Dr. Faust was a scholar, and that was important to the story. If a man didn’t have fame and wealth from birth, the University could be his path to those.
It was easy enough to find Basel’s wealthy men. Their houses were displays, in the subdued Basel manner. The family names of the magistrates and the council were very regular from year to year and century to century. These families had their wealth from trade and guilds, and some from land. None of this was irregular, or unique to Basel. For every Faulkner or Burckhardt in Basel, there was a Zimmerman in Zurich, a Hofburg in Frankfurt, and a Weil in Bremen. It was the University that gave Basel another class of great men.
This special parallel city was made of students as commoners; student graduates who studied toward higher degrees as the skilled tradesmen; lecturers and associate professors as wealthy younger sons; administrators and Deans and Provost as greater patricians; and at the highest level, above officials, equal with magistrates and bishops, were the Professors, the holders of Chairs. These were meant to be great men and masters in their fields. Among them were Physics, Law, Medicine, Theology, Logic, Greek, Latin, Anatomy, Rhetoric, and others. In Basel the greatest was Mathematics.
And as the University was a parallel city, Europe’s universities were a parallel continent, and they were its kingdoms and duchies. Heidelberg was a power, Paris was a kingdom, Bologna held its independence. In the realms of Mathematics, though, Basel was Hapsburgs and Bourbons and Romanovs all in one. In the parallel continent it was unparalleled, because Master Johann was its center.
The story of Faust could only be in a place where a man could become great through knowledge, a place such as Basel. In all the Faustbooks, the story always took place in a University.
I walked Walls that Friday evening. That was common in Basel, though more often to watch the sun’s mid-morning rise, not its setting. I walked the whole Wall of Large Basel. It was near three miles long and I didn’t run any of it. I started at Saint Alban’s Gate in the late afternoon. The first stretch was the two long sides of the angle that the Ash Gate pivots. That was almost a mile. There were guard towers every few hundred yards and ramps up from the streets at every gate and barbican.
The barbicans were wide and flat, just as high as the Wall itself, protruding from it in sharp triangles to give defenders a vantage over attackers at the Wall’s base. Basel had never been taken, and rarely attacked. That could be proof that there was no need for the Wall, or proof that there was every need for it. It was an odd logic, and I wondered what Gottlieb would say about it.
As I reached the far corner past the Ash Gate and turned toward the Stone Gate, the sun was full in front of me just ready to touch the horizon. The path on the Wall was wide, twelve feet across, but all I met was the Day Watch and I greeted each man I passed. I knew many of them. I stopped to talk a few times. Then they were standing down as the Night Watch took their places. What the Watch could do against plague, I didn’t know, or they either, but the Watch had been doubled.
Just past the Stone Gate was the stream of the Birsig Flow, pouring into the moat and into its canal to the city. I walked across the arch where it entered. There was a strong portcullis there, and barbican just after, because that would always be a weak place in a Wall.
Beyond the Walls were fields. Some were farms and some were only meadows. There were no cattle or sheep in them that night, but once a black horse came out into the open from some trees, and Daniel was its rider. He lit suddenly toward the gate, whipping his black, as if racing, yet with no other horse I could see. Then I did see a white horse, without a rider, nearly beside him. Then they were hidden behind the Wall. I turned and went on with my walk.
I saw Saint Leonhard’s church spire and clock, and the Barefoot Church further in. As I passed them, the sun was just half-set and the sky an inferno. When I came to the Columned Gate the sun was gone. The moat below still was glowing red, like a candle wick’s last spark. This was the city’s largest gate, on the road from Alsace.
Then was the final long walk to Saint John’s Gate, back to the river, and it was such a long and ever darker way that I only had the stars above and the points of light from the windows, and they both seemed as far away.
The Wall was complete and unbreached. I knew it for sure now.
As I stood at the gate, I saw another watcher was also on the Walls, confirming them.
“Good evening, sir,” I said. Magistrate Faulkner recognized me in the dark.
“It’s Leonhard? Yes, good evening.”
“These Walls seem so strong.”
“They are. Despite their age.”