Landfalls by Naomi J. Williams

slight frown, an impatient perusal, then consignment to a large pile of documents that the mathematician intends, one day soon, to go through with more care.
    Condorcet’s wife, Sophie, a beautiful and intelligent woman whose love for him will amaze him until the day he dies, will ask, “What news from the great expedition, Nicolas?”
    Condorcet will reply, “Oh, it is all barometric readings and magnetic intensities mixed up with Lamanon’s bombast.”
    â€œJust the thing to be read at the next meeting of the academy.”
    Condorcet will snort. “I would not dream of denying Lamanon that pleasure when he returns,” he will say. And so Lamanon’s letters and reports will remain on Condorcet’s desk, read but not shared, and there they will remain until the Revolution upends everything, even mathematicians and their piles of paper.
    This is all most unfortunate, as Condorcet’s neglect will forever diminish Lamanon’s scientific legacy. It is also too bad because Lamanon would be shocked to learn there might be cause for reserve between them. On the contrary, it pleases him to imagine Condorcet reading his letter. He can see the great man’s distinctive dark eyebrows relaxing with delight when he sees who the letter is from, then contracting again with serious intent as he unfolds the pages and begins to read. Lamanon smiles as he leans over to conclude the letter: “We are like a big family on board, with Monsieur de Lap é rouse as our father,” he repeats. Then he folds the letter and affixes his seal to the back—he loves this part, the smell of the molten wax and its satisfying displacement under the weight of the seal—and moves on to write a very similar letter to the Count de Buffon. Yes, the same Buffon he provoked, first, with his disputatious paleontological m é moire , and then with his bad manners at Madame Necker’s. But Lamanon does not worry if the count is still displeased, if, indeed, he ever noticed the count’s displeasure at all; nor does he wonder if his letter will be welcome. He has an irrepressible faith in his own value as a man of science. And it is not always misplaced. Let us be clear about that. Lamanon will never know it, of course, but Buffon, still writing in his late seventies, will, in his monumental Histoire naturelle , refer to findings reported in this very letter from Tenerife.
    As to the findings themselves, Condorcet is right that they have mostly to do with barometric readings and magnetic intensities. For Lamanon does not write to Condorcet and Buffon about beans. No. To these stalwarts of the French Enlightenment he writes about his ascent of the Peak of Tenerife. He and eleven other members of the expedition made the trip. It was the eve of the feast of St. Louis when they reached the top, where they drank to the king’s health. “The highest elevation at which the feast day has ever been celebrated,” he writes. He goes on to say that he and his friend Father Mongez, the Boussole ’s chaplain and assistant naturalist, then settled down to serious scientific endeavor, collecting rocks, measuring air pressure with one barometer, then another, taking compass readings, noting the degree of magnetic inclination, counting their own pulses, and sniffing ammonia to see if it retained its strength at altitude. He is particularly pleased to report a new, barometrically derived measurement for the peak’s height: 1,950 toises . He hopes this will be useful, as there has been little agreement on this subject among visitors to the island.
    He does not mention that ten of his colleagues left the peak as soon as they had toasted the king, bothered by the sulfurous fumes that swirled about the mountaintop. Or that at one point he sniffed the ammonia to keep from passing out. Nor does he mention that barometric determinations of altitude are notoriously unreliable. Presumably his correspondents