And the agent went ashen, according to the Emperor, the astronomer told Leibniz. And in a quavering voice he had managed to say, This is an eel, when the Emperor raised his hand to stop him and said, You know who would enjoy this is the Imperial Fish Specialist. Now of course, the Court Chamberlain told the astronomer, there’s no such thing as an imperial fish specialist! But the Emperor summons one of his valets and instructs him in a whisper to send in a servant clad in academic finery who is to nod yes after the first twelve fish named by the agent but after the thirteenth fish to shake his head almost imperceptibly no. My Imperial Fish Specialist knows all about fish, he will enjoy this, he will enjoy this, the Emperor kept telling his agent. Soon this fictitious fish expert entered the Chamber accompanied by two imperial guards whom the Emperor had sent for also and who took up their positions on each side of the agent, where they stood impassively with their immense swords in front of them balanced by their sharp tips on the silk rug. Please identify the fish, the Emperor said. And I am thinking to myself, the Emperor tells me, the Court Chamberlain told the astronomer, This is a lesson in proper vision. I am teaching him how to see. The relationship between surfaces and essences. The significance and insignificance of certain surfaces, the attendant presence and absence of certain essences. The difference between books and the Book of Nature, between the self-serving writers and the ambitious publishers of his beloved books and the writer and publisher of the Book of Nature, the self-publisher of the Book of Nature, i.e., God. After this, I’m thinking, the Emperor told his Court Chamberlain, my agent will never again rely on his books when his eyes will do! Never again on the opinions of his forefathers when his eyes will do! The fish, the fish, please identify the fish, the Emperor said, and his art agent, in a now thoroughly strangulated voice, began by naming the more recognizable creatures, first the eel again, then the lobster, then the octopus, and then the crab. After each one the Emperor glanced at his Imperial Fish Specialist, who nodded. Tortoise, stingray, sea horse, shrimp: all correct, indicated the ersatz fish specialist. Swordfish? Nod. Pike? Nod. Flounder? Carp? Nod! Nod! The agent was gaining confidence. He must have learned a thing or two from those nauseating Mediterranean fish markets he had to pass through en route from one gallery to another, one library to the next! the agent must have thought, said the Emperor. A mind such as mine is actually always absorbing the world! Now he pointed at the creature that constitutes the eye of Arcimboldo’s woman and said: Sunfish. Ironically, the Emperor would later learn, as he told the Court Chamberlain, the Court Chamberlain the astronomer, and the astronomer Leibniz, that this was quite correct: The eye of the woman was, in fact, the eye of a sunfish. But the agent obviously did not know that, and when he and the Emperor looked over at the Imperial Fish Specialist—who pursed his lips and shook his head—the blood that little by little had returned to the art agent’s face now drained from it once more, and the Emperor murmured, Take him to the dungeon and gouge out his eyes, they aren’t his anyway and he knows not how to use them, and the two guards had hauled the agent halfway across the Castle complex before the Emperor ran up, almost speechless with mirth, and revealed that all this was just a little joke, a little joke, that’s all!—albeit a little joke with a dead-serious lesson in it. Via humor, I am honing your eye, the Emperor told his agent. Arcimboldo, you see, the Emperor told his agent, began with fishes, but out of fishes he made the most magnificent face, whereas Bronzino began with a face and ended up with nothing. You cannot aim right at the face! The goal of course is a human face, not fish, but one arrives at human faces only through the roundabout route of fishes. (The Emperor added: I am saying something fundamentally philosophical when I say: The Bronzino is boring.) The true artist walks straight toward the insignificant, while slyly keeping an eye on the significant, and moving at all times away from the gorgeous, he instructed his art agent, the Emperor recalled. The Emperor had a lot more to say on the subject of significance and insignificance, but he noticed at that point that his art agent had urinated down one of his pant legs, so he thanked him graciously for both paintings—which can now be found in adjacent galleries at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna—and sent him on his way. The astronomer told Leibniz: It was a nasty little joke, the Emperor told his Court Chamberlain, but from then on he brought me the most marvelous art. Peering into his telescope, the astronomer added: One wants above all to understand the Sun, but one cannot aim one’s telescope right at the Sun!