"Heer Spinoza," said the bookseller solemnly, "thy Cartesian
commentary has brought me a many pence, and if thou thyself hast
browsed more than bought, thou wast welcome to take whatever thou
couldst carry away in that long head of thine. But to serve thee now
is more than I dare, with the populace so wrought up against thee.
What! Didst thou think thy doings in Utrecht would not penetrate
hither?"
"My doings in Utrecht!"
"Ay, in the enemy's headquarters--betraying us to the periwigs!"
Spinoza was taken aback. This was even more serious than he had
thought. It was for supposed leaning to the French that the De Witts
had been massacred. Political odium was even more sinister than
theological. Perhaps he had been unwise to accept in war-time the
Prince of Condé's flattering invitation to talk philosophy. To get to
the French camp with the Marshal's safe-conduct had been easy enough:
to get back to his own headquarters bade fair to be another matter.
But then why had the Dutch authorities permitted him to go? Surely
such unique confidence was testimonial enough.
"Oh, but this is absurd!" he said. "Every burgher in Den Haag knows
that I am a good republican, and have never had any aim but the honor
and welfare of the State. Besides, I did not even see Condé. He had
been called away, and I would not wait his return."
"Ay, but thou didst see Luxemburg; thou wast entertained by Colonel
Stoupe, of the Swiss regiment."
"True, but he is theologian as well as soldier."
"He did not offer to bribe thee?"
"Ay, he did," said Spinoza, smiling. "He offered me a pension--"
The bookseller plugged his ears. "'Sh! I will not know. I'll have no
hand in thy murder."
"Nay, but it will interest thee as a bookseller. The pension was to be
given me by his royal master if I would dedicate a book to his august
majesty."
"And thou refusedst?"
"Naturally. Louis Quatorze has flatterers enough."
The bookseller seized his hands and wrung them with tears. "I told
them so, I told them so. What if they did see these French gentry
visiting thee? Political emissaries forsooth! As well fear for the
virtue of the ladies of quality who toil up his stairs, quoth I. They
do but seek further explications of their Descartes. Ah, France may
have begotten a philosopher, but it requires Holland to shelter him, a
Dutchman to understand him. That musked gallant a spy! Why, that was
D'Hénault, the poet. How do I know? Well, when a man inquires for
D'Hénault's poems and is half-pleased because I have the book, and
half-annoyed because he must needs buy it--! An epicurean rogue by his
lip, a true son of the Muses. And suppose there _is_ a letter from
England, quoth I, with the seal of the Royal Society!"
"_Is_ there a letter from England?"
"Thou hast not been to thy lodging? That Royal Society, quoth I, is a
learned body--despite its name--and hath naught to do with King
Charles and the company he keeps. 'Tis they who egg him on to fight
us, the hussies!"
Spinoza smiled. "It must be from my good friend Oldenburg, the
secretary."
"'Tis what I told them. He was in my shop when he was here--"
"Asking for his book?"
"Nay, for thine." And the bookseller's smile answered Spinoza's. "He
bade me despatch copies of the _Principia Philosophiae Cartesianae_ to
sundry persons of distinction. I would to Heaven thou wouldst write a
new book!"
"Heaven may not share thy view," murmured Spinoza, who was just
turning over the pages of an attack on his "new book," and reading of
himself as "a man of bold countenance, fanatical, and estranged from
all religion."
"A good book thou hast there," said the bookseller. "By Musæus, the
Jena Professor. The _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus ad Veritatis
Lancem Examinatus_--weighed in Truth's balance, indeed. A title that
draws. They say 'tis the best of all the refutations of the pernicious
and poisonous Tractate."
"Of which I see sundry copies here masked in false titles."
"'Sh! Forbidden fruit is always in demand. But so long as I supply the
antidote too--"
"Needs fruit an antidote?"
"Poisoned apples of Knowledge offered by the serpent."
"A serpent indeed," said Spinoza, reading the Antidote aloud. "'He has
left no mental faculty, no cunning, no art untried in order to
conceal his fabrication beneath a brilliant veil, so that we may with
good reason doubt whether among the great number of those whom the
devil himself has hired for the destruction of all human and divine
right, there is one to be found who has been more zealous in the work
of corruption than this traitor who was born to the great injury of
the church and to the harm of the state.' How he bruises the serpent's
head, this theology professor!" he cried; "how he lays him dead on his
balance of Truth!" To himself he thought: "How the most ignorant are
usually the most impudent and the most ready to rush into print!" He
had a faint prevision of how his name--should it really leak out,
despite all his precautions--would come to stand for atheism and
immorality, a catchword of ill-omen for a century or two; but he
smiled on, relying upon the inherent reasonableness and rightness of
the universe.
"Wilt take the book?" said the bookseller.
"Nay, 'tis not by such tirades that Truth is advanced. But hast thou
the Refutation by Lambert Velthuysen?"
The bookseller shook his head.
"That is worth a hundred of this. Prithee get that and commend it to
thy clients, for Velthuysen wields a formidable dialectic by which
men's minds may be veritably stimulated."
On his homeward way dark looks still met him, but he faced them with
cheerful, candid gaze. At the end of the narrow Spuistraat the affairs
of the broad market-place engrossed popular attention, and the
philosopher threaded his way unregarded among the stalls and the
canvas-covered Zeeland waggons, and it was not till he reached the
Paviljoensgracht--where he now sits securely in stone, pencilling a
thought as enduring--that he encountered fresh difficulty. There, at
his own street door, under the trees lining the canal-bank, his
landlord, Van der Spijck, the painter--usually a phlegmatic figure
haloed in pipe-clouds--congratulated him excitedly on his safe return,
but refused him entry to the house. "Here thou canst lodge no more."
"Here I lodge to-night," said Spinoza quietly, "if there be any law in
Holland."
"Law! The folk will take the law into their own hands. My windows will
be broken, my doors battered in. And thou wilt be murdered and thrown
into the canal."
His lodger laughed. "And wherefore? An honest optician murdered! Go
to, good friend!"
"If thou hadst but sat at home, polishing thy spy-glasses instead of
faring to Utrecht! Customarily thou art so cloistered in that the
goodwife declares thou forgettest to eat for three days together--and
certes there is little thou canst eat when thou goest not abroad to
buy provision! What devil must drive thee on a long journey in this
hour of heat and ferment? Not that I believe a word of thy turning
traitor--I'd sooner believe my mahl-stick could turn serpent like
Aaron's rod--but in my house thou shalt not be murdered."
"Reassure thyself. The whole town knows my business with Stoupe; at
least I told my bookseller, and 'tis only a matter of hours."
"Truly he is a lively gossip."
"Ay," said Spinoza drily. "He was even aware that a letter from the
Royal Society of England awaits me."
Van der Spijck reddened. "I have not opened it," he cried hastily.
"Naturally. But the door thou mayst open."
The painter hesitated. "They will drag thee forth, as they dragged the
De Witts from the prison."
Spinoza smiled sadly. "And on that occasion thou wouldst not let me
out; now thou wilt not let me in."
"Both proofs that I have more regard for thee than thou for thyself.
If I had let thee dash out to fix up on the public wall that
denunciation thou hadst written of the barbarian mob, there had been
no life of thine to risk to-day. Fly the town, I beseech thee, or find
thicker walls than mine. Thou knowest I would shelter thee had I the
power; do not our other lodgers turn to thee in sickness and sorrow to
be soothed by thy talk? Do not our own little ones love and obey thee
more than their mother and me? But if thou wert murdered in our house,
how dreadful a shock and a memory to us all!"
"I know well your love for me," said Spinoza, touched. "But fear
nothing on my account: I can easily justify myself. There are people
enough, and of chief men in the country too, who well know the motives
of my journey. But whatever comes of it, so soon as the crowd make the
least noise at your door, I will go out and make straight for them,
though they should serve me as they have done the unhappy De Witts."