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looking at his hands. They sat in the rector's room overlooking the central courtyard of the school. It was raining. There was wind in the chimney, and balls of smoke rolled out of the fireplace and hung in the air around them, making his eyes sting. "I talk too quickly, and say things before I have had time to consider my words. Sometimes in the middle of a class I change my mind and begin to speak of some other subject, or realise that what I have been saying is imprecise and begin all over again to explain the matter in more detail. " He shut his mouth, squirming; he was making it worse. Dr Papius frowned at the fire. "You see, Herr Rector, it is my
cupiditas speculandi
that leads me astray."
    "Yes, " the older man said mildly, scratching his chin, "there is in you perhaps too much… passion. But I would not wish to see a young man suppress his natural enthusiasm. Perhaps, Master Kepler, you were not meant for teaching?"
    Johannes looked up in alarm, but the rector was regarding him only with concern, and a touch of amusement. He was a gentle, somewhat scattered person, a scholar and physician; no doubt he knew what it was to stand all day in class wishing to be elsewhere. He had always shown kindness to this strange little man from Tübingen, who at first had so appalled the more stately members of the staff with his frightful manners and disconcerting blend of friendliness, excitability and arrogance. Papius had more than once defended him to the supervisors.
    "I am not a good teacher, ' 'Johannes mumbled, "I know. My gifts lie in other directions. "
    "Ah yes, " said the rector, coughing; "your astronomy. " He peered at the inspectors' report on the desk before him. "You teach
that
well, it seems?"
    "But I have no students!"
    "Not your fault-Pastor Zimmermann himself says here that astronomy is not everyone's meat. He recommends that you be put to teaching arithmetic and Latin rhetoric in the upper school, until we can find more pupils eager to become astronomers."
    Johannes understood that he was being laughed at, albeit gently.
    "They are ignorant barbarians! " he cried suddenly, and a log fell out of the fire. "All they care for is hunting and warring and looking for fat dowries for their heirs. They hate and despise philosophy and philosophers. They they they-they do not
deserve
…" He broke off, pale with rage and alarm. These mad outbursts must stop.
    Rector Papius smiled the ghost of a smile. "The inspectors?"
    "The…?"
    "I understood you to be describing our good Pastor Zimmermann and his fellow inspectors. It was of them we were speaking."
    Johannes put a hand to his brow. "I-I meant of course those who will not send their sons for proper instruction. "
    "Ah. But I think, you know, there are many among our noble families, and among the merchants also, who would consider astronomy
not
a proper subject for their sons to study. They burn at the stake poor wretches who have had less dealings with the moon than you do in your classes. I am not defending this benighted attitude to your science, you understand, but only drawing it to your attention, as it is my-"
    "But-"
    "-As it is my
duty
to do. "
    They sat and eyed each other, Johannes sullen, the rector apologetically firm. Grey rain wept on the window, the smoke billowed. Johannes sighed. "You see, Herr Rector, I cannot-"
    "But try, will you, Master Kepler: try?"
    He tried, he tried, but how could he be calm? His brain teemed. A chaos of ideas and images churned within him. In class he fell silent more and more frequently, standing stock still, deaf to the sniggering of his students, like a crazed hiero-phant. He traipsed the streets in a daze, and more than once was nearly run down by horses. He wondered if he were ill. Yet it was more as if he were… in love! In love, that is, not with any individual object, but generally. The notion, when he hit on it, made him laugh.
    At the beginning of 1595 he received a sign, if not from God himself then from a lesser