One bright summer evening he was sitting on the top of a folding library ladder, which moved on wheels, before a wall ranged with books from top to bottom; he was sticking numbers on the backs of books, comparing the new catalogue with the old illiterate one, in which the names of foreign books were copied out in Russian characters. Through the high windows, glazed after the manner of old Dutch houses with little round pieces of glass fixed in a network of lead, the slanting rays of sunshine fell like sheaves of luminous dust upon the sparkling brass instruments; on the heavenly spheres, astrolabes, compasses, bevels, draught compasses, measurement scales, levels, telescopes, microscopes; the various stuffed birds and animals, the huge bone from a mammoth’s head, monstrous Chinese idols and marble statues of beautiful Hellenic gods; the interminable rows of books uniformly bound in leather and parchment. Tichon enjoyed his work, here among the books. There reigned the calm, soothing peace of a wood, or of some old cemetery, which, forsaken by men, is lovingly visited only by sunshine. No sound interrupted the stillness save the evening chimes, which suggested the bells of the legendary town Kitesh, and the voices which came through the open door of the adjoining room where Bruce and Pastor Glück, having finished their supper, now sat talking and smoking over their wine.
Tichon had just fastened new numbers on some quarto and octavo volumes which were described in the old catalogue under No. 473 as The Philosophy of Francis Bacon in English, 3 vols.; under No. 308, Meditationes de Prima Philosophia, by Descartes, in Dutch; under No. 532, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, by Isaac Newton. Returning the books to their places, Tichon found at the back of the shelf an old mouse-eaten octavo, No. 461, Leonardo da Vinci, a treatise on painting, in German. This was the first German translation of Trattato della Pittura, issued at Amsterdam, in the year 1582; a leaflet with a wood-cut portrait of Leonardo had been placed in the book. Tichon gazed intently at this face, strange, unknown, and yet so familiar, as if he had once seen it in a dream. He thought that Simon the magician, who could fly in the air, must surely have had a similar face.
The voices in the neighbouring room seemed to grow louder and louder, Bruce was disputing some matter with Pastor Glück. They spoke in German. Tichon had learnt the language from the pastor; a few stray words struck him; his curiosity was aroused and he remained, with Leonardo’s book still in his hand, trying to catch the drift of their conversation.
“How is it you don’t see it, Reverend Sir, that Newton was no longer in his right senses when he wrote his Commentaries on the Apocalypse?” said Bruce. “Later on he himself confesses it, in a letter addressed to Bentley, on September 13, 1693, ‘I have lost my coherency of thought and no longer feel the old vigour of reason,’ in other words, he simply went into his dotage.”
“Your Excellency, I would rather be mad with Newton than reasonable with the rest of us bipeds!” exclaimed Glück, tossing off another glass of wine.
“There is no accounting for taste, my good sir,” continued Bruce, with a dry, short, wooden laugh, “but here’s something more curious still. At the time Newton wrote his Commentaries, in Muscovy, the other extremity of the world, barbarians called ‘Raskolniks,’ have in their turn compiled Commentaries on the Apocalypse, and come to very much the same conclusions as Newton. Daily expecting the Day of Doom, and the Second Coming, some lay themselves in coffins and say their own funeral service; others burn themselves. They are hunted and persecuted; for my part I would say of these unfortunate people, in the words of Leibnitz, ‘I do not like savageries, and would prefer to let everybody live in peace.’ As for those who are calmly awaiting the end of the world, their error seems to me quite innocent. Another thing strikes me as most curious, that the extreme West and the extreme East, the greatest enlightenment and the greatest ignorance, meet in these Apocalyptic deliriums. It is enough to suggest that the end of the world is drawing nigh and that we shall all go to the devil very soon!”
Again he laughed his sharp, wooden laugh and then added something Tichon could not hear, but it was evidently something very heterodox, for Pastor Glück, whose wig had, as usual at the end of his supper, slipped to one side of his drowsy head, suddenly jumped up in a fury, pushed back his chair and was going to run out of the room. Bruce kept him back, however, and a few kind words reassured him: he was the only patron Glück had. He loved and esteemed him for his disinterested pursuit of knowledge; yet, being himself a sceptic, or as many asserted a thorough atheist, he could not see the poor Pastor, the Don Quixote of astronomy, without being tempted to tease him and scoff at the unlucky commentaries on the Apocalypse—the reconciliation of science and religion.
Bruce was of opinion that one or the other had to be chosen—either faith without knowledge, or knowledge without faith.
He filled Glück’s glass and, in order to console him, began to inquire about the details of Newton’s Apocalypse. At first the old man answered reluctantly, but after a while he related with enthusiasm Newton’s conversation with his friend concerning the comet of 1680. “One day, when asked about it, instead of giving a direct answer he opened his Principia and pointed to a place where it was said ‘Stellae fixae refieri possunt. Fixed stars can be renewed by comets falling upon them.’ ‘Why did you not write about the sun as plainly as you did about the stars?’ ‘Because the sun concerns us more,’ replied Newton, and then added with a laugh, ‘For the rest, I have said sufficient for those who desire to understand.’
“As a moth attracted by the light, so will the comet fall into the sun and increase the solar heat to such an extent, that everything on earth will be consumed by fire. As it is written in the Holy Scriptures: ‘The heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burnt up.’ Then the prophecies will be accomplished both of him who believed, and of him who knew.