The Sleepwalkers (197 page)

"You
ask
me,"
he
wrote
to
Father
Guldin,
"what
I
did
with
myself
during
the
long
siege.
You
ought
to
ask
what
one
could
do
in
the
midst
of
the
soldiery.
The
other
houses
had
only
a
few
soldiers
billeted
on
them.
Ours
is
on
the
city
wall.
The
whole
time
the
soldiers
were
on
the
ramparts,
a
whole
cohort
lay
in
our
building.
The
ears
were
constantly
assailed
by
the
noise
of
the
cannon,
the
nose
by
evil
fumes,
the
eye
by
flames.
All
doors
had
to
be
kept
open
for
the
soldiers
who,
by
their
comings
and
goings,
disturbed
sleep
at
night,
and
work
during
day-time.
I
nevertheless
considered
it
a
great
boon
that
the
head
of
the
Estates
had
given
me
rooms
with
a
view
over
the
moats
and
suburbs
in
which
the
fighting
took
place."
³

When
he
did
not
watch
the
fighting,
Kepler,
in
his
unquiet
study,
was
engaged
with
his
old
occupational
therapy,
the
writing
of
a
chronological
work.

On
30
June,
however,
the
peasants
succeeded
in
setting
fire
to
part
of
the
town.
It
destroyed
seventy
houses,
and
among
these
was
the
printing
shop.
All
the
sheets
that
had
so
far
been
printed,
went
up
in
flame;
but
the
angels
again
intervened
and
Kepler's
manuscript
escaped
unscathed.
This
provided
him
with
an
occasion
for
one
of
his
endearing
understatements:
"It
is
a
strange
fate
which
causes
these
delays
all
the
time.
New
incidents
keep
occurring
which
are
not
at
all
my
fault."
⁴

Actually,
he
was
not
too
much
aggrieved
by
the
destruction
of
the
printing
press,
because
he
had
had
more
than
enough
of
Linz,
and
was
only
waiting
for
a
pretext
to
move
elsewhere.
He
knew
of
a
good
press
in
Ulm,
on
the
upper
reaches
of
the
Danube,
which
belonged
to
his
Swabian
homeland,
and
was
less
than
fifty
miles
from
Tuebingen
–
that
magnetic
pole
which
never
lost
its
attraction.
When
the
siege
was
lifted
and
the
Emperor's
consent
obtained,
Kepler
was
able,
after
fourteen
long
years,
to
leave
Linz,
which
he
had
never
liked,
and
which
had
never
liked
him.

But
the
printer
at
Ulm
turned
out
a
disappointment.
There
were
quarrels
from
the
start,
and
later
on
threats
of
a
lawsuit.
At
one
point,
Kepler
even
left
Ulm
in
a
sudden
huff
to
find
a
better
printer
–
in
Tuebingen,
of
course.
He
travelled
on
foot,
because
he
again
suffered
from
boils
on
his
backside,
which
made
riding
a
horse
too
painful.
The
time
was
February,
and
Kepler
was
fifty-six.
In
the
village
of
Blaubeuren,
having
walked
fifteen
miles,
he
turned
back
and
made
peace
with
the
printer
(whose
name
was
Jonas
Saur,
meaning
sour).

Seven
months
later,
in
September
1627,
the
work
was
at
long
last
completed.
It
was
just
in
time
for
the
annual
book
mart
at
the
Frankfurt
Fair.
Kepler,
who
had
bought
the
paper,
cast
some
of
the
type,
acted
as
printer's
foreman,
and
paid
for
the
whole
enterprise,
now
travelled
himself
to
Frankfurt,
with
part
of
the
first
edition
of
a
thousand
copies,
to
arrange
for
its
sale.
It
was
truly
a
one-man
show.

The
last
of
the
Egyptian
plagues
he
had
to
contend
with
were
Tycho's
heirs,
who
now
reappeared
on
the
scene.
The
Junker
Tengnagel
had
died
five
years
before,
but
George
de
Brahe,
the
misfired
"Tychonides",
had
continued
the
guerilla
warfare
against
Kepler
through
all
these
years.
He
understood
nothing
of
the
contents
of
the
work,
but
he
objected
to
the
fact
that
Kepler's
preface
occupied
more
space
than
his
own,
and
to
Kepler's
remark
that
he
had
improved
Tycho's
observations,
which
he
regarded
as
a
slur
on
his
father's
honour.
Since
the
work
could
not
be
published
without
the
heirs'
consent,
the
first
two
sheets,
containing
the
dedications
and
prefaces,
had
to
be
reprinted
twice;
as
a
result,
there
exist
three
different
versions
among
the
surviving
copies
of
the
book.

The
Tabulae
Rudolphinae
remained,
for
more
than
a
century,
an
indispensable
tool
for
the
study
of
the
skies
–
both
planets
and
fixed
stars.
The
bulk
of
the
work
consists
of
the
tables
and
rules
for
predicting
the
positions
of
the
planets,
and
of
Tycho's
catalogue
of
777
star
places,
enlarged
by
Kepler
to
1,005.
There
are
also
refraction-tables
and
logarithms,
⁵
put
for
the
first
time
to
astronomic
uses;
and
a
gazetteer
of
the
towns
of
the
world,
their
longitudes
referred
to
Tycho's
Greenwich
–
the
meridian
of
Uraniborg
on
Hveen.