Gottfried: “This, My Lady, is a gift from the Heavenly Father. It cannot be anything else.”

Leibniz: “Referring, I think, to the harmony between words and things, not to the sudden cessation of Heinrich’s malady.”

“Perhaps,” said Margaretha, “you can now understand why, a few months ago, when my brother, in a jealous rage, butchered a young lady and flung her mutilated body to his hogs, our father, besides shielding little Katharina from the truth of what her beloved big brother had done, shielded him from the judicial authorities, as well, and locked him up in his turret instead. Father still holds out hope that he’ll get well again. That he’ll get, I mean, sane again. Father still holds out hope for Heinrich’s sanity! That is why you’re here, you know: not to tally up the stars, but to make Heinrich sane again. The previous Imperial Astronomer wasn’t able to make Heinrich sane again, but maybe you with that magical tube of yours will return him to his senses, my father must be thinking!” And she burst into laughter.

“There has been no justice,” she added.

She said: “His only punishment for murdering that poor girl has been a halt on his supply of Seville oranges … An amazing mismatch between punishment and crime … Citrus … Murder … Taking a life … The things he did to the body … Of a girl he claimed to love … Mutilation … Versus no more oranges … When he actually still gets daily grapefruits … And daily tangerines … You’ll find the floor of his turret strewn with citrus rinds … Still,” she said, “the freeze on Seville oranges, probably because it is the first time Father, or else the Chamberlain under whose sway Father has fallen, has imposed any constraint on him whatsoever, has perturbed my brother a great deal…”

“And she picked up that wrinkled little orange again and handed it to me,” the astronomer told Leibniz.

“The remarkable thing,” she said, “is that Father still intends to be succeeded by Heinrich.”

When the astronomer tried to teach her a bit of algebra, using the numbers in the notebook in which she tabulated Heinrich’s expenses, she laughed and told him not to bother. “Father doesn’t actually care whether I learn mathematics, just whether Heinrich does. If you were told to teach me mathematics, too, well, that’s just my mother nudging him with her knee from beyond the grave.” Suddenly she emitted a sob. “I miss my mother! She loved me!” For a moment, according to the astronomer, tears ran down her cheeks. Then Princess Margaretha laughed at her own outburst, flicked away a tear, smoothed her skirt, and said: “I want you to know, by the way, that I’m actually happy in spite of everything. Deep down, none of this affects me.”

Wilhelmina in her wedding gown tiptoed past the open door.

“It is very improper,” Gottfried was saying as the astronomer left the Small Dining Room, “to eat a pastry with one’s hands.”