surd!" 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 Conde. 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'Henault, the poet. How do I know? Well, when a man inquires for
D'Henault'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,