'Wilkins's confusion is understandable – but Pepys's meaning is clear. There are some suspicious-minded persons upriver' (waving in the general direction of Whitehall) 'who think I'm a spy, communicating with Continental powers by means of subliminal messages embedded in what purport to be philosophickal discourses – it being beyond their comprehension that anyone would care as much as I seem to about new species of eels, methods for squaring hyperbolae, et cetera .But Pepys was not referring to that – he was being ever so much more clever. He was telling Wilkins that the not-very-secret negotiations being carried on by Buckingham and Shaftesbury are like the innocuous-seeming message, being used to conceal the truly secret agreement that the two Kings are drawing up, using Minette as the conduit.'