A solitary supper at Frombork

Copernicus has spent the winter at Frombork, working on the manuscript he has kept private for years, and tonight he eats alone with the pages beside him. The canonry keeps a modest table: black pudding, a herb pottage, manchet bread, and a jug of spiced wine.

He reads again the argument that troubled him from the start — that if the Earth moves, the stars should shift as we watch them, and yet they do not. His answer is that the stars are unimaginably far away, which is not a proof but a rescue. He is aware that he is asking the reader to give up the solid, motionless Earth at the center of everything, and he is not sure he will publish. The candle burns low over the dish.