Sometimes we received wine and victuals from
below, which were drawn up by pulleys.
The knowledge I had in mathematics, gave me great assistance in
acquiring their phraseology, which depended much upon that science,
and music; and in the latter I was not unskilled. Their ideas are
perpetually conversant in lines and figures. If they would, for
example, praise the beauty of a woman, or any other animal, they
describe it by rhombs, circles, parallelograms, ellipses, and other
geometrical terms, or by words of art drawn from music, needless
here to repeat. I observed in the king's kitchen all sorts of
mathematical and musical instruments, after the figures of which
they cut up the joints that were served to his majesty's table.
Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevil, without one right
angle in any apartment; and this defect arises from the contempt
they bear to practical geometry, which they despise as vulgar and
mechanic; those instructions they give being too refined for the
intellects of their workmen, which occasions perpetual mistakes.
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