An Elegant Solution(90)

But in the end they were convinced. “A new lion,” Daniel said at last.

“And what does it mean that there is?” Gottlieb said. “A new rival.”

“We could end him here!” Daniel said. “The four of us. And we’d have the proof for our own!”

“Father knows where it came from,” Nicolaus said.

“Cut him in on the spoils, then. We’ll publish under the whole family’s name. Or do away with the Brute, too! Then we’d have the Chair open, too.”

“Only one can have it,” Gottlieb said.

“Then watch your own throat.”

“Those are poor jokes,” I said, but I laughed. I felt light-headed from the long debate.

“He’s not joking,” Nicolaus said. “It’s Mathematics.”

I answered,“I don’t have fear of any of your family.”

Daniel said, “But on to other matters. There’s a propriety to answering a public challenge from the Paris Academy. It’s meant for men of reputation and position. You’ll need someone to write a letter for you.”

“I mean to ask your father.”

“And he’ll sneer, won’t he? That will be a lesson in derision. Even to you, dear Leonhard.”

“He won’t sneer at Leonhard,” Nicolaus said. “He’ll be civil. But he’ll still turn him down.”

“And if he doesn’t,” Daniel said, “Then that will be near as interesting as the proof itself.”

“What do you mean?” Gottleib asked him.

Daniel only shook his head. “Cheers to you, Leonhard. Remember this night, when the Reciprocal Square was solved and proven. We’ll leave the intrigues for tomorrow. This night is yours.”

I let it be. So we went on to talk of other things. I asked about Italy, where the three of them all had lived and had Chairs. The conversation was affable and the only jabs were good natured. Little Johann asked more questions than I did. We talked about other Universities without sarcasm or bitterness. If the night was mine, their gift to me for it was conviviality. We talked of Paris and Holland and Heidelberg. We talked of kings and princes, the courts of Prussia, Austria, France, Hanover, Saxony, and even England, and which would be more advantageous in which to gain a position, which would be more cultured, which would be more lucrative. Then we talked of Empires and Kingdoms, the present wars and recent wars and Basel’s place among them all. It was well that Louis the Sun King of France had died when he did, for Basel would have been his next cherry to pick.

Then at the end we parted, all close friends. The forces that pulled together were stronger than the forces that pushed apart.





12

THE PHYSICS ELECTION





On Monday, Daniel had said the University would convene on Wednesday. On Tuesday, everyone in Basel had heard. But the true Announcement was yet to come, and once Basel knew that the University would Convene, Basel knew that it would be Announced.

After the recent fearful days of the plague, the news was like fresh water. The announcing and convening of the University was a ritual as old as the University, and in austere Basel, where any feather of pageantry was suspect, only the academic and ancient in alliance justified a display. And as long as it was justified, the citizens would gladly spectate a spectacle.

It had been two years since the last convention, for the Election to Logic, and the elevation of Gottlieb and the departure of Daniel. I knew the ritual fairly well from watching it then. It was all pompous pomp on the outside, Basel’s gaudiest rite, as ritual as a coronation; as ponderous as a planet’s orbit, and as full of robes and regalia as a cathedral choir and dressmaker’s shop together. To Italians or French, it would seem just as black and white as everything else in a Protestant city. Yet color was measured by contrast, and in Basel, bright colors were kept in their proper place.

But there was what was seen, and there was what had substance. It was the invisible part of the convention that had the most meaning: the quiet conversations before the loud gathering, the two heads leaned close across a table in a dim room, the sparse written note then thrown in the fire. Daniel claimed that when finally the University sat to deliberate, its deliberations had already been done.

Master Johann was now the senior Chair of the college and had a critical role in the first meeting. What would happen in the conclave, and what had been agreed beforehand between the most influential members, would never be known outside.



The carriage returned that evening from Strasbourg and Freiburg. I was in the Barefoot Square at the time, just coming out from the Barefoot Church. All day the rumors and gossip had been pouring out the Inn and every other door about the coming Convention and Election. When the coach arrived, it seemed a part of the disturbance. It was surrounded by hounds, and wolves, and hunting dogs, and then I saw Jehu in the seat next to Abel. That King of Israel looked up to the windows of the Inn, and there, Jezebel looked down at him. He shook his fist at her and she jeered back at him, and all the dogs bayed and howled back at the face in the window.