tower. In this case, however, there are extenuating circumstances that have dictated a less conventional accommodation. Jack the Coiner and his gang seized the Tower complex in an elaborate coup de main some months ago. It was hushed up, explained away. But the fact is that he did it; from which we may conclude that he had, and has, many confederates among the people who dwell there, and that he knows its secrets all too intimately. Effective control of the Tower is still vested in Charles White, captain of the King’s Messengers, and he is an old crony of Bolingbroke.”

“I should have thought the Regents might have found another man for such a position,” said Caroline, shifting her attention to Daniel.

“In England such changes are not made lightly or swiftly,” said Daniel, “and rarely without cause. We have no firm evidence against Mr. White-though this might change-”

“If Jack talks to us, and tells us what he knows,” Newton concluded.

“I see,” said Caroline, “which is yet another reason to keep him out of the Tower, and out of the Power, of Charles White. Where then is he?”

“He is in Newgate Prison,” said Newton, “and others of his gang are in Fleet Prison. We deemed it wisest not to put all of them together in one building.”

“Indeed,” said Caroline, looking a little dismayed. “But is Newgate not a very common pit? Can he be kept close in such a place?”

“Newgate is several prisons lumped into one,” said Daniel. “The most notorious part of it is indeed an execrable dungeon. But connected with it is the Press-Yard and Castle, where Persons of Quality are held, if they can afford it.”

“We are paying the Gaolers of Newgate to keep him in an apartment there, heavily ironed,” Newton announced.

“Can Jack not pay them even more?”

“Perhaps. But if they collude in his escape, the gaolers lay themselves open to charges of High Treason. And, working as they do at Newgate, and discoursing with Jack Ketch every day, they know better than most what is the penalty for that crime.”

“I thank you, Sir Isaac, and Dr. Waterhouse, for acquainting me with these things,” said Caroline, in a tone of voice, and with a shift of posture, that made it plain that this part of the conversation was at an end. “Now I would hear of matters far more important.” She settled back in her chair, letting its padded arms support her elbows, and as she talked, her right hand strayed over to rest upon the antique globe and nudge it this way and that in its felt-lined cradle. Her pose recalled that of a Monarch with one hand on an Orb, though the other hand seemed to be missing its Sceptre. “As you may know, Sir Isaac, I have known Baron von Leibniz for many years, and learned from him much of what I know of Mathematicks, Metaphysicks, and the younger discipline of Natural Philosophy. Concerning the first of these, reports have reached me of an unpleasant dispute concerning the origin of the Calculus. The particulars are tedious. Lesser minds, confronted with such complexities, have seized on simple explanations. One such is that you stole the calculus from Freiherr von Leibniz; another is that he stole it from you. I find both of these hypotheses unconvincing.”

During Caroline’s remarks Daniel had observed a change in the weather pass across Isaac’s face. If he had expected lavish thanks and praise, he had been disappointed; Caroline had found the news of Jack and Bolingbroke interesting but, in the end, not all that remarkable. ’Twas as if the exhausted and bloodied Knight had dragged a pair of freshly slain dragons into the forecourt of the Princess’s castle, and after a look-see and a polite question or two, she had gone back to filing her nails. Isaac had been irked for a moment, then resigned himself to it. ’Twas ever thus, for Isaac. Everything he had done had been under-appreciated and over-criticized. The pink flush of victory, which earlier had been so plain on his face, had vanished, to be replaced by the visage he was used to wearing: gray and stiff as the figurehead on a worn-out ship.

“Your royal highness knows Leibniz better than I,” said Newton. “As you have confided your view in me, highness, I shall accept it, and say nothing against it, either here, or in public. Of course, I have no power to compel other philosophers to adopt that, or any other, view.”

“Then let us wash our hands of the Calculus Dispute and move on to Metaphysicks and Natural Philosophy. For I have long suspected-and Dr. Waterhouse will support me on this-that the Calculus Dispute was really an epiphenomenon of a far more profound, interesting, and momentous debate. Baron von Leibniz has served my House well as court philosopher; Sir Isaac, I trust, is desirous of doing likewise.”

“It is chief among my aspirations, highness,” Newton responded. This elicited a slight eye-roll from Leibniz, who glanced toward Daniel for support, but Daniel affected not to notice, and remained grave of aspect.

“I wonder if any royal House in the history of this world has enjoyed the distinction of being served, at the same time, by two such eminent philosophers! It is a rare thing, and I mean to make the most of it. You are both Christians, believers in a living and active God. You both hold that humans are made in God’s image, possessing free will. In Mathematicks and Natural Philosophy, your interests run on very similar lines. And yet there is between you a schism as deep as that between Scylla and Charybdis-a fundamental divergence of views that makes it impossible for you to collaborate with each other. Which were not such a bad thing, perhaps, if I were still Princess of Ansbach or some other tiny place, and you, sir, a Librarian and you, sir, a Vicar. But I am Princess of Wales. The House you both now serve is a great one-some would say, second only to the House of Bourbon. If the philosophy of that House is confused, why, it shall have dreadful consequences, dificult to foretell. A year ago, I asked Dr. Waterhouse to journey hither from Boston, that we might go to work healing this breach. That you, Sir Isaac, and you, Baron von Leibniz, are here together in this room now, is all his doing; but he did it at my command. His part in the thing is done and he has my gratitude forever. Your parts, gentlemen, begin now.”

“Highness,” said Newton, “I am grateful to you for having stated with such clarity the truth of my views on God, the human spirit, and free will. For Baron von Leibniz, I am sorry to report, has disseminated the slander that I am some sort of Atheist. While it is true that I reject the doctrine of the Trinity, please know that I do so only out of a belief that the Homoousian doctrine promulgated at the Council of Nicaea was an error, a straying from what Christians had believed until then, and ought to believe now-”

“Any person who seeks slander need not look so far afield, nor delve so deep!” Leibniz exclaimed, rising to his feet so forcefully that he had to take half a step toward Newton to steady himself. “I saved this man’s life three days ago, and gossip has already reached my ears that I am guilty of assaulting him! These willful distortions, sir, do nothing to bring us nigher true Philosophy!”

“I cannot imagine any slander more base than that I am an Atheist!” returned Newton. Because of his ribs, it was much more difficult for him to rise from his chair, but now he got his walking-stick under his folded hands as if he were about to give it a go.

“An Atheist? No. Never would I spread such a calumny-on my honor! But spreading doctrines that incline others toward Atheistical views is another matter. Of that you are, I regret to say, culpable.”

“Can one believe the incoherence of the man?!” Newton burst out, and regretted it, for it hurt to speak so vehemently. As long as his ribs were complaining anyway, he rose to his feet, then continued the outburst in a voice distorted by pain. “I am not an Atheist, he claims to admit-then he turns around and accuses me of spreading Atheism! It is typical of his slippery discourse, his slippery metaphysics!”

They were interrupted, but only for a moment, by a thud emanating from the floor between them. For Princess Caroline, disgruntled and bored, had used the palm of her hand to roll the globe up out of its cradle and over the rim of the felt-padded Great Circle that held it captive. It had tumbled to the rug between Newton and Leibniz. She put a foot up on it-a most undignified posture, for a Princess-and began to roll it back and forth idly as the argument went on.

“I do not think it is the least bit slippery,” said Leibniz. “You may be the most sincere Christian in the world, sir, but if you publish doctrines that are obscure, incoherent, contradictory, and impossible for readers to follow, why, they may go a-stray in their thinking and tend towards doctrines you would never espouse.”

“This is how you make amends for a false accusation of Atheism-by saying my life’s work is incoherent and contradictory? Pray do not make any more such apologies, sirrah, or I shall have to make amends to you by challenging you to a duel!”

Princess Caroline gave the globe a hard shove, and it rolled for a few yards across the carpet and scored a goal, as it were, in a large fireplace that accounted for most of one wall of the room. The hearth was slightly lower than the floor of the room, so the globe lodged there, and came to a stop between two andirons. “That globe will never do, for a modern Monarch,” she announced. “When the Prince of Wales and I move to this house, it shall have to be replaced by a new one, with more of geography and fewer of monsters and mermaids. One that shall be ready to receive Lines of Longitude whensoever that Roger Comstock finds someone to award his Prize to.” She rose now to her feet, and Newton and Leibniz, finally remembering their manners, turned to track her as she walked toward the fireplace. First, though, she wrenched a burning taper from a chair-side candelabrum. “As a rule I am averse to burning things found in Libraries, but this must be reckoned no loss at all, compared to the damage that the two of you are inflicting on Philosophy by your bickering.” She bent her knees and executed a graceful descent until she was sitting on the floor beside the hearth, skirts arranged around her. “I see things sometimes, in dreams or in day-dreams-some of them I quite fancy, for they seem to carry meaning. Those I remember, and think back on. There is one such vision that has got stuck in my head, quite as melodies often do, and I can’t seem to get rid of it. I shall try to do justice to it thusly.” And she reached out with the candle and let its flame lave the underside of the globe. The globe was of wood, and too heavy to catch fire readily; but paper gores printed with images of continents had been pasted over it. The paper caught fire, and a ragged flame-ring began to spread, consuming the cartographer’s work and leaving behind it a blackened and featureless sphere. “Sophie kept trying to tell me, before she died, that a new System of the World was being made. Oh, it is not a terribly novel thing to say. I know, and Sophie knew, that the third volume of your Principia Mathematica bears that name, Sir Isaac. Since she died, I have become quite convinced that she was correct-and moreover that the System is to be born, not at Versailles, but here-that this shall be its Prime Meridian, and all else shall be reckoned, and ruled, from here. It is a pleasing notion that there is to be such a System, and that I might play some small part in being its midwife. I think of the globe, with its neat parallels and meridians, as the Emblem of this System-what the Cross is to Christianity. But I am troubled by the vision of such a Globe in flames. What you are looking at here is a poor rendition of it; in my nightmares, it is ever so much more lovely and dreadful.”

“What do you suppose that vision signifies, highness?” asked Daniel Waterhouse.

“That this System, if it is set up wrong, might be doomed from the start,” said Caroline. “Oh, it shall be a wonder to behold at first, and all shall marvel at its regularity, its ?conomy, and the ingenuity of them who framed it. Perhaps it shall work as planned for a decade, or a century, or more. And yet if it has been made wrong at the beginning, it shall burn, in the end, and my vision shall be realized in a manner infinitely more destructive than this.” She gave the smoking globe a nudge. It had been wholly scoured by the flames and become a trackless black orb.

Daniel now stepped over and gave her a hand up. “I do not concern myself so much,” said Caroline, turning toward Leibniz and Newton, “with bankers, merchants, clock-makers, or Longitude-finders, and their roles in the creation of this System. Or even with Astronomers and Alchemists. But I am terribly concerned with my Philosophers, for if they get it wrong, then the System is flawed, and shall burn, in the end. Stop your bickering and get to work.”

“As it pleases your highness,” said Sir Isaac. “What would you have us work on?”

“Baron von Leibniz may be on to something,” said Caroline, “which is that, though you, and most other Fellows of the Royal Society, are true Christians, and believers in Free Will, the very doctrines and methods that the Royal Society has promulgated have caused many to question the existence of God, the divinity of Christ, the authority of the Church, the premise that we have souls endowed with Free Will. Why, Dr. Waterhouse himself has lately given me the lamentable news that he has quite abandoned all such doctrines.”

This earned Daniel perturbed and puzzled looks from Newton and Leibniz. All he could do, in the face of such disapproval from such minds, was make a frail smile and shrug. Caroline continued, “As so much of civilization is rooted in those beliefs, this strikes me as one way in which our System of the World might be set up wrongly and thus self-doomed. Neither you, Sir Isaac, nor you, Baron von Leibniz, sees the slightest contradiction between your Faith and the true and fearless pursuit of Natural Philosophy. But you differ radically in how you reconcile the one with the other. If you two cannot manage it, no one can; and so I would like for you to work on that, if you please.”

“Your royal highness’s discourse concerning the System of the World, and the threat of its running awry at some future time, puts me in mind of a thing I do not understand in the philosophy of Sir Isaac Newton,” Leibniz began. “Sir Isaac describes that System by which the heavenly bodies are kept in their gyres, and made to orbit round and round forever. Fine. But he seems to say that God, who created this system and set it in motion, must from time to time reach in and tinker with it, as a horologist adjusts the workings of his clock. As if God lacked the foresight, or the power, to make it a perpetual motion.”

“You are over-reacting to a passage from my Opticks that is really not all that important,” Isaac began.

“On the contrary, sir, it is very important indeed, if it is wrong, and puts wrong ideas in people’s heads!”

“Then as you are at such pains to correct my errors, Herr Leibniz, let me return the favor in kind. This similitude, likening the universe to a clock, and God to a horologist, is faulty. A horologist is presented with certain laws or facts of nature, viz. that weights descend towards the center of the earth and springs push back when deflected. Taking these as givens, he hacks away at his bench to produce some mechanism that exploits these properties in a more or less ingenious way. Ones who are more ingenious, make clocks that require adjustment less often, and one who was perfect would, I suppose, make one that would never need it at all. But God does not merely compose the objects and forces that were given to Him, but is Himself the Author of those objects and forces. Author, and preserver. Nothing happens in this world without His government and His inspection. Think of Him not as a watch-maker but as a King. Suppose there were a Kingdom where all things ran forever in an orderly and regular way without the King ever having to attend, make judgments, or exercise his powers. If it were, in sum, so ordered that the King could be removed from it without any diminution, then he would be a King only in name, and not deserving of the respect and loyalty of his subjects.”

“Like the God of Spinoza,” said Caroline, “if I am following your similitude correctly.”

“Indeed, highness. And so if Baron von Leibniz is of the view that the world can go on forever without the continual inspection and governance of God, why, then, I say that it is his philosophy that shall incline men towards Atheism.”

“That is not my view, as I think you know,” said Leibniz equably. “I believe that God takes part in the world’s workings at every moment-but not in the sense of mending it when it has gone awry. To say otherwise is to say God makes mistakes, and changes His mind. Instead of which I believe in a pre-established harmony, reflecting that God has foreseen all, and provided for it.”

To which Sir Isaac was about to make some rejoinder when he was interrupted by Daniel. “This, I believe, is the least interesting topic that the two of you could debate. It is really an argument about the signification of certain words, and the applicability of certain metaphors: the clock-maker, the King, et cetera.”

Both Leibniz and Newton were pressing their lips together to keep all of their objections and rejoinders from bursting forth in a Pandoran onslaught. Rather than see the rest of the day devoted to the aftermath, Daniel turned to Princess Caroline and continued, without letup: “Or to put it another way: your royal highness, are you willing to stipulate that Sir Isaac and Baron von Leibniz both believe in a God who is aware of and active in the Universe? And that this God, in framing the Universe, was not chargeable of any errors?”

“Indeed, Dr. Waterhouse, it is plain to see that both of them believe as much-though I wish you would believe it, too.”

“I am not really a participant, highness, so let us leave my views out of the reckoning.”

“On the contrary, Dr. Waterhouse,” said the Princess, “every philosophical dialogue I have ever read, requires one interlocutor who is of a Skeptickal habit of mind-”

“Or of a Stupid,” Daniel put in.

“Be he Skeptickal, Stupid, or both, the others try to win him over to their view of things.” Caroline had suddenly gone all flushed and girlish, and looked to Newton and Leibniz for their support in the venture. Phant’sying she saw what she wanted, she turned back to the bemused Daniel, who was saying: “Am I to understand that the purpose of the discussion is now to subject me to a religious conversion?”

“You are the one who complained, a moment ago, of feeling Stupid,” said Caroline, a bit miffed. “So listen, and be enlightened.”

“I am yours to command, highness, and ready for Enlightenment. But I’d have you know that my Stupidity and my Skepticism are two sides of the same coin, and are of a very particular kind, which is carefully thought out. John Locke was of the same mind, and set it down in words better than I ever could. To go into it here would be half an hour’s digression; suffice it to say, that as a result of being near men like Newton and Leibniz, men like Locke and I are all too keenly aware of the limits of our own intellects, and the dullness of our own senses. And not only of ours but of most other people’s, too. And as a result of studying Natural Philosophy we have got glimmerings of the immensity and complexity of the Universe that were not available to anyone until of late, and are known only to a few now. The imbalance between the grand mysteries of the Universe as opposed to our own feeble faculties, leads us to set very modest expectations as to what we shall and shan’t be able to understand-and makes us passing suspicious of anyone who propounds dogma or seems to phant’sy he has got it all figured out. Having said which I must concede that if anyone can figure it all out, it would be these two; and so I’ll listen, provided they confine their discussion to topics that are interesting.”

“And what would you denominate interesting, Doctor Waterhouse?” asked the Princess.

“The two labyrinths.”

Caroline and Leibniz both smiled; Newton looked stormy. “I do not know what this is meant to signify.”

“Doctor Leibniz mentioned to me long ago that there are two sorts of intellectual labyrinths into which all thinking people are sooner or later drawn,” said Caroline. “One is the composition of the continuum, which is to say, what is matter made of, what’s the nature of space, et cetera. The other is the problem of free will: Do we have a choice in what we do? Which is like saying, do we have souls?”

“I’ll agree with Baron von Leibniz at least to this point: these are interesting questions, and so many spend so much time thinking on them that the similitude of a labyrinth is well taken.”

Daniel reminded them, “The Princess has requested that this discussion be productive of a better System of the World. I put it to you that the latter question-free will, and the spirit-is, as far as that goes, the more important. Myself, I am comfortable with the notion that we are Machines made of Meat, that there’s no more free will in us than there is in a cuckoo-clock, and that the spirit, soul, or whatever you want to call it, is a f?ry-tale. Many who study Natural Philosophy will arrive at the same conclusion, unless the two of you find a way of convincing them otherwise. Her royal highness seems to be of the view that such beliefs, if they should be imbued into the new System that her House is erecting, shall lead to the realization of her nightmare. So, if I am to be Simplicio in this dialogue, pray explain how it is that there may be such a thing as free will, and a spirit that may do as it pleases, unbound by the Mathematick laws of our Mechanical Philosophy.”

“Well, if you put it that way, it’s an old problem,” said Leibniz. “Descartes saw straight away that Mechanical Philosophy might spell trouble for free will, in that it led to a new sort of predestinationism-not rooted in theology, like that of the Calvinists, but rather growing out of the simple fact that matter obeys predictable laws.”

“Yes,” said Daniel, “and then he got it all wrong, by putting the soul in the pineal gland.”

“I’d rather say he got it wrong before then, by dividing the universe into matter, and cogitation,” Leibniz said.

“And I’d say he got it wrong even before then, by supposing that there was a problem,” said Newton. “There’s nothing wrong in recognizing that part of the universe is a passive mechanism, and part of it is active and thinking. But Monsieur Descartes, seeing what was done to Galileo by the Papists, was in such terror of the Inquisition that his resolve failed.”

“Very well, in any case we agree that Descartes perceived a problem, and came up with a wrong answer,” said Daniel. “Does either of you have a better one to offer up? Sir Isaac, it sounds as if you deny the very existence of any such problem.”

“You may read Principia Mathematica without finding discourse of souls, spirits, cogitation, or what-have-you,” said Isaac. “It is about planets, forces, gravity, and geometry. I do not address, and certainly do not pretend to solve, the riddles that so confounded Monsieur Descartes. Why should we attempt to frame hypotheses about such matters?”

“Because if you do not, Sir Isaac, others, of less brilliance, will; and they will frame the wrong ones,” Caroline said.

Newton bristled. “My work on gravity and opticks has brought me a kind of fame, which is a thing I never sought, nor wanted. It has done me nothing good, and much bad-as now, when I am expected to utter profundities on topics far afield from what I have chosen to study.”

“So says the public Sir Isaac Newton,” said Daniel, “Author of Principia Mathematica, and Master of the Mint. But this is a private gathering, which might benefit from the participation of the private Sir Isaac: the author of the Praxis.”

“Praxis has not been published,” Isaac pointed out, “and not because I have deemed it somehow private but because ’tis yet unfinished, and so not fit to talk of.”

“What is Praxis?” Caroline inquired.

“What Principia Mathematica was to Mechanical Philosophy, Praxis would be to Alchemy,” said Isaac.

“A laconic answer! May we hear more?”

“If I may say so, highness,” said Daniel, “Sir Isaac learned early that anything he openly professed was liable to come under attack, to his great aggravation and embarrassment, and so became chary of professing anything until he had got it perfect, and made it impervious. Praxis is not ready yet.”

“Then it seems I shall not have any satisfaction whatsoever!” said Caroline, a bit poutingly.

“Which is entirely my fault, for having mentioned Praxis,” Daniel hastened to say. “But I had a reason for doing it, which was to say that, though the public Sir Isaac might profess not to see the problem that so captured the attention of Descartes, I believe that the private Sir Isaac has been working on just that problem.”

“As I state quite plainly in Principia Mathematica,” said Isaac, in a bit of a high clarion self-righteous tone, “it is not my intention, in that work, to consider the causes and seats of Force. That gravity exists, and acts at a distance, is taken as a given. Why and how it does so are not considered. I would not be human if I did not have some curiosity as to what gravity was, and how it works; and even if ’twere otherwise, Baron von Leibniz and his Continental supporters would never allow me a moment’s peace on the matter. So, yes! I would understand Force. I have toiled at it. The ignorant have styled my toils Alchemy.”

At this Daniel threw him an irritated look, which Isaac, to his credit, did not fail to notice. “C’est juste!” Isaac said. “It’s not wrong to call this work Alchemy, but that word, so laden with the baggage of centuries, doesn’t do justice to it.”

“May I ask a question about your research in this area-however you choose to denote it?” Leibniz asked.

“Provided it contains no hidden barbs or spryngs,” Isaac allowed.

Leibniz now achieved the difficult feat of rolling his eyes, heaving a great sigh of exasperation, and voicing his question all at the same time. “If I understand what ‘force’ means, in your metaphysicks-”

“Which is the only coherent definition of ‘force’ that I know of!” Newton slipped in, glancing at the Princess.

Leibniz, with some visible straining, affected a saintly mien during this. “It appears to mean some invisible influence, acting across what you think of as the vacuum of space at infinite speed, which causes objects to accelerate-even though nothing seems to be touching them.”

“Setting aside your strangely hedged and qualified way of talking about ‘vacuum’ and ‘space,’ that is a reasonable description of gravitational force,” Newton allowed.

“Now in your metaphysicks-which I concede happens to be that used by just about everyone-there is this thing called space, which is mostly empty, but has lumpy bits here and there, called bodies; some big heavy spherical ones which we call planets, but also any amount of clutter, such as this poker, yonder candelabrum, the rug, and these bipedal animated bodies answering to the names Daniel Waterhouse, Princess Wilhelmina Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, et cetera?”

“That much is so obvious that some of us are amazed to hear a learned man waste breath pointing it out,” said Newton.

“Some of those bodies answer only to the deterministic laws of the mechanical philosophy,” said Leibniz, “such as the globe, which rolled into the fireplace because her royal highness gave it a shove. But the bodies denominated Daniel Waterhouse, et cetera, are somehow different. True, they are subject to the same forces as the globe-our friend Daniel plainly feels Gravity’s pull, or else he would float away! But such bodies act in complicated ways not explainable by the laws set forth in your Principia Mathematica. When Dr. Waterhouse sits down to write an essay, let us say about the Latitudinarian philosophy espoused by him and the late Mr. Locke, we may observe his quill maneuvering all over the page in the most complicated paths imaginable. Here are none of the conic sections of the Principia! No equation can predict the trajectory of Daniel’s nib over the page, for it results from innumerable and unfathomable minute contractions of the small muscles of his fingers and his hand. If we dissect a man’s hand, we find that these muscles are governed by nerves, which may easily enough be traced back to the brain, as rivers come from springs in the mountains. Remove the brain, or sever its connexions to the hand, and lo, that limb becomes as simple as yonder globe; that is, we may predict its future movements from the Principia, and plot them in Conics. And so it is evident that, to the Force of Gravity-which acts on everything-are superadded other forces, observable only in animals,* and productive of infinitely more complicated and interesting movements.”

“I am with you so far,” said Newton, “if all you are saying is that forces other than Gravity act on Dr. Waterhouse’s pen when he is writing something, and that such forces do not appear to motivate rocks or comets.”

“Hooke was fascinated by muscles,” Daniel put in, “and looked at them under his microscope, and labored at making artificial ones, so that he could fly. Those, I predict, could have been described by Mechanical Philosophy; after all, they were naught more than practical applications of the Rarefying Engine, and as such, subject to Boyle’s Law. With more time and better microscopes, Hooke might have found, within muscles, tiny mechanisms, likewise describable by mathematical laws, and thereby put to rest any supposed mysteries-”

But he stopped as both Newton and Leibniz were making the same sort of hand-waving gestures employed to bat away farts. “You miss the point!” said Leibniz. “I have no interest in the physics of muscles! Think, sir, if Hooke had made his flying-machine, driven, in a deterministic fashion, by Rarefying Engines, what more then would he have had to add to this device, to make it flutter to a safe perch atop the cupola of Bedlam, and balance there as ’twas buffeted by divers wind-gusts, and take flight again without o’ersetting and tumbling to the ground like a shot squab? I am trying to draw our attention to what it is that comes down those nerves from the brain: the decisions, or rather, the physical manifestations thereof-the characters, as it were, in which they are writ-and transmitted to the muscles, that they may inform what would otherwise be without form and void.”

“I understand that,” said Daniel, “and I say it is all pistons and cylinders, weights and springs, to the very top. And that’s all I need to explain how I inform ink on a page, and how a bird informs the air with its wings.”

“And I agree with you!” said Leibniz.

This produced a dumbfounded pause. “Have I converted you to the doctrine of Materialism so easily, then?” Daniel inquired.

“By no means,” said Leibniz. “I say only that, though the machine of the body obeys deterministic laws, it does so in accordance with the desires and dictates of the soul, because of the pre-established harmony.”

“Of that, we must needs hear more, for it is very difficult to understand,” said the Princess.

“Chiefly because it is wrong!” said Sir Isaac.

Caroline now had to literally step between the two philosophers. “Then we are all in agreement that further discourse concerning the pre-established harmony is wanted from Baron von Leibniz,” she said. “But first, I would fain hear Sir Isaac address the ph?nomena of which Drs. Waterhouse and Leibniz have just been discoursing. Sir Isaac, we have heard from both of these gentlemen that they are wholly satisfied it is all mechanism to the very top. What of you? Do you require something more?”

Newton said, “If we allow, not only the muscles, but the nerves, and even the brain itself, to be ‘pistons and cylinders, weights and springs’ as you put it, whose machinations might be observed and described by some future Hooke, then we must still explain how those mechanisms are informed by the soul, spirit, or whatever we are going to call it-the thing that has free will, that is not subject to deterministic laws, and that accounts for our being human. This is ultimately the same problem as we discoursed of earlier-the problem you find boring, Daniel-of God’s relationship to the Universe. For the relationship that our souls bear to our bodies, is akin to the relationship that God bears to the entire Universe. If God is to be something more than an Absentee Landlord-something more than the perfect watch-maker, who sets His clock a-run, and walks away from it-then we must account for how He influences the movements of things in the world. This gets us round to that mysterious ph?nomenon called Force. And when we discourse of animal motion we must in the end address a like problem, namely of how the soul that inhabits a body may influence the operation of what is in the end just a big soggy clock.”

“I could not disagree more, by the way,” said Leibniz. “The soul and body influence each other not at all.”

“Then how does my soul know that yonder candle is flickering?” asked Princess Caroline. “For I can only know such a thing through my eyes, which are parts of my body.”

“Because God has put into your soul a principle representative of the candle-flame and everything else in the Universe,” said Leibniz. “But that is most certainly not how God perceives things! He perceives all things, because He continually produces them. And so I reject any such analogies likening God’s relationship to the Universe and ours to our bodies.”

“I do not understand Baron von Leibniz’s hypothesis at all,” Isaac confessed.

“What is your hypothesis, Sir Isaac?”

“That most of the animal body is a determined machine, I’ll grant. That it is controlled from the brain, has been proved, by Willis and others. It follows, simply, that, by laws of God’s choosing, the soul has the power to operate upon the brain, and thereby to influence animal movements.”

“This is just Descartes and the pineal gland all over again!” Leibniz scoffed.

“He was wrong about the pineal gland,” Newton said, “but I’ll grant a certain formal resemblance between his way of thinking about it, and mine.”

“In each case,” Daniel translated, “there is some sense in which a free, non-corporeal, non-mechanical spirit can effect physical changes in the workings of the machinery of the brain.”

“I think that much is obvious; as is the fact that God-Who is likewise a non-corporeal Spirit-has power to effect physical changes-that is, to exert Force-upon any thing whatsoever in this Universe.”

“And is it the case that when you study the causes and seats of Force in your Praxis work, you seek to understand Forces of that type as well?”

“I do not think that any account of Force that failed to address this topic could be deemed complete.”

“When Sir Isaac was working on the Principia,” said Daniel, “I paid him a visit up at Trinity. He had requested what seemed to me to be an odd lot of information: tables of the tides, data on a certain comet, astronomical observations of Jupiter and Saturn. Well, it was a long ride, and by the time I had reached Cambridge I’d managed to work out that there was a common thread running through all of these: gravity. Gravity causes the tides and determines the orbits of comets and planets alike. To us it is obvious now; but back then it was by no means agreed that a comet, let us say, might be bound by the same force that kept the Earth in its gyre. Isaac’s triumph was to perceive that all of these ph?nomena were attributable to the same cause, working everywhere in the same way. Now, I have long been nonplussed by Isaac’s Alchemical research, but as years have gone by I have perceived that he would achieve a similar triumph by finding a single common underlying explanation for ph?nomena that we think of as diverse, and unrelated: free will, God’s presence in the Universe, miracles, and the transmutation of chymical elements. Couched in the willfully obscure jargon of the Alchemists, this cause, or principle, or whatever one wants to call it, is known as the Philosopher’s Stone, or other terms such as the Philosophic Mercury, the Vital Agent, the Latent or Subtile Spirit, the Secret Fire, the Material Soul of Matter, the Invisible Inhabitant, the Body of Light, the Seed, the Seminal Virtue.”

“You are confusing a number of different ideas,” said Isaac, “but this does at least prove that you perused my notes before burning them.”

At this Caroline was taken aback for a moment; then curiosity got the better of her. “What is this Agent or Spirit? Have you seen it, Sir Isaac?”

“I see it now, in the emotions and thoughts flickering across your face, highness. I see its effect everywhere,” was the somewhat evasive response of Newton. “In Nature I perceive two categories of actions: mechanical and vegetable. By mechanical I mean, of course, just the sort of thing that Drs. Waterhouse and Leibniz discoursed of earlier: in a word, clock-work. By vegetable I do not mean turnips. That is a new and vulgar meaning of the word. I use it in its ancient sense of something animate, living, growing. It describes generative and creative processes. Clocks, even good ones, run down and wear out. The mechanical world decays. Counterpoised against this tendency to decline must be some creative principle: the active seed-the Subtile Spirit. An unimaginably tiny quantity of this, acting upon a vastly larger bulk of insipid, dead, inactive matter, wreaks immense, even miraculous transformations, to which I give the general name vegetation. Just as the general principle of Gravity manifests itself in diverse specific ways, such as tides, the orbits of comets, and the trajectories of bullets, so the vegetative principle may be perceived, by those who know how to look for it, in diverse places. Just to mention one example, which we discoursed of earlier: a flying-machine, constructed of artificial muscles, would be a mechanical device, whose fate, I believe, would be to crash to the ground, like the corpse of a bird that has died on the wing. If that machine were to take flight-which would mean sensing every fluctuation of the air, and responding in the correct way-I should ascribe that, ultimately, to the workings of some sort of vegetative principle. But Daniel is correct in thinking that it is also related to such matters as souls, miracles, and certain of the more profound and astonishing chymical transformations.”

“But do you think that there is ultimately some physical substance at work-something you could touch and observe?”

“Yes, I do, and have been searching for it. And I think I know where to find some,” Isaac said, and turned to glower at Daniel. But the Princess missed this, as she was turning to Leibniz. “Baron von Leibniz,” said she, “can your view be reconciled with Sir Isaac’s?”

Leibniz sighed. “It is…awkward,” he said. “To my ears, all of this sounds like a rear-guard action fought by a good Christian retreating before the onslaught of Mechanical Philosophy.”

“That could not be more wrong!” snapped Newton. “There is Mechanical, and there is Vegetable. I study both.”

“But you have already ceded half the battlefield to Mechanical!”

“There is no ceding, sir. Have you not read my Principia? The Mechanical world exists, the Mechanical philosophy describes it.”

“Dr. Waterhouse would say that Mechanism describes not just half, but all of it,” Leibniz said. “I take the opposite view, which is that Vegetable is all, and what we think of as mechanical is only the superficies of underlying processes that are not mechanical at all.”

“We await a coherent explanation,” said Isaac.

“Philosophers of a Mechanick frame of mind break all things down into atoms, to which they ascribe properties that, to them, seem reasonable-which means Mechanical properties. Mass, extension, and the ability to collide with and stick to one another. Then from this they try to explain Gravity and Souls and Miracles. It leads them into difficulties. Instead, I break all things down into monads, to which I ascribe what some would call soul-like properties: they can perceive, thnk about their perceptions, decide, and act. From this it is no great difficulty to explain those things that are so troublesome, in a mechanical-minded Atomic philosophy-everything that you put under the rubric of Vegetation, including our own ability to think, decide, and act. However, it is difficult to explain the things that are, in an Atomic philosophy, idiotically simple and obvious. Such as space and time.”

“Space and Time! Two minor omissions that no one is likely to notice,” grumbled Newton.

“If I may say so, your own conception of Space is by no means as straightforward as it seems at first,” Leibniz said, very much in the style of one who was firing the opening salvo of another long argument. But before this could get going, the door of the room opened, and Johann von Hacklheber could be seen standing there, holding, in a very significant way, a Letter. Behind him Eliza was pacing back and forth with a fist balled up in front of her lips.

Princess Caroline stared into Johann’s eyes, and cocked her head. She did not say aloud I told you not to bother me, but it came through so distinctly that all heads turned back toward Johann, expecting from him an immediate apology. Instead he raised his eyebrows and stood his ground.

Caroline closed her eyes and sighed. Newton, Leibniz, and Waterhouse stepped back to clear her path out of the room. For they had all understood at the same moment that there was only one person who had this authority: Caroline’s father-in-law, the as-yet-uncrowned King of England.

“Dr. Waterhouse, pray accept the role of my knight-errant, and put this thing to rest,” she said, and swept out.

“Well! That’s a bit of a tall order,” Daniel reflected, after the door had been closed behind her.

“Not so,” said Newton, “if you’ll only release the Solomonic Gold.”

“That Jew who works for the Tsar,” said Daniel-not wishing to utter the name Solomon, for fear it would send Isaac into chiliastic transports-“has detected that the trial batch of plates were made of heavier-than-normal gold, and the decree has gone forth from the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg that all succeeding plates be made of the same stuff. If we disobey, punishment will ensue, in the Russian style. Were it not for this, I’d swop the gold without hesitation. For I believe it has no special properties whatsoever.”

“Then how do you explain your personal resurrection, at the hands of Enoch Root, in 1689?”

“Say what!?” asked Leibniz.

“Or,” said Isaac, “is that the one thing Hooke wrote, in all his life, that you’ll not believe?”

“Hooke’s account states that Enoch gave me some medicine, which helped.”

“Helped!? You have a marvelous gift for understatement, Daniel.”

“It could have been anything…or nothing. It has been known to occur that seemingly dead men will revive after a few minutes.”

“I hated Hooke,” Isaac admitted, “but even I will admit that he was the most acute observer who ever lived. Do you really expect me to believe that he, of all people, could not distinguish between a living patient and a dead?”

“I see that your mind is quite made up. What point is there in debating it?”

Both Newton and Leibniz laughed out loud.

“What is funny?” Daniel demanded.

“You have made us debate for hours!” Leibniz exclaimed. “Now that you are challenged on a troublesome question, you claim to see no point in it.”

“I need only a small sample, Daniel,” said Newton. “Do not forget that for many years I have sought evanescent traces of this in samples of gold that had been infinitely diluted and debased. My techniques are now highly developed. I do not need a brick of the stuff. Just an ounce, or less-a scrap.”

“I tell you that Peter’s assayer weighed every ounce of it. There are no ounces to spare. I could ask him for permission to take a small sample, but…”

“No,” said Isaac, “I do not think it would be wise for you to tip your hand.”

At this remark Daniel was suddenly conscious of the ring on his finger: the one that Solomon had given him, made of con-fused bits punched from the plates at Bridewell. A tingle ran up his arm to his scalp; but he froze there, and said nothing, and hoped that Isaac would not take note of his horripilation.

“Isaac,” said a voice. Daniel had to look up to verify that it was that of Leibniz: a bit shocking, only in that the German had addressed Newton by his Christian name, without the “Sir.”

“Gottfried,” said Newton, not to be gainsaid.

“Thirty-seven years ago I came incognito to these shores to propose an alliance between myself and you. It was about two years after I’d developed the calculus, only to realize I was only following in your footsteps. It had occurred to me that we might share other interests as well, and that by joining forces we might achieve more, sooner. Daniel had encouraged me in this.”

“I well remember the match, and the matchmaker,” said Isaac, “and his weakness for playing with matches.”

This witticism, because it was such a rare thing from Isaac, cut all the more deeply. Daniel’s right arm had begun to feel terribly heavy, as if the ring were weighing it down-or as if the strain of the day had caused him to suffer a stroke. He put the heavy hand in the pocket of his breeches, and hung his head.

“Then you remember as well as I that the match flared, only to fail,” said Gottfried. “Now I am back, certainly for the last time. Will you not reconsider, Isaac? Will you not obey your Princess-my Princess-and work with me, and lay a strong foundation beneath the System of the World?”

“I am and have been working on just that,” said Isaac. “Should I not ask you, Gottfried, if you would work with me? It might entail giving up on monads, by the way. Ah, I see by your look that you have no thought of doing so.”

“The answer then is no.”

“The answer is yes. But it is a question of timing, sir. It is not for you, or me, or our Princess, to dictate how long it shall take, and when it shall be accomplished! She would have it settled now-today! You are likewise in a great hurry. For you are an old man-we are all old men-and fearful of running out of time. But this is neither here nor there. Nature will reveal her secrets at times of her own choosing, and has no thought of our convenience. Principia Mathematica might never have come about had Nature not sent a spate of comets our way in the 1680s, and so arranged their trajectories that we could make telling observations. It might be ten years, a hundred, or a thousand before she sends us the clew that will enable us to solve the riddles we have been speaking of today. Though the Gold of Solomon might be might be just that clew-I don’t know until I can inspect some of it.”

Daniel smiled. “You are infinitely patient, it seems, save where the Solomonic Gold is concerned. It is amusing. Of the three of us, I’m the only one who is convinced he is really going to die soon-both of you, Isaac and Gottfried, are believers in life ?ternal. Why don’t you have the courage of your convictions, and agree to re-convene the discussion a few centuries from now, or whenever there are sufficient data to resolve these issues philosophically?”

Which was a little bit of a cheap trick-forcing their hands thus, by challenging the sincerity of their religious convictions. But Daniel was exhausted, and could see that the thing was doomed, and wanted only to wind it up.

“I accept!” said Leibniz. “It is a sort of duel-a philosophick duel, to be settled, not with weapons, but with ideas, at a time and on a field yet to be chosen. I accept.” And he held out his hand toward Isaac.

“Then I’ll look for you on that field, sir,” said Newton. “Though our philosophies are so different that I do not really expect both of us can possibly be there; for one of us must be wrong.” He shook Leibniz’s hand.

“Every duellist needs a second,” said Leibniz. “Perhaps Daniel shall act in that capacity for both of us.”

Daniel snorted. “Isaac may believe I was resurrected, but I did not think you would hold with such beliefs, Gottfried. No, if you require seconds, it now seems that there are any number of immortal personages who shall be willing to show up on the appointed date, and hold your coats: for you, Gottfried, there is Enoch Root, and for you, Isaac, that ancient Jew who works for the Tsar and calls himself Solomon.” And so he did not take his right hand from his pocket to shake hands with them, for the ring felt terribly heavy and obvious, and he had a sort of lurid phant’sy that Gottfried and Isaac would suddenly recognize it for what it was, and fall to scuffling over it.

“BRR, MY FATHER-IN-LAW is frightfully cross with me,” Caroline announced, “at least, if I have made sense of his letter correctly.” She had read through it three times as Johann and Eliza watched. Leicester House resounded with booming and dragging noises: the sound of Royal baggage being packed and positioned.

“So much time has passed, and so many things have occurred, since I claimed I was going away to that Schlo? to recover from June’s traumas, that I had quite forgotten that his majesty was expecting me back. But now he seems to have figured out where I am.”

“Probably some intelligence reached him after our little adventure on the Thames,” Johann suggested. His discourse had been clipped and gloomy, and he’d been supporting his head on his fingertips-or perhaps that was self-administered massage. To Caroline, being bawled out by the King of England and Elector of Hanover might have been a trivial family dust-up, but for him it was a different matter.

“Very well,” said Caroline, “it’s back to Hanover I go, then.”

“Right!” said Johann, and got up and strode out. If anyone had had the temerity to stop him and ask him why, he’d have said he was off to do something ever so practical and important. But as both Caroline and Eliza understood perfectly well, the fact of the matter was that he had become so agitated that he’d go mad if he spent any more time sitting and talking.

“Off to Hanover,” Caroline repeated, “only to return in a few weeks! It says here that his majesty intends to reach England late in September. Supposing that the Prince of Wales and I are to accompany him, that means that as soon as I reach Hanover I shall have to turn round and come right back.”

“Geographically, yes, you shall return to the same latitude and longitude,” said Eliza, after thinking about this one for a moment. “But you will no longer be incognito. And so socially you shall be coming to a city you have never before visited, and to a different life altogether.”

“I suppose that shall be quite true, as long as we dwell in places like St. James’s Palace, with all the courtiers and the ambassadors, and the Duke of Marlborough right next door,” said Caroline. “But if there’s one thing I learned from Sophie, it’s that there are very practical reasons for a Princess to have more than one Palace. For her, the Leine Schlo? served as St. James’s shall for me and George Augustus. But at every chance she got, she removed herself to Herrenhausen, where she could live as she pleased, and walk in the garden. That’s why I have been so keen on this place. It’s going to be my Herrenhausen,” Caroline announced, “and you are going to be its doyenne.”

“Thank God,” said Eliza, “I was afraid you were about to say, ‘dowager.’ ”

“Lady of the Bedchamber or Mistress of the Stole or something,” Caroline said, a bit absently. “We shall have to choose the right English title for you. Whatever you’re called, the point is that I’d like you to live here, at least part of the time, and walk in the garden with me, and talk to me.”

“That doesn’t sound too onerous,” said Eliza with a smile. “But know that any place where I live is liable to have a flux of odd persons running through it, connected with the work that I pursue on the abolition of Slavery, and so on.”

“So much the better! It’ll remind me that much more of the Charlottenburg back when Sophie Charlotte was still alive.”

“Some of my lot may be odder and rougher yet…”

“You have a faraway look in your eye when you say that…are you thinking of your long-lost beau?”

At this Eliza sighed and threw Caroline a mean look.

“I have not forgotten our fascinating chat in Hanover,” Caroline said.

“Let’s speak of a different fascinating chat!” said Eliza. “What tidings from the Library?”

“When I left, they were still having at each other. They are both very proud men. Newton, especially, is not of a mind to back down. The court is coming here, and leaving poor Leibniz behind in Hanover. Advantage Newton. Newton has won the calculus dispute, or so it is believed by the savants of the Royal Society. And the recent controversies surrounding the Mint have cleared up, or so it would seem.”

“Is that what he told you? Now that would be some kind of a miracle, if true,” Eliza said.

“Why do you say so?”

“Is it not the case that the Pyx is still under the control of Charles White? And is Newton not still answerable to a Trial of the Pyx?”

“That is what they tell me,” said Caroline, “but Newton seems to believe he has now got the upper hand where that is concerned, by arresting the arch-villain known as Jack the Coiner. The fiend is now utterly in Sir Isaac’s power, and doomed to be half-hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn Cross…Johann? Johann! Bring the smelling salts, the Duchess has got the vapors!”

Johann banged into the room only a few moments later, but by then his mother had got her color back, and prevented a slide to the floor by getting a white-knuckled grip on the arms of her chair. “It is nothing,” she said, swiveling her eyes at her first-born. “Carry on, please, as you were.”

Johann departed, seething and quizzical.

“It is just a sort of catalepsis that comes over me sometimes, when suddenly I have got rather a lot to think about all at once. Shortly it passes. I am fine. Thank you for your expression of concern, highness. Moving on-”

“We shall not move on!” announced the Princess of Wales. “We shall stick right here, on this, the most fascinating topic of conversation in the history of the world! You are in love with the most infamous Black-guard ever!”

“Stop that! It’s not like that at all,” said Eliza. “He happens to be in love with me, that is all.”

“Oh, well, that’s different altogether.”

“There is no call for sarcasm.”

“How did you meet? I love to hear stories of how true lovers met.”

“We are not true lovers,” said Eliza, “and as to how we met-well-it’s none of your business.”

Another door whacked open and in came Leibniz. He bowed to the ladies, looking very solemn. “I take it that a departure for Hanover is planned, and soon,” he said. “If your royal highness will have me, I will accompany you.” He turned toward Eliza. “My lady. The friendship that began in Leipzig thirty years ago, when our paths crossed at the Fair, and I shared a little adventure with you and your Vagabond beau-”

“Aha!” shouted Caroline.

“Draws now to a close. The Princess’s noble and splendid attempt to effect a philosophical reconciliation-so ably and patiently assisted by Dr. Waterhouse-has, I am sorry to say-”

“Failed?” said Caroline.

“Adjourned,” Leibniz said.

“For how long?”

“Hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.”

“Hmm,” said Caroline, “that will be of little practical utility to the House of Hanover, when it comes time to select a new Privy Council.”

“I am sorry,” said Leibniz, “but there is no rushing certain things. While other matters, such as my departure from London, happen entirely too soon.”

“Where are Sir Isaac, and Dr. Waterhouse?” the Princess inquired.

“Sir Isaac has taken his leave, and forwards apologies for not having said good-bye in person,” said Leibniz, “but one gets the idea he had terribly important things to do. Dr. Waterhouse said he would await you in the garden, just in case you might be of a mind to behead him for failing in his mission.”

“By no means! I shall go and thank him for his good offices-and I’ll see you on the boat tomorrow!” said Caroline, and swept out of the place.

“Eliza,” said the savant.

“Gottfried,” said the Duchess.