Kepler

It was one of the school inspectors, the physician Oberdörfer, who first approached him, with a stealthy smile and- could it be?-a wink, and invited him to come on a certain day to the house of Herr Georg Hartma

"Yes, yes," Joha

Oberdorfer, whispering sideways like a bad ventriloquist, inclined his great trembling head until it almost rested against Kepler's ear. "Also she is rich, so I am told." The young woman paused, leaning down to exclaim over a pale pursed little boy in velveteen, who turned a stony face away and tugged furiously at his nurse's hand. Kepler all his life would remember that surly Cupid. "Her father," the doctor hissed, "her father has estates, you know, to the south. They say he has settled a goodly fortune to her name." His voice sank lower still. "And of course, she is certain to have been provided for also by her…" faltering "… her late, ah, husbands. "

"Her…?"

"Husbands, yes. " Dr Oberdorfer briefly shut his little eyes. "Most tragic, most tragic: she is twice a widow. And so young!"

It dawned on Joha

"Yes?" Joha

Dr Oberdorfer winced, and then, gri

"Plump, rather, Master Kepler, plump. And the winters are cold, eh? Ha. Ha ha."

And he took the young man firmly by the elbow and steered him up the stairs, into an alcove, where there waited a sleek, grim dandified man who looked Joha

So began the long, involved and sordid business of his wiving. From the start he feared the prospect of the plump young widow. Women were a foreign country, he did not speak the language. One night four years previously, on a visit to Weilderstadt, flushed with ale and wanting to reassert himself after losing heavily at cards, he had consorted with a scrawny girl, a virgin, so he was assured. That was his sole experience of love. Afterwards the drab had laughed, and tested between her little yellow teeth the coin he had given her. Yet beyond the act itself, that frantic froglike swim to the cataract's edge, he had found something touching in her ski

He discovered how small a place was Graz: everyone he knew seemed to have a hand in the turbulent making of this match. Sometimes he fancied he could detect a prurient leer on the face of the town itself. Dr Oberdorfer was the chief negotiator, assisted by Heinrich Osius, a former professor of the Stiftsschule. In September these two worthies went together down to Mühleck to hear jobst Müller's terms. The miller opened the bidding coyly, declaring himself not at all eager to see his daughter wed again. This Kepler was a poor specimen, with small means and an unpromising future. And what of his birth? Was he not the son of a profligate soldier? Dr Oberdorfer countered with a speech in praise of the young man's industry and prodigious learning. Duke Frederick of Württemberg, no less, was his patron. Then Osius, who had been brought for the benefit of his bluntness, mentioned Mistress Barbara's state: so young, and twice a widow! Jobst Müller frowned, his jaw twitching. He was growing weary of that refrain.

The negotiators returned confident to Graz. Then an unexpected and serious obstacle arose, when Stefan Speidel the district secretary, Kepler's friend, declared himself opposed to the match. He knew the lady, and thought she should be better provided for. Besides, as he admitted in confidence to Kepler, he wished her to marry an acquaintance of his at court, a man of rising influence. He apologised, waving a hand; you will understand, of course, Joha

The printing of the Mysterium progressed. Mästlin had secured the blessing of the Tübingen college senate for the work, and was supervising the setting at Gruppenbach the printers. He reported faithfully the completion of each chapter, grumbling over the expense in cash and energy. Kepler wrote him back a cheerful note pointing out that attendance at this birth would, after all, ensure the midwife's immortal fame.

Kepler was himself busy. The school authorities, incensed by his six-month absence at the Württemberg court, had followed their inspectors' advice and set him arithmetic and rhetoric classes in the upper school. These were a torment. Rector Papius, despite his half-hearted threats, had held off from increasing the young master's duties-but Papius had been summoned to the chair of medicine at Tübingen. His successor, Joha

The wedding feast took place, after a brief ceremony in the collegiate church, at Barbara's inherited house on the Stempfergasse. Jobst Müller, when the deal was closed and he could afford again the luxury of contempt, had declared that he would not see celebrated in his own home, before his tenants and his servants, this affront to his family's name. He had settled on Kepler a sum of cash, as well as the yield of a vineyard and an allowance for the child Regina 's upbringing. Was not that enough? He sat in silence throughout the morning, scowling under the brim of his hat, morosely drunk on his own Mühleck wine. Kepler, seeing him in a sulk, squeezed a drop of bitter satisfaction from the day by calling on him repeatedly to propose a toast, to make a speech, throwing an arm about his shoulders and urging him to sing up, sing up, sir, a rousing chorus of some good old Gössendorf ballad.