Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch fabric merchant who lives in seventeenth-century Delft, has always had a rapacious curiosity. Since youth, he has possessed a fresh sense of wonder, an insatiable need to know, and a conviction that the visible is just a fraction of the material world. This is why, after years of labor, he built the world's first microscope at the age of twenty-seven. In the process, however, he has completely alienated his family. He lives in his laboratory, and he and his wife never think of each other. His eldest daughter, Marie, runs the shop and keeps her father fed out of a seventeenth-century sense of duty, but she does not love him. In the years after his triumph, Leeuwenhoek examines and dissects everything he can possibly get his hands on. He does not speak Latin, the language of science, so communicating his findings is a daunting task. Eventually, however, a member of the Royal Society visits, confirms his findings, and writes to his colleagues in London. They are staggered. Leeuwenhoek has finally won the renown he deserves. One day, he makes the greatest breakthrough of his life—he examines a drop of water. That day, he becomes the first person in the world to see microbial life. Marie enters just then, and he rushes to her as he sobs, and implores her to give him a tear. She despises him, and she pulls away, but he kisses her hungrily until a drop falls from her eye. Once he has that, he forgets about her and goes back to his work. He has, he realizes, forever changed the nature of belief. To him, there is no difference between the discovery of life and the creation of it.