Mirabile dictu, there is a way to do just that, which I had recently heard about because of the loose tongue of a gentleman who has already been mentioned: Fatio de Duilliers. This Fatio fled to England after the Continent became a hostile place for him, and befriended a prominent English Alchemist by the name of Newton. He has become a sort of Ganymede to Newton's Zeus, and follows him wherever he can; when they are perforce separated, he prates to anyone who will listen about his close relationship to the great man. I know this from Signore Vigani, an Alchemist who is at the same college with Newton and so is often forced to break bread with Fatio. Fatio is prone to irrational jealousy, and he endlessly schemes to damage the reputation of anyone he imagines may be a rival for Newton's affections. One such is a Dr. Waterhouse, who shared a room with Newton when they were boys, and for all I know buggered him; but the facts do not matter, only Fatio's imaginings. In the library of the Royal Society, Fatio recently happened upon Dr. Waterhouse sleeping over some papers on which he had been working out a calculation consisting entirely of ones and zeroes – a mathematical curiosity much studied by Leibniz. Dr. Waterhouse woke up before Fatio could get a closer look at what he had been doing; but as the document in question appeared to be a letter from abroad, he inferred that it might be some sort of cryptographic scheme. Not long after, he went to Cambridge with Newton and let this story drop at High Table so that all could know how clever he was, and that Waterhouse was certainly a dolt and probably a spy.