“Now I think I understand,” Eliza said. “It remains only to apply this principle to me, I suppose.”

“If I come down in the morning to find you copulating on my table with a foreign deserter, as if you were some sort of Vagabond,” Huygens said, “I am annoyed. I admit it. But that is not as important as what you do next. If you posture defiantly, it tells me that you have not learned the skill of recognizing when you are running awry, and correcting yourself. And you must leave my house in that case, for such people only go further and further astray until they find destruction. But if you take this opportunity to consider where you have gone wrong, and to adjust your course, it tells me that you shall do well enough in the end.”

“It is good counsel and I thank you for it,” Eliza said. “In principle. But in practice I do not know what to make of this Bob.”

“There is something that you must settle with him, or so it would appear to me,” Huygens said.

“There is something that I must settle with the world.”

“Then by all means apply yourself to it. Then you are welcome to stay. But from now on please go to your bedchamber if you want to roger someone.”

I find that men (as high as trees) will write Dialogue-wise; yet no man doth them slight For writing so; indeed if they abuse Truth, cursed be they, and the craft they use To that intent; but yet let truth be free To make her sallies upon thee, and me, Which way it pleases God.

–John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress

DANIEL WATERHOUSE, a Puritan.

SIR RICHARD APTHORP,a former Goldsmith, proprietor of Apthorp’s Bank.

ROGER COMSTOCK,Marquis of Ravenscar, a courtier.

JACK KETCH,chief Executioner of England.

EDMUND PALLING,an old man.

APTHORP’S MINIONS.

APTHORP’S HANGERS-ON AND FAVOR-SEEKERS.

JACK KETCH’S ASSISTANTS.

APTHORP:It couldn’t be-Dr. Daniel Waterhouse!

WATERHOUSE:Well met, Sir Richard!

APTHORP:Sitting in a chair, no less!

WATERHOUSE:The day is long, Sir Richard, my legs are tired.

APTHORP:It helps if you keep moving-which is the whole point of the ‘Change, by the by. This is the Temple of Mercury-not of Saturn!

WATERHOUSE:Did you think I was being Saturnine? Saturn is Cronos, the God of Time. For your truly Saturnine character you had better look to Mr. Hooke, world’s foremost clockmaker…

DUTCHMAN:Sir! Our Mr. Huygens taught your Mr. Hooke everything he knows!

WATERHOUSE:Different countries revere the same gods under different names. The Greeks had Cronos, the Romans Saturn. The Dutch have Huygens and we have Hooke.

APTHORP:If you are not Saturn, what are you, then, to bide in a chair, so gloomy and pensive, in the middle of the ‘Change?

WATERHOUSE:I am he who was born to be his family’s designated participant in the Apocalypse; who was named after the strangest book in the Bible; who rode Pestilence out of London and Fire into it. I escorted Drake Waterhouse and King Charles from this world, and I put Cromwell’s head back into its grave with these two hands.

APTHORP:My word! Sir!

WATERHOUSE:Of late I have been observed lurking round Whitehall, dressed in black, affrighting the courtiers.

APTHORP:What brings Lord Pluto to the Temple of Mercury?

JEW:By’re leave, by’re leave, Senor-pray-where stands the tablero?

APTHORP:He sees that you have a Chair, and hopes you know where is the Table.

WATERHOUSE:That would be mesa. Perhaps he means banca, desk…

APTHORP:Every other man in this ‘Change, who is seated upon a chair, is in front of such a banca. He wants to know where yours has got to!

WATERHOUSE:I meant that perhaps he is looking for the bank.

APTHORP:You mean, me?

WATERHOUSE:That is the new title you have given your goldsmith’s shop now, is it not? A bank?

APTHORP:Why, yes; but why doesn’t he just ask for me then?

WATERHOUSE:Senor! A moment, I beg you!

JEW:Like this, like this!

APTHORP:What is he holding up there, I do not have my spectacles.

WATERHOUSE:He has drawn what a Natural Philosopher would identify as a Cartesian coordinate plane, and what you would style a ledger, and scrawled words in one column, and numerals in the next.

APTHORP: Tablero-he means the board where the prices of something are billed. Commodities, most likely.

JEW:Commodities, yes!

WATERHOUSE:‘Sblood, it’s right over there in the corner, is the man blind?

APTHORP:Rabbi, do not take offense at my friend’s irritable tone, for he is the Lord of the Underworld, and known for his moods. Here in Mercury’s temple all is movement, flux-which is why we name it the ‘Change. Knowledge and intelligence flow like the running waters spoken of in the Psalms. But you have made the mistake of asking Pluto, the God of Secrets. Why is Pluto here? ’Tis something of a mystery-I myself was startled to see him just now, and supposed I was looking at a ghost.

WATERHOUSE:The tablero is over yonder.

JEW:That is all!?

APTHORP:You have come from Amsterdam?

JEW:Yes.

APTHORP:How many commodities are billed on the tablero in Amsterdam now?

JEW:This number…

APTHORP:Daniel, what has he written there?

WATERHOUSE:Five hundred and fifty.

APTHORP:God save England, the Dutchmen have a tablero with near six hundred commodities, and we’ve a plank with a few dozen.

WATERHOUSE:No wonder he did not recognize it.

Apthorp (to Minion):Follow that Kohan and learn what he is on about-he knows something.