The sword was no longer moving. Leibniz ventured closer, keeping his eyes fixed on Sophie’s powdered face, then traced a line from her soft, plump white shoulder, down the sleeve of her dress, across a rubble of jewelry encrusting her wrist and fingers, down the rusty rapier-blade, to a Dresden china plate where a deceased bat lay, wings arranged artfully as if it had been put there as a garnish by a French chef. "The comet has come to earth!" she proclaimed.