The Confusion

"You powers of observation are as keen as ever, monsieur," said the King, "and I have never been more pleased to number you among my subjects."

At this d'Avaux bowed very deeply. Eliza could not help but think that, for all the frustration and defeat d'Avaux had suffered here, this immense compliment from le Roi was more than compensation enough. It made her wonder: Did the King know everything?

The King continued: "Monsieur le comte d'Avaux has, as usual, spoken wisely. It follows that if we are to baffle Envy's devotees, we should celebrate all that is magnificent in this Realm: with funerals, the magnificence that has passed, and with weddings, the magnificence that is yet to come. Let it be so."

And it was so.

Most of the guests went home following the funeral in the ballroom, but enough remained to fill the chapel for the wedding. After that, they went directly into a second funerary mass; for Madame la duchesse d'Arcachon had not recovered from the sight of her husband's head pulled from the box. What everyone had taken for a swoon, had in fact been a stroke. One side of her body had already gone lifeless by the time they had carried her to her bedchamber, and during the subsequent hours, the paralysis had spread to engulf the other side as well, and finally the heart had stopped. And so, by the time the newlyweds emerged from the doors of the Hôtel Arcachon, around midnight, and climbed into a borrowed carriage (for the white seashell-coach was both fouled and broken), both of Étie

The new Duke and Duchess consummated their union under many blankets in a carriage en route to Versailles, and arrived at La Dunette in the darkest and coldest hours before dawn. Fresh hoof-prints in the snow on La Dunette's gravel paths told them that they were not the first to come this way since the snow had ceased to fall. When they reached the château, they found the servants already awake and dressed, and red around the eyes. The doye

Fräulein!

You and your Vagabond have something of mine. I have something of yours.

—L

DECEMBER 1690

It seems to us indeed that this block of marble brought from Genoa would have been exactly the same if it had been left there, because our senses make us judge only superficially, but at bottom because of the co

—LEIBNIZ

THE FORMAL INTRODUCTIONS HAD PLAYED against the backdrop of a fireplace large enough to burn a small village. For half an hour or so, Nicolas Fatio de Duillier and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz had inched towards each other as if conjoined by an invisible spring stretched through the middle of the muttering swarm of Freiherren and Freifrauen. When finally they drew within hailing distance of each other they switched over to French and launched into an easy chat about involutes, evolutes, and radial curves. Leibniz moved on into a tutorial about a new notion he had been toying with in his spare time, called parallel curves, which he illustrated by drawing invisible lines on the hearth with the toe of his boot. Petty nobles of Lower Saxony who trespassed on these were politely asked to move, so that Fatio could draw several invisible lines and curves of his own. Then he managed, in a single grammatically correct sentence, to make reference to Apollonius of Perga, the Folium of Descartes, and the Limaçon of Pascal.

The walls of the room were decorated with impossibly optimistic paintings, two to three fathoms on a side, of sowers, reapers, and gleaners plying their respective trades in sun-gilded fields. Fickle light was shed on these by flames burning in bronze baskets carried on the heads of naked, muscle-bound, bronze blackamoors planted on ten-ton pedestals in the corners.

Fatio looked significantly at his watch. "The sun rose—what—two hours ago? At this latitude, we have—say—two hours of daylight remaining?"

"A bit more, sir, by your leave," answered Leibniz with a wink, or perhaps a cinder had flown into his eye. But that was all that needed to be said. Both men turned their backs to the fire for a last helping of warmth, then marched towards the room's exit, groping through darkness and smoke for the door.

They were blinded by powerful bluish light. The Schloß's galleries—which served not only as co

"Some family," Fatio ventured. "One hears of them but does not meet them."

"They grow into the interstices left between other families," Leibniz admitted. "You would find the Hanover crowd more interesting."

"They do seem impossibly fecund," Fatio said. "The Winter Queen left children strewn all over the place, and Sophie, at one time or another, has given birth to nearly everyone."

"Sophie married in to this lot," Leibniz said, glancing back.

"And that is how you became her librarian?"

"Privy Councillor," Leibniz corrected him.

"Sir! I beg you to accept my apologies and my congratulations!" a

"Never mind, it happened quite recently. In brief, the family of Dukes whose ancestral home is this Schloß put on a tremendous spate of baby-making round the time of the Thirty Years' War, probably because they were besieged here for æons by Danes, Swedes, and God knows who else, and had nothing to do but fuck. Four brothers were born in an interval of eight years! All survived!"

"Calamity!"

"Indeed. Through the 1650s the lads ran riot through the courts of Christendom, trying to mitigate the u

"But my dear Doctor, how did the youngest brother end up in the best position?"

They came to a corner of the Schloß and turned into another endless gallery.

"In 1665 the drunk one died. Ernst August and Georg Wilhelm—the syphilitic—were off sowing their wild oats. So John Frederick—"