Read Where Tigers Are at Home for Free Online Page A

dead than alive.
    Soaking wet, teeth chattering, he set off for the town of Neuss where there was a Jesuit college. After three hours of agony, he rang the bell of the college & collapsed in the porter’s arms. When he came to, he rejoiced to see his travelling companions, who had managed to cross the river at another place &, having assumed he had died, now wept tears of joy to see him safe & sound.
    After three days of well-deserved rest they were fit enough again to reach Cologne without a stop. It was in that city that Von Spee had been ordained & on his advice Athanasius decided to abandon his façade of humility: even though they might offend some people’s susceptibilities, his knowledge & skill at reasoning were too important to be concealed. In a few months Athanasius completed his degree in philosophy with distinction, all the while continuing to study physics, languages & mathematics on his own. Impressed by his exceptional abilities, his teachers decided to send him to the college at Ingolstadt in Bavaria to complete his studies of the humanities & to teachAncient Greek. In obedience to his superiors, Athanasius left Cologne toward the end of 1622, but he was sick at heart: he was leaving Friedrich von Spee behind & with him all the joy of his youth & of learning. They were never to see each other again.
    Kircher spent three years improving his knowledge in numerous disciplines. Under the direction of Christoph Schreiner, whose reputation is firmly established, he studied astronomy & mathematics without respite & was soon as outstanding in them as his master. He achieved the same in physiology, in alchemy & in many other subjects, at the same time deepening his knowledge of languages. At the age of twenty-three Kircher easily outshone all his colleagues, who agreed that he had a remarkable gift of memory in addition to an inventive mind & extraordinary mechanical skills.
    At that time Ingolstadt was under the jurisdiction of Johann Schweickhardt, Archbishop of Mainz and Elector of the Holy Roman Empire. Now it so happened that a delegation sent by His Grace was announced for the beginning of March. Such visits were not at all frequent and the town received the visitors with great pomp & ceremony.
    The Jesuits, & Kircher in particular, were called upon to contribute to the festivities. Athanasius devised several spectacular events of his own invention that were much admired by the bishop’s delegates. To the amazement of the audience, he created optical illusions in midair, projecting fantastic shapes onto the trees in the park & the clouds—chimeras, sphinxes & dragons; he presented distorting mirrors that showed you upside down, aged or rejuvenated by several years, & concluded with a lavish fireworks display in which the rockets, as they burst, formed the imperial eagle & other emblematic animals. Accused of black magic by some simple or jealous people, Kircher had to demonstrate the mesoptic, catoptric & parastatic instrumentsthat he had used to create the spectacle & show the legates how they worked; they were all instruments of his own invention, which he later described in detail in his
Mundus Subterraneus
& his
Ars Magna Lucis & Umbrae
. The ambassadors were so delighted with the entertainment that they insisted the young prodigy stay with them until they left.
    Charmed by the reports of his envoys, Johann Schweickhardt urged Kircher to come & see him without delay. Athanasius therefore went to see the old man in Aschaffenburg & made an excellent impression on him. Immediately taken into his service, he spent a large part of his time inventing & constructing numerous curious machines to amuse the archbishop during his leisure moments. Thus he made a speaking, moving statue, which appeared to be alive, &, among other marvels, explained the miraculous properties of the lodestone, showing how it could be used to cure nervous illnesses or transmit thoughts over a distance. At the request of Johann