The tale rehearsed thus far is well known,29 but the present Author’s privileged access to State Archives has allowed him to uncover a more disconcerting narrative. Close reading of Bernoulli’s notes from the period before the Guild’s formation show that even as he planned his bridge, even as he sketched the Discourses, he secretly researched another subject: Miracles.

If it seems ironic to the Reader that the tyranny of priests was overthrown by one so devout, he will do well to remember that Natural Philosophy was not as rigidly defined then as now30 if we acclaim Bernoulli as the first Modern, we must remember he hailed from a medieval world as distant from ours as the Etruscan was to his. If we never learn why such a mind entertained such fantasy (indeed, there may be no explanation), his real achievements must always stay our censure.

Young Bernoulli wasted months researching esoteric subjects we have today dismissed as the grossest superstition. Regretfully, only a summary is possible.31 He believed that the myths of Virgin birth32 and Transubstantiation33 were linked in more than a Scriptural sense. His ambition, it appears, was to give them some mathematical explanation.

Bernoulli abandoned these blind alleys from the tumult of the Thirties through the repeated crises of the Forties, but the reprieve was temporary. In the early Fifties the Molè’s final ascent mirrored its architect’s descent into senility, an unraveling that began soon after he began dissecting pseudonaiades by means electrical. Perhaps he pried out other secrets with their liquid anatomy. More likely he was already mad.

While the Molè occupied his days, the Etruscan Scriptures34 consumed his nights. He reread their so-called Books of Fate, and, coming to believe the old story that our ancestors had successfully predicted the hour of their Empire’s collapse, he sought to fix the date of Concord’s.35

The present Author takes no pride revealing the pathetic last chapters of Bernoulli’s life nor does he believe that these revelations diminish our great debt to him.36 That his secret half was unknown till now is some small reassurance that however deep this madness went, it never impinged upon his real duty. The Curia was unworthy to govern because it allowed itself to be governed by superstition, but Bernoulli suppressed that irrationality, and, rising above it, he showed his true worth.

It is the most signal victory of an uncommon life: before he conquered the World, Bernoulli conquered his soul. Reader, pass on in respectful silence. Who but genius knows the dark countries genius must traverse?