The Confusion

“But he knows nothing of these!”

 

 

“But I do, Fatio.”

 

“What are you saying? I confess the Bible is easier to interpret than you, Isaac.”

 

“On the contrary, I feel that I am all too transparent, for Daniel, and God only knows how many others, have seen through me.”

 

“Not that many—yet,” Daniel said quietly.

 

“The nub of it is this: I have let my affection for you cloud my judgment,” Isaac said. “I have given much greater credit to your work, Nicolas, than I ever should have, and it has led me down a cul-de-sac and caused me to waste years, and ruin my health. Thank you, Daniel, for telling me this forthrightly. Mr. Locke, you have worked in a gentle way to bring about this epiphany, and I apologize for thinking poorly of you and accusing you of plotting against me. Nicolas, come to London and share lodgings with me and be my help-meet as I move forward in the Great Work.”

 

“I am not willing to be less than your equal partner.”

 

“But you cannot ever be my equal partner. Only Leibniz—”

 

“Then go and make love to Leibniz!” Fatio cried. He stood poised where he was for a few moments as if he could not believe he’d said it—waiting, Daniel thought, for Newton to retract everything he’d said. But Isaac Newton was long past being able to change his mind. Fatio was left with only one thing he could possibly do: He ran away.

 

Once Fatio had passed out of view, Daniel began to hear a distant moaning or wailing. He assumed that he was hearing Fatio crying out in grief. But it grew louder. He feared for a moment that Fatio might be coming back toward him with a weapon drawn.

 

“Daniel!” said Locke sharply.

 

Locke had gotten to his feet and was standing over Newton, blocking Daniel’s view. Locke had begun his career as a physician and seemed to have reverted to his old form now; with one hand he was throwing off the mass of blankets in which Newton had been wrapped up this whole while, with the other, he was reaching for Newton’s throat to check his pulse. Daniel rushed toward them, fearing that Isaac had suffered a stroke, or an apoplectic fit. But Newton knocked Locke’s hand away from his neck with a shout of “Murder! Murder!”

 

Locke took half a step back. Daniel drew up on Newton’s other side to find him flailing all of his limbs, like a man who was drowning in air. The violence of his movements seemed to levitate his whole body out of his chair for an instant. He fell hard onto the stone patio, yelped, and went stiff, his entire body trembling like a plucked twist of catgut. Daniel dropped to a knee and placed a hand on one of Newton’s bony shoulders. What meager flesh he had was hard and thrumming. Newton started away as if Daniel had touched him with a hot iron and rolled blindly against the chair leg, which caught him in the midsection. In a heartbeat he contracted into a f?tal position, wrapping his whole body round the leg of the chair like a toddler who grips his mother’s leg with his whole being because he does not want her to walk away. “Murder, murder!” he repeated, more quietly now, as if dreaming of it, though it might have been Mother, mother.

 

Locke spoke from between his hands, which he had clapped over his face like the covers of a book. “The greatest mentality of the world—demented. Oh, God have mercy.”

 

Daniel sat down crosslegged next to Isaac. “Mr. Locke, if you would be so good as to have one of the servants bring me a cup of coffee. I am going to do something I have not done in three decades: sit up all night worrying about Isaac Newton.”

 

“What you have done was necessary and in no way do I fault you for it,” Locke said, “but gravely I fear that he shall never be the same.”

 

“You are right. He will be merely the most successful Natural Philosopher in all of history. Which is a better thing to be than a false Messiah. It will take him years to get used to his new station in the world. By the time he is himself again, I’ll be out of his reach, in Boston, Massachusetts.”

 

 

 

 

 

Bonaventure Rossignol to Eliza

 

 

MARCH 1694

 

 

 

 

My lady,

 

 

 

I pray this intercepts you in Hamburg, but I worry that it shall never catch up with you. I am a mortal, earthbound, attempting to get a message to a Goddess who travels in a flying chariot.

 

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