The Confusion

 

Schlo? Wolfenbüttel, Lower Saxony

 

 

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 connection of things the whole universe with all of its parts would be entirely different, and would have been another from the beginning, if the least thing in it went otherwise than it does.

 

 

 

—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 Lima?on 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 Schlo?’s galleries—which served not only as connecting passages, but also as a sort of perimeter defense against the climate—ran around its exterior wall, and had plenty of windows. The low light of the heavy winter sun ricocheted off the ice-crusted snow that covered the dead gardens, filling these corridors with chilly brilliance. An indignant servant slammed the doors behind them to keep the heat in. Leibniz and Fatio began to match each other’s pace down the length of the gallery, moving just short of a sprint. The cold seemed to have dissolved their stockings. It was imperative to keep the knees and calves working.

 

“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!” announced Fatio, faltering and reaching for his hat so that he could bow; but Leibniz caught his elbow and pulled him along.

 

“Never mind, it happened quite recently. In brief, the family of Dukes whose ancestral home is this Schlo? put on a tremendous spate of baby-making round the time of the Thirty Years’ War, probably because they were besieged here for ?ons 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 unnatural surplus of virgins that had built up during the War. All of them wanted Sophie. One of them was too fat and, in any event, Catholic. One was too drunk and impotent. One was famously syphilitic. But the youngest—Ernst August—was, as the F?ry Tale has it, just right! Sophie married him.”

 

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

 

They came to a corner of the Schlo? 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—”

 

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