The System Of The World (The Baroque Cycle, #3)

by Neal Stephenson

We came up to take in the view, they seemed to say, and never expected the Spanish Inquisition.

Nobody expects The Spanish Inquisition!

This salon was as cluttered with peculiar exhibits as the Court of Technologickal Arts at Clerkenwell, and as crowded with obstreperous madmen as a meeting of Her Majesty’s Privy Council.

At 2 A.M. a man knocked on the door hoping to find a Sodomite. I sent him away gravely disappointed.

No singing, no Sodomites, no Mercury.

“The profession of politics would be altogether too disagreeable,” Roger allowed, “without compensations above and beyond what is strictly appropriate.”

Sadly, this seems to be the ethos of all contemporary politicians too.

“Dr. Vaterhouse of der Royal Society,” he rattled off, as he allowed Daniel to kiss his hand—the very last occasion, or so Daniel hoped, that Daniel would ever give his Puritan ancestors occasion to roll over in their graves. Daniel was so consumed by the horror of what he was doing, and by wondering whether he was going to catch anything from that hand, which had already been kissed, today, by half of the syphilitics in England, that he failed to attend to what the King was saying.