60
" Forget your magic mirror," she decided to say. "If I lived here, I would spend my whole life in here, reading."
"They're just... books...."
He carefully lit the candelabra at the front and placed Lumière on the floor, dismissing him.
"Just books? That's like saying Alexandria is just a library." She ran over to the closest shelf and tilted her head, reading the titles. "You don't understand. I don't understand how you don't understand. Look- here's an ancient text in Greek about astronomy... and next to it is everything Galileo Galilei ever wrote!! This whole section is about the stars and planets and the entire universe!"
The Beast stood, looking slightly embarrassed, scratching the back of his neck with his hand.
Belle grabbed a book and ran over to him, shoving it in his face. "Up until this man, Copernicus, everyone thought the entire universe rotated around the earth- that we were the center of it all." She flipped open to a page that had an engraving of planets and their paths, little callouts to their names and the length of their orbits. "Thanks to men like him and Tycho Brahe and Kepler, we now know nothing revolves around the earth- except the moon. "
― Liz Braswell , As Old as Time