The Confusion

“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-”

“By process of elimination, he would be the obese Catholic?”

“Yes. He appropriated the Duchy and raised an army to defend it. By the time news of this coup de main had made its way to the Venetian brothel where Ernst August and Georg Wilhelm had set up their headquarters, ’twas a fait accompli. Later, like good brothers, they worked out a settlement. John Frederick got the great prize, and was made Duke of Hanover. Georg Wilhelm became Duke of Celle. Ernst August-despite being a Protestant-remained the Bishop of Osnabruck. The odds and ends of the clan ended up here in Wolfenbuttel-you have just met them. Now, Ernst August and Sophie had already resolved to make their little fiefdom into a Parnassus, a kingdom of Reason-”

“So they hired you, naturally.”

“No, actually, there was a lot of that going round at the time. John Frederick wanted to do the same at Hanover.”

“It must have been a good time to be a savant.”

“Indeed, one could name one’s price. John Frederick had more money and a vast library.”

“Right, now I am starting to remember it. Huygens told me that after he taught you everything he knew concerning mathematics-which would have been round about the early 1670s-you had to leave Paris and take a job in some cold bleak place.” Fatio looked significantly out the window.

“’Twas Hanover actually-a distinction without a difference, as to you it would seem very like Wolfenbuttel.”

Leibniz ushered Fatio into an entrance hall dominated by frighteningly massive staircases.

Sounding a bit perplexed, Fatio said, “Rather a lot of people must have died then, for Ernst August to become Duke of Hanover-”

“John Frederick died in ’79. Georg Wilhelm still lives. But it was Ernst August who became Duke of Hanover, by dint of this or that sub-clause in the agreement made between him and his brothers-I’ll spare you details.”

“So Sophie got to merge her Parnassus with John Frederick’s-of which you were the crowning glory-”

“Really you do flatter, sir.”

“But why did I have to come down here to meet you? I’d expected to find you at Hanover.”