The Confusion

THE DOCTOR HAD CAUSED a large shed to be scabbed onto the outer wall of the stable and filled with the books and papers most important to him. In one corner stood a black stove having the general size and shape of the biblical Tower of Babel. When they arrived it was merely warm, but Leibniz wrenched open several doors, rammed home half a cord or so of wood, and clanged them to. Within seconds, ears began to pop as the mickle Appliance sucked the air from the room. The iron tower began to emit an ominous rumbling and whooshing noise, and Leibniz and Fatio spent the rest of the conversation nervously edging away from it, trying to find the radius where (to paraphrase Fatio) being burnt alive was no more likely than freezing to death. This zone proved surprisingly narrow. As Leibniz fussed with the stove, which had taken up a kind of eerie keening, Fatio stepped back a pace, and let his eye fall on a sheet of paper-the topmost of several that were sticking out of a book. A few lines of printing were visible at the top of the page, written in Leibniz’s hand:

DOCTOR

THE RECENT EVENTS IN THE BALLROOM OF THE HOTEL ARCACHON WERE OF SUCH A DRAMATICK NATURE THAT I CANNOT BUT THINK YOU HAVE ALREADY HAD ACCOUNTS OF THEM FROM DIVERSE SOURCES HOWEVER MY VERSION FOLLOWS…

Beyond that point all was swallowed up between the pages of the enclosing book, which was expensively bound in red leather, ornately gilded with both Roman and Chinese characters.

“Any possibility of tea?” Fatio inquired, spying a kettle that had been left on one of the steps of the flaming ziggurat. Shielding his face in the crook of one arm, Leibniz ventured closer, seized a poker, and lunged like a fencing-master at the kettle to see whether it contained any water. Meanwhile Fatio peeled back the topmost sheet to reveal a letter written on different paper, in a different hand: Eliza’s!

To G. W. Leibniz from Eliza, the Marrying Maiden

Doctor,

You will want to know everything about the dress I was married in. The stomacher is made of Turkish watered silk decorated with several thousand of the tiny pearls that come from Bandar-Kongo on the Persian Gulf…

Leibniz had been rummaging in a drawer. He pulled up a black slab about the size of a folio book, impressed with a single huge Chinese character, and snapped off a corner. “Caravan tea,” he explained. “Unlike your English and Dutch tea, which comes loose off of ships, this stuff was brought overland, via Russia-it is a million dried leaves pressed together into a brick.”

Fatio did not seem to be as fascinated by this as Leibniz had hoped. Leibniz tried another gambit: “Huygens wrote to me recently, and mentioned you had come over from London.”

“Monsieur Newton and I devoted the month of March to reading Mr. Huygens’s Treatise on Light and were so taken with it that we agreed to divide forces for the year-I have been studying with Huygens-”

“And Newton toils at his Alchemy.”

“Alchemy, theology, philosophy-call it what you will,” Fatio said coolly, “he is close to an achievement that will dwarf the Principia.”

“I don’t suppose it has anything to do with gold?” asked Leibniz.

Fatio-generally so birdlike-quick in his answers-allowed some moments to pass. “Your question is a bit vague. Gold is important to Alchemists,” he allowed, “as comets are to astronomers. But there are some, of a vulgar turn of mind, who suppose that Alchemists are interested in gold only in the same sense as bankers are.”

“C’est juste. Though there is a troublesome banker, not far from here, who seems to value it in both the monetary and the Alchemical sense.” Leibniz, who until this point in the conversation had been the embodiment of good cheer, deflated as he was saying these words, as if he had been reminded of something very grave, and his eye strayed over to the outlandish red-leather book. This topic had had the same effect on his spirits as a handful of earth tossed into a fire. Again, Fatio allowed some moments to pass before he responded; for he was studying Leibniz carefully.

“I think I know who you mean,” Fatio said finally.

“It is most curious,” Leibniz said. “Perhaps you have heard some of the same stories concerning this as I have. The entire controversy, as I understand it, revolves around a belief that there is a particular sample of gold, whose precise whereabouts are unknown, but that possesses some properties that make it more valuable, to Alchemists, than ordinary gold. I would expect a banker to know better!”

“Do not make the error of believing that all gold is the same, Doctor.”

“I thought Natural Philosophy had proved at least that much.”

“Why, some would say it has proved the opposite!”

“Perhaps you have read something new in London or Paris that I have not seen yet?”

“Actually, Doctor, I was thinking of Isaac’s Principia.”

“I have read it,” Leibniz said drily, “and do not recollect seeing anything about gold.”