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upon a trampoline, and he thought, with rapturous inconsequence: I shall live forever. The ratio of the outer to the inner circle was identical with that of the orbits of Saturn and Jupiter, the furthermost planets, and here, within these circles, determining that ratio, was inscribed an equilateral triangle, the fundamental figure in geometry. Put therefore between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars a square, between Mars and earth a pentagon, between earth and Venus a… Yes. Yes. The diagram, the easel, the very walls of the room dissolved to a shimmering liquid, and young Master Kepler's lucky pupils were treated to the rare and gratifying spectacle of a teacher swabbing tears from his eyes and trumpeting juicily into a dirty handkerchief.
     
    * * *
     
    At dusk he rode out of the forest of Schönbuch. The bright March day had turned to storm, and a tawny light was sinking in the valley. The Neckar glimmered, slate-blue and cold. He stopped on the brow of a hill and stood in the stirrups to breathe deep the brave tempestuous air. He remembered Swabia not like this, strange and fierce: was it he, perhaps, that had changed? He had new gloves, twenty florins in his purse, leave of absence from the Stiftsschule, this dappled grey mare lent him by his friend the district secretary of Styria, Stefan Speidel, and, safe in a satchel by his side, wrapped in oilskin, most precious of all, his manuscript. The book was done, he had come to Tübingen to publish it. Black rain was falling when he entered the narrow streets of the town, and lanterns flickered on the bastioned walls of Hohentubingen above him. After the annunciation of July, it had taken seven more months of labour, and the incorporation of a third dimension into his calculations, to round out his theory and complete the
Mysterium.
Night, storm, a solitary traveller, the muted magnificence of the world; a trickle of rain got under his collar, and his shoulder-blades quivered like nascent wings.
    Presently he was sitting in a bed, in a low brown room at The Boar, with a filthy blanket pulled to his chin, eating oatcakes and drinking mulled wine. Rain drummed on the roof. From the tavern below there rose a raucous singing-fine hearty people, the Swabians, and prodigious topers. Many a skinful of Rhenish he himself as a student had puked up on that rush-strewn floor down there. It surprised him, how happy he was to be back in his homeland. He was downing the dregs of the jug in a final toast to Mistress Fame, that large and jaunty goddess, when the potboy banged on the door and summoned him forth. Bleared and grinning, half drunk, and still with the blanket clutched about him, he struggled down the rickety stairs. The aleroom had the look of a ship's cabin, the drinkers swaying, candlelight swinging, and, beyond the streaming windows, the heaving of the oceanic night. Michael Mästlin, his friend and sometime teacher, rose from a table to meet him. They shook hands, and found themselves grappling with an unexpected shyness. Johannes without preamble said: "I have written my book." He frowned at the filthy table and the leathern cups: why did things not quake at his news?
    Professor Mästlin was eyeing the blanket. "Are you ill?"
    "What? No; cold, wet. I have lately arrived. You had my message? But of course, since you are here. Ha. Though my piles, forgive my mentioning it, are terrible, after that journey."
    "You don't mean to lodge here, surely?-no no, you shall stay with me. Come, lean on my arm, we must see to your bags."
    "I am not-"
    "Come now, I say. You are on fire, man, and your hands, look, they're shaking. "
    "I am not, I tell you, I am
not ill."
    The fever lasted for three days. He thought he might die. Supine on a couch in Mästlin's rooms he raved and prayed, plagued by visions of gaudy devastation and travail. His flesh oozed a noxious sweat: where did it come from, so much poison? Mästlin nursed him with a bachelor's unhandy tenderness, and on the fourth