HE COULD NOT GET ANexplanation until hours later, when they had put Leipzig’s north gate a few miles behind them, and stopped at an inn on the road to Halle. By this time Eliza had been thoroughly saturated with the Doctor’s view of events as well as his gloomy and resentful mood. She stayed in the Ladies’ Bedchamber, he stayed in the Men’s, they met in the Common-Room. “He was born in Leipzig-educated himself in Leipzig-went to school in Leipzig-“

“Why’d he go to school if he educated himself? Which is it?”

“Both. His father was a professor who died when he was very young-so he taught himself Latin at the same age when you were hanging from dead men’s legs.”

“That’s funny-you know, I tried to teach myself Latin, but what with the Black Death, the Fire, et cetera…”

“In lieu of having a father, he read his father’s library- thenwent to school. And you saw for yourself how they treated him.”

“Perhaps they had an excellent reason,” Jack said-he was bored, and getting Eliza steamed up would be as good an entertainment as any.

“There is no reason for you to be gnawing at the Doctor’s ankles,” Eliza said. “He is one of that sort of man who forms very profound friendships with members of the gentler sex.”

“I saw what sort of friendship he had with you when he was pointing out your gentle bosom to Lothar von Hacklheber,” Jack returned.

“There was probably a reason-the Doctor is a tapestry of many threads.”

“Which thread brought him to the Book-Fair?”

“For some years he and Sophie have been trying to persuade the Emperor in Vienna to establish a grand library and academy for the entire Empire.”

“Who is Sophie?”

“Another one of the Doctor’s woman friends.”

“What fair did he pick her up at?”

Eliza arched her eyebrows, leaned forward, and spoke in a whisper that could etch glass: “Don’t speak of her that way-Sophie is none other than the daughter of the Winter Queen herself. She is the Duchess of Hanover!”

“Jeezus. How’d a man like the Doctor end up in such company?”

“Sophie inherited the Doctor when her brother-in-law died.”

“What do you mean by that? Is he a slave?”

“He is a librarian. Sophie’s brother-in-law hired him in that capacity, and when he died, Sophie inherited the library, and the Doctor along with it.”

“But that’s not good enough-the Doctor has ambitions-he wants to be the Emperor’s librarian?”

“As it is now, a savant in Leipzig may never become aware of a book that’s been published in Mainz, and so the world of letters is fragmented and incoherent-not like in England, where all the savants know each other and belong to the same Society.”

“What!? A Doctor here wants to make things more like England?”

“The Doctor proposed to the Emperor that a new decree be drawn up, ordering that all booksellers at the Leipzig and Frankfurt fairs must write up a description of every book they publish, and send these, along with copies of each book, to-”

“Let me guess-to the Doctor?”

“Yes. And then he would make them all part of some vast, hard-to-understand thing he wants to build-he couldn’t restrain himself from breaking into Latin here, so I don’t know exactly-part library, part academy, part machine.”

“Machine?” Jack was imagining a mill-wheel assembled from books.

But they were interrupted by ribald, helpless, snorting laughter from the corner of the Common-Room, where the Doctor himself was sitting on a stool, reading (as they saw when they came over and joined him) one of the hurled books that had lodged in the baggage-cart. As usual their progress across the room, or to be specific Eliza’s, was carefully tracked by lonely merchants whose eyeballs were practically growing out of their heads on stalks. Jack had at first been surprised, and was now growingly annoyed, that other men were capable of noticing Eliza’s beauty-he suspected that they did so in some base way altogether different from how he did it.

“I love reading novels,” the Doctor exclaimed. “You can understand them without thinking too much.”

“But I thought you were a philosopher,” Eliza said, apparently having waxed close enough to him now that she could get away with teasing and pouting maneuvers.

“But when philosophizing, one’s mind follows its natural inclination-gaining profit along with pleasure-whereas following another philosopher’s meditations is like stumbling through a mine dug by others-hard work in a cold dark place, and painful if you want to zig where they decided to zag. But this-” holding up the book “-you can read without stopping.”

“What’s the story about?”

“Oh, all these novels are the same-they are about picaroons-that means a sort of rogue or scoundrel-could be male or female-they move about from city to city like Vagabonds (than whom, however, they are much more clever and resourceful)-getting into hilarious scrapes and making fools-or trying to-out of Dukes, Bishops, Generals, and

“… Doctors.”

Lengthy silence, then, followed by Jack saying, “Errr… is this the chapter where I’m supposed to draw my weapon?”

“Oh, stop!” the Doctor said. “I didn’t bring you all this way to have an imbroglio. ”

“Why, then?” Jack asked-quickly, as Eliza was still so red-faced he didn’t think it would be clever or resourceful to give her a chance to speak.

“For the same reason that Eliza sacrified some of your silk to make some dresses, and thereby fetched a higher price. I need to draw some attention to the mine project-make it seem exciting-fashionable even-so that people will at least think about investing.”

“I’m guessing, then,” Jack said, “that my role will be to hide behind a large piece of furniture and not emerge until all rich fashionable persons have departed?”

“I gratefully accept your proposal,” the Doctor said. “Meanwhile, Eliza-well-have you ever seen how mountebanks ply their trade in Paris? No matter what they are selling, they always have an accomplice in the crowd, attired like the intended victims-”

“That means, like an ignorant peasant,” Jack informed Eliza. “And at first this accomplice seems to be the most skeptical person in the whole crowd-asking difficult questions and mocking the entire proceedings-but as it continues he is conspicuously won over, and gladly makes the first purchase of whatever the mountebank is selling-”

“Kuxen, in this case?” Eliza said.

The Doctor: “Yes-and in this case the audience will be made up of Hacklhebers, wealthy merchants of Mainz, Lyons bankers, Amsterdam money-market speculators-in sum, wealthy and fashionable persons from all over Christendom.”

Jack made a mental note to find out what a money-market speculator was. Looking at Eliza, he found her looking right back at him, and reckoned that she was thinking the same thing. Then the Doctor distracted her with: “In order to blend in with that crowd, Eliza, we shall only have to find some way to make you seem half as intelligent as you really are, and to dim your natural radiance so that they’ll not be blinded by awe or jealousy.”

“Oh, Doctor,” Eliza said, “why is it that men who desire women can never speak such words?”

“You’ve only been in the presence of men who are in the presence of you, Eliza,” Jack said, “and how can they pronounce fine words when the heads of their yards are lodged in their mouths?”

The Doctor laughed, much as he’d been doing earlier.

“What’s your excuse, Jack?” Eliza responded, eliciting some sort of violent thoracic Incident in the Doctor.

Tears of joy came to Jack’s eyes. “Thank God women have no way to rid themselves of the yellow bile,” he said.

At this same inn they joined up with a train of small but masty ore-wagons carrying goods that the Doctor had acquired at Leipzig and sent on ahead to wait for them. Some of these were laden with saltpeter from India, others with brimstone from the Ore Range.*The others-though laden only with a few small crates-sagged and screeched like infidels on the Rack. Peering between the boards of same, Jack could see that they contained small earthenware flasks packed in straw. He asked a teamster what was in them: “ Quecksilber” was the answer.