That they lived was evidence that Daniel eventually pulled Isaac away and got him pointed back up the river toward Cambridge. But Isaac's mind was still on those Satanic miracles that had appeared in the dead man's groin. 'I admire Monsieur Descartes' analysis, but there is something missing in his supposition that the world is just bits of matter jostling one another like coins shaken in a bag. How could that account for the ability of matter to organize itself into eyes and leaves and salamanders, to transmute itself into alternate forms? And yet it's not simply that matter comes together in good ways – not some ongoing miraculous Creation – for the same process by which our bodies turn meat and milk into flesh and blood can also cause a man's body to convert itself into a mass of buboes in a few hours' time. It might seem aimless, but it cannot be. That one man sickens and dies, while another flourishes, are characters in the cryptic message that philosophers seek to decode.'