George Louis had returned from his errand and had been skirting the back of the crowd trying to find a way in without getting into a shoving-match with any Cossacks. The crowd parted to admit one of Sophie Charlotte’s footmen, who glided in carrying a tray with a velvet pillow on it, and on the pillow, a rock still nestled in torn-up wrapping paper. George Louis followed the lead and took up an appropriate position next to his mother, and got an expression on his face that said, I am ready to be introduced and to have a jolly good time playing along with this incognito business, but everyone else—especially Peter—was gazing at the rock instead. It was pinkish-brown, and about the size of a melon, but sort of Gibraltar-shaped, with a flat, angled grinding-surface on the top and a system of rootlike legs below. There was a lot of rude behavior going on in the outer fringes of Peter’s retinue, as diverse furry muscular steppe-dwellers jostled for position. They seemed to have convinced themselves that "Tooth of the Leviathan" was a flowery monicker for some very large diamond. Men who were eager to lay eyes on the treasure collided with others who already had, and were recoiling in dismay. Meanwhile Leibniz had been nudged up to the front by Sophie, who did not believe in breaking her minions on the wheel, but was not above delivering swift jabs to the arse and kidney with her bejewelled knuckles. Leibniz bellied up to the tooth and caught the edge of the underlying tray, which was almost too heavy for the servant to hold up. Sophie Charlotte’s heavenly face was beaming at him. Next to it was the Tsar’s watch-chain. Leibniz began to tilt his head back, and did not stop until he was gazing at the undersurface of Peter’s chin. His wig slipped and Sophie cuffed him in the back of the head to set it aright, and said: "The Doctor is hard at work on a wonderful project in Natural Philosophy, which my son does not understand, but which should produce miraculous results, provided some wise monarch can only supply him with an infinite amount of money."