Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

arranged already.... In fact, it should be arranged for Helena to come here as soon as

possible, for I am afraid that our hostess will get tired waiting too long without having

a servant, and I would ask you to tell me what Helena thinks about it. (i.–)

Descartes adds in a postscript that he has included a letter for Helena, but

that it is not urgent to deliver it. In fact, he suggests, it would be better

if his correspondent were to retain the letter and deliver it personally to

Helena rather than have it delivered by a messenger. That should happen,

he thinks, about the end of the week, when Helena would come to give the

intermediary some letters for forwarding to Descartes.

Descartes acknowledges the safe arrival of some books from the same

correspondent, after a passage that included ‘two nights on the water’

(i.).This may suggest that Helena and Francine had previously

lived with him or near him in Leiden, and that he was now arranging to

continue their camouflaged relationship in an even more remote corner

of northern Holland.It also implies that Helena was not an illiterate

servant, since Descartes was writing to her and was expecting a number

of letters in return, presumably written in Dutch. There is no indica-

tion of what happened after Helena and her daughter arrived in Alkmaar.

Descartes may have remained in seclusion, probably at Egmond, until he

became involved in the publication of his next book, theMeditations

(when he returned once more to Leiden).

He left Leiden suddenly aroundSeptember, and did not return

fortwo weeks.This coincided with the death of Francine, who died on

Septemberat the age of five, on the third day after the onset of scarlet

fever.Baillet claims that Descartes was planning to send his daughter

to one of his relatives in France, so that she could receive an appropriate

education. Within eight days of Francine’s death, Descartes was back

in Leiden, focusing on the printing of theMeditations, and replying to

scientific queries from Mersenne. It seems as if his intensely ambitious

pursuit of another publication was only briefly interrupted by Francine’s

death.

Descartes cannot have been very surprised at the death of his daugh-

ter. Infant mortality was much higher in the seventeenth century than it is

now, and everyone, young and old, was watchful for the infectious diseases

that frequently devastated whole towns. For example, Descartes’ earlier

efforts to contact Elzevier as a possible publisher for his book, in October

, had been frustrated by the great plague that affected Leiden during

the winter of–.Apart from such plagues that affected people of