Brother Gregory: Gene Five

By John Hulme

Mendel learns how to bend rays of light, which reveals the incredible world of sub-microscopic life, and also gives him a clue as to how a “perfect” crime was committed. Brother Gregory uses technology, sympathy and logical deduction to save his friend from disaster.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Hulme
• Release date: Jul 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310445538

John Hulme

John Hulme is a retired Professor, now living and writing in Florida. He was educated in England - a long time ago - and arrived on the shores of New York carrying a single suitcase and lots of ideas. He has written several hardcover science books and was an early user of the fledgling internet as a teaching tool. Before retirement he wrote a set of fictional science stories about Gregor Mendel - the person who discovered genetics, which he is now converting into ebooks. Since retirement he has started on a long-cherished writing project of historical fiction - which you may be seeing soon.

Book preview

Brother Gregory: Gene Five

The Bending of Light

Being the fictionalized story of Brother Gregor Mendel; monk, scientist and the discoverer of genetics.

How Mendel solves a mysterious crime while studying the properties of light.

by

John Hulme

scholar

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 John Hulme

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Afterword

Illustrations

About the Author

Footnotes

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Chapter One

A taste of war

Turning the corner at Janska and Minoritska streets, right by the Minorite Church, Brother Gregory paused for a moment. Children were shouting and pointing more than was usual for an April evening right after school, and a small group raced past him with unusual vigor. Instinctively, he clutched the parcel he was carrying tighter to his chest.

Peering through his gold rimmed glasses he squinted northwards up the curving road. Coming from the direction of Koblinza street he saw the cause of the disturbance; a platoon of soldiers was marching with measured cadence in his direction.

As they got closer he could see their uniforms [see Footnote]. Each was wearing a long gray greatcoat with eight white buttons, yellow piping and open at the front showing the blue trousers. On their heads each soldier had a shako that reminded Brother Gregory of an inverted flower pot, but having a brass Imperial eagle as it's front decoration.

The single NCO was carrying a Kammerbuchsen, but the rest of the privates carried Lorenz pattern cap-lock rifles with thrust-bayonets in brass-mounted scabbards by their side. Moustaches completed the intimidating appearance on each face as they marched past surrounded by a cloud of small excited children.

Marching soldiers had become a more and more common sight on the streets of Brno that April of 1866, but they still were exotic enough to cause comment and attract attention. Brother Gregory watched them as they strode down the hill in the direction of the Grand Hotel, but he assumed that they were going to join their companions camped in the open fields just north of the Augustinian Monastery.

The quiet life of the monks had been broken a few days earlier, late in March, when the first Imperial soldiers of Francis Joseph arrived to set up their tents. A company of about 100 men and 20 wagons had occupied the broken ground just off Uvoz road and set about establishing a temporary military camp.

At first the Brothers had been as excited as the small boys of the town, that clustered round the soldiers and went everywhere with them. But the excitement quickly wore off when a party of drunken privates had tried to break into the brewery next door to the Monastery, and caused a lot of damage and disturbance.

As the days past, the camp grew larger and more tents sprang up. Smokey fires burned constantly and new parties of marching solders arrived daily. Brother Gregory had watched them with interest; his father had been a soldier in the last days of Napoleon and had often told his family of his adventures under the colors.

Now, after a long day teaching in the Realschule, his interest in things military was at its lowest and he was anxious to complete his two remaining tasks of the day and get off home to his dinner.

A broken microscope

Picking his way carefully through the thinning evening crowds, he walked slowly up Minoritska street and turned into the doorway of a small, glass fronted shop that faced west. It's irregular windows caught the last rays of the setting sun and reflected them back in rainbow patterns. As he pushed open the door a small brass bell attached to the top of the door frame announced his arrival, causing the owner of the store to look up from his work.

Herr Mendel, it is good to see you, to what do I owe this honor? he said, putting down the cut glass bowl he had been cleaning and turning towards the monk.

A problem, I'm afraid Herr Rosenstrauch, a problem for which I need your help. Mendel looked around him. He was standing on one side of a long counter that ran the length of the small store. Behind the counter were shelves, and on each shelf were displayed vases, bowls, inkwells, mirrors, jugs and a host of other glass objects. But Mendel had not come to Rosenstrauch's Glassatt to buy a tankard.

He placed the brown paper parcel on the counter. I dropped my microscope, he said, shaking his head at the memory of his carelessness, it's broken, and I would like you to see if you can repair it for me.

Of course, said Herr Rosenstrauch waving his hands and pushing his sleeves further up his arms. Show me.

Mendel unwrapped the parcel and revealed a sorry sight. His one and only microscope, the instrument that he had used all through his time at the University of Vienna and was now one of his most treasured possessions, lay in pieces on the counter.

It was a silly accident, Mendel said, poking the pieces with one of his fingers. I had just received a set of prepared microscope slides from one of my Professors, Herr Docktor Ausbach, who had asked me to help him identify some of the specimens he had been collecting. I was in such a hurry to set up my microscope that I knocked it off my table, onto the floor, and broke it in several pieces.

Rosenstrauch tut-tutted sympathetically. So you still keep in touch with your old Professors? he said, picking up a small box of microscope lenses, opening it and examining the contents.

Yes, replied Mendel, I correspond with Nageli at the University of Munich, and occasionally Herr Doktor Franz at the Philosophical Institute. But Professor Ausbach is the only one who asks me to help him in his work. He looked at the broken instrument. Is there anything you can do?

Rosenstrauch did not answer at once. He was a measured man who had learned the hard way to be careful in all his actions. It had taken him many years to build up his small glass cutting workshop in Brno, from which he now made a modest living, but far too many of those years had been hard and unrewarding. There were still many of the ansehnlich Brno citizens who would not patronize his establishment.

Those that did found that he sold good quality glassware, but few of his patrons knew that as a sideline, Herr Rosenstrauch had a passion for the science of optiks. Whenever he could, he bought himself lenses and prisms with which he carried out experiments on the properties of light. As a profitable side line, he also built high quality telescopes, cameras and other optical instruments such as microscopes.

It was because of his interest in physics and the principles of bending light that he had tried, only once, to join the Brno Science Society, but the hostility that greeted his application had convinced him to look else where for intellectual support. That was how he had found Mendel, and a comfortable friendship had sprung up between the two scientists.

Come with me. Let's see what we can do, the glass maker said, picking up the small box of lenses and leaving the broken microscope to Mendel. Together they moved to the back of the store, through a curtained off doorway and into Rosenstrauch's private workshop.

The workshop

Put it down over there, said Rosenstrauch, pointing in the general direction of the middle of the room. Mendel, after moving aside a clutter of assorted tools, put the broken microscope onto a solid, but heavily worn oak table. Then he looked around him.

A heavy black curtain covered the only window, high on a north wall, so the room was lit by a series of oil burning lamps, the smell of which filled the room with a faint oriental odor. By the light of the lamps, Mendel could see that two of the walls were lined with rows and rows of small drawers, each labeled with a neat, calligraphic sign.

There were a couple of old wooden chairs, one of which was piled high with assorted books and papers. More books stood in confused stacks in the corners, and Mendel was sure he saw a brass astrolabe mixed with a clutter of walking sticks propped in a blue Chinese vase beside the door. But the item of furniture that dominated the room was a massive oak table.

On this table were a series of instruments, polished rods of iron and wood, and an array of clasps, clamps and fasteners. Scattered in slotted boxes were hundreds and hundreds of pieces of pure glass, shaped into lenses, slabs, prisms, and other shapes that had no common name.

Impressive, murmured Mendel, instantly fascinated by the tools of investigative science, many of which he had seen last as an undergraduate student in Vienna.

Thank you, said Rosenstrauch, are you interested in optics?

But of course,' Mendel exclaimed, I studied with Herr Professor Doktor Doppler many years ago, and some of my first experiments were about the properties of lenses. Indeed, Mendel had encountered, and been taught by, the famous physicist Christian Doppler, when he was still the director of the Physical Institute in Vienna. A dull lecturer himself, Doppler had, never the less, seen promise in student Mendel. The kind Professor had taken pity on the penniless student and given him an important position as assistant demonstrator", even though all these valuable places had been filled long before Mendel arrived.

Doppler, who had died of chronic lung disease in 1852, had discovered the Doppler effect, where sound waves coming from a moving object, such as a train whistle, change in pitch as the object moves towards the observer, and then away from them.

What are you doing? Mendel asked.

At the moment I am making telescopes as fast as I can, was the reply. All the officers arriving with the Imperial Army want good telescopes before they go into battle, and I make the best ones. I have sold two already and I expect to sell a lot more before the recruitment is over.

Mendel understood why an officer in the army would need a telescope, but not why a war was expected, or what Rosenstrauch meant by 'recruitment', so he asked.

Bismarck, whispered Rosenstrauch, lowering his voice and glancing nervously around him as if he expected the Iron Chancellor to appear from behind his boxes. Many people in Brno that spring felt the same way. For over a year Bismarck had been needling and provoking the government of Francis Joseph [see footnote] until the Emperor had finally responded by putting his regiments in Bohemia and Venetia on a war footing.

I have heard, Rosenstrauch went on, that Prussia has signed a short-term alliance with Italy only last week, if this is true then we now have armed enemies to the north and the south of us. If it comes to war, and many say it will, we will have to fight on two fronts.

But why should we be fighting a war at all? Mendel asked. I seem to remember that only a few years ago, we were allies with Prussia in a war against the Dutch, or was it the Danes?

Rosenstrauch sighed. He could not understand men like Brother Gregory who managed to make their way through life completely cut off from politics [see footnote] and all current events. It was in 1864 and it was against Denmark, he corrected, we, and the Prussians, forced the Danes to surrender the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein - don't ask why! he added quickly, seeing the look on Mendel's face. It seemed like a great victory, for both countries, but in fact it was only the start of our troubles with Prussia.

Why? Mendel couldn't help asking.

Because ever since, the Prussians and that trouble maker Bismarck, have been arguing about who should get what. Just last year, around the time you were giving your talk about peas, Bismarck proposed that the Duke of Augustenburg rule the two duchies, as a compromise, but our Emperor had little sympathy for that idea and turned him down. So, the question of what to do with Schleswig and Holstein still festers.

But, hesitated Mendel, not sure of his facts, didn't we have a change in government last year, and didn't the new Minister of State claim to have sorted all that out?

You mean Belcredi, Rosenstrauch said, some what surprised that Mendel knew of the 'Ministry of Counts [see footnote]'. Yes, when the Emperor dismissed Schmerling in July last year (1865) he appointed Graf Richard Belcredi as his prime minister, who, as far as I can see, has only made matters worse. Rosenstrauch hesitated, what he was about to say could be considered by some, treason. He lowered his voice.

"In August, he negotiated with Prussia and came up with the treaty of Gastein. Prussia paid 2,250,000 thalers of silver for Lauenberg but were also given control of Schleswig and Holstein and allowed to move their troops into Keil. At best this compromise only gave us some breathing room, but in September Belcredi revoked the ‘February Patent [see footnote]' - our pitiful, joke of a constitution - and has ruled by decree ever since."

Mendel nodded. Brother Matthew, his friend, had almost had a fit when Count Belcredi had first been appointed Minister of State, seeing in the Moravian someone who would try to restore the fictional power of the Austrian nobles.

But, when the constitution of the Empire had been revoked, Brother Matthew switched his loyalties, enthusiastically endorsed the move and cheered the Count. For, as one of his first acts as Minister, Belcredi had established Czech as the language of instruction in all Bohemian schools, where only German had been allowed before. Klacel, Brother Matthew, was an ardent Czech nationalist [see footnote], and any victory of this kind, no matter how small, was welcomed.

So shouldn't we be at peace with Prussia? Mendel asked.

Tell that to Bismarck, Rosenstrauch snorted, while Belcredi was revoking our constitution, the Prussian chancellor was visiting the French Emperor and conspiring with him to strip us of our Venetian territories, and twisting the Italians into stabbing us in the back. Here the glass cutter was oversimplifying. Although Bismarck did indeed try to get the French to assist him in putting armed pressure on Austria, it was the Austrians themselves that tried to keep France neutral by offering to cede Venetia to Italy. They would find compensation, they thought, by annexing Silesia.

Then, Rosenstrauch continued, in January this year he issued a formal complaint that we were stirring up trouble in Holstein in favor of the Duke of Augustenburg. It was a direct provocation, and in February Belcredi and our Emperor had no choice but to declare our alliance with Prussia at an end. I don't think it impressed Bismarck, however.

Why?

"Because he promptly set about excluding us from the German Confederation [see footnote]. Even the most pacific of our ministers saw this as an open invitation to war. Why to you think they have mobilized the Grenz Infantry, and begun moving line regiments into this area?"

"You