Where Tigers Are at Home by Jean-Marie Blas de Robles Read Free Book Online

us could be repeated with all the grains of sand that might be found throughout the world, he proceeded with his demonstration. If we imagined a sphere a twelfth of an inch in diameter, it would contain 27,000 grains of sand; a sphere one inch in diameter would contain 46,656,000, one a foot in diameter 80,621,568,000, one a league in diameter 272,097,792,000,000,000,000, hence if the whole Earth consisted of grains of sand it would contain 3,271,512,503,499,876,784,372,652,141,247,182 & 0.56 for it is 2,290 leagues in diameter & contains 12,023,296,769 & 0.3 spheres a league in diameter …
    One can easily imagine our amazement at such knowledge & above all at the ease with which he dispensed it. From that dayon my admiration & respect for Father Kircher knew no bounds & nothing has happened since then to lessen them. I ceaselessly sought out his company & he favored me, if not with his friendship, then at least with his generous patronage. His favor brought me the jealousy of my comrades & various annoyances, which are not relevant here but which I am happy to forgive in view of the immense honor that was granted me.
    Two happy years passed in this way. Kircher enjoyed Würzburg & tirelessly continued with his own work alongside his duties as a teacher. Through his correspondence with the greatest names of the time & the missionaries of the Society scattered over the globe, he was kept informed of all the new developments in the sciences. And protected as we were in a profoundly Catholic kingdom, the war raging between Reformers & the partisans of the Counter-Reformation seemed a long way away, although we regularly heard the most terrible reports.
    It looked as if everything was going to continue in studious tranquillity when Athanasius Kircher had a strange experience: one stormy night, suddenly wakening with a start at an unusual noise, he saw a crimson light at his window. Jumping out of bed, he opened the skylight to see what was happening. To his great surprise he saw that the college courtyard was full of armed men drawn up in ranks! Horrified, he ran to his neighbor’s cell, but found him so fast asleep he could not wake him & it was the same with all the other Jesuits he tried to warn. Worried that he was suffering from hallucinations, he came to get me and took me to a place overlooking the courtyard. The armed men had disappeared.
    During the following two weeks Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, joined the war on the side of the Reformers. Reverses for the Catholic side came thick & fast, & after the battle ofBreitenfeld & his victory over Tilly, the Swedish army entered Franconia: we received news that the fiends were marching on Würzburg! Kircher’s worst fears were being realized … We only had time to gather a few belongings together & fly. Würzburg having no garrison, no reserves, no help of any kind, the college dispersed within twenty-four hours. The enemy was approaching & it was said that the Swedes showed no mercy toward Jesuits. We were caught up in unspeakable chaos; we had to flee to Mainz & on October 14, 1631 we set off with little more than what we stood up in. My master had to leave behind the manuscript of his
Institutiones Mathematicæ
, the fruit of several years’ work & a loss it took him several months to get over.
ALCÂNTARA:
An intelligent piece of ass, a very intelligent piece of ass!
    Whenever Eléazard felt dazed from having spent too long sitting at his computer, he would put his machine into sleep mode, watch the constellations moving across the star-studded night on the screen for a moment, then go and sit down in front of the large mirror in the living room. There he would practice manipulating the ping-pong balls with which his pockets were now filled. There was nothing that could empty his mind so well as repeating the precise movements governing the appearance and disappearance of the objects. He would watch the balls emerge between his fingers, or multiply, correcting