An Elegant Solution(122)

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Master Desiderius!” I gasped.

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

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

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

“Both of us,” Staehelin said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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