The English Pupil Summary

It is a late December afternoon in 1777. A man tucked in a small sleigh orders his coachman to keep driving. The coachman is afraid, as his employers had forbid him from taking the sleigh beyond the city limits. At the same time, his master is dying and enjoys the afternoon drives.

Carl Linnaeus looks out from where he is wrapped in sheepskins and thinks of Lappland where he'd explored when he was younger. He had been twenty-five then and now he is seventy. His famous memory is gone, taken away by a series of strokes. Now he forgets things: where he is, the names of plants and animals, places, dates, and his own name.

The sleigh continues through the snow. Linnaeus's legs are paralyzed, along with one arm, and he can't wash or feed himself. When he falls from...