The system of the world - By Neal Stephenson Page 0,236

A goldsmith grasped it with tongs and thrust it into a furnace; for a few moments it was enveloped in fumes and colored flames as impurities were burnt off. Then it resolved to a pure glowing slab. He tugged it out, quenched it in water, and snipped off a corner for assay. Then Daniel took it to a weigher who tediously balanced it on a scale, and noted it in a book. Then it was across the yard to a mill consisting of two great brass rollers, one above the other like a mangle. A man fed the plate into the crevice between these as a boy whirled a crank on an elaborate gear-train. The rollers turned almost as slowly as minute-hands. What emerged from them was no longer a neat square: it had been mashed to an irregular oval blob, like pie-crust under a rolling-pin, thinner than a fingernail. It came out onto a kind of skid that had been fashioned from a whole ox-hide stretched over a frame the size of a dining-table. The plate lay on this like a lake of molten gold, almost smooth enough to bear reflections. Four men—one at each corner—now bore this across the court to a stall where a large shearing-machine had been established. The ox-hide pallet was mated to this, so that the golden sheet could be slid directly into the jaws of the shear. Two men now went to work slicing the lozenge of gold into a large number of strips, each about a hand-span in width. When this was finished they rotated the strips ninety degrees and fed them through a second time, cutting them into squares. Some of the cuttings, from near the edge, came out imperfectly shaped, and were pitched into a discard basket. The rest were piled into a neat stack. When they ran out of gold the shear-men twice counted and re-stacked the cards (for the gold squares resembled nothing so much as a deck of great playing-cards). All of the proceeds—including the basket of scraps—were given back to Daniel. He took them back to the weigher, who accounted for every iota of gold. Daniel then returned the scraps to the locked crypt.

The tour-group reconvened in the shop of the man called Saturn. The golden cards had been stacked and counted one more time, and loaded into a purpose-built, velvet-lined chest that was just the right size for them. They gathered round it instinctively.

“Well, Dr. Waterhouse, we now understand perhaps a tenth of the oddities housed in your court,” said Eliza. “When shall we understand the remainder?”

“When we go to Bridewell!” Daniel returned, and picked up the chest as if he meant to leave.

“WE ARE LIKE JEWELS in a pirate’s treasure-chest,” said the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm, trying to get her fellow-passengers to look on the bright side.

Daniel, Eliza, Johann, and “Hildegard” were sharing this booth-on-wheels, not only with a small chest of gold cards, but also with several bales of libels. To judge from their smell and their tendency to rub off on people’s clothing, these had come off the press very recently. Everyone shied away from them save Daniel, who was dressed in clothes that were black to begin with.

According to some unwritten but universal rule of etiquette, people mashed together in a confined space tended not to look one another in the eye, or to converse. The fact that “Hildegard” was, in truth, obviously Princess Caroline of Hanover only exacerbated it. Thus Eliza’s efforts to make cheery conversation.

After they had jolted some distance southwards along Saffron Hill, Daniel, mortified and bored, managed to work one of his arms free of the pile-up, and got a hand on the window-shutter, which he shot open. In London, actual sun-beams were too much to ask for; but he was rewarded with a nebulous in-flow of smoky gray light, which fell on the top-most sheet of a libel-bale.

LIBERTY

by Dappa

My Persecutor has been heard to say that my libels are used only to stop up chinks, and plug diverse other windy orifices, in the garderobes of Bankside gin-houses. Which if true raises the question of how he would know anything of such places; but let us pass over this mystery. For if Mr. Charles White’s assertion is true, then you, reader, are enjoying but a few minutes’ peaceful interlude in a House of Office somewhere in Southwark, and I had best get to the point before you have done with your business.

If you put your eye up to