Now, it seems, according to the Court Chamberlain, who repeated several times that he was only passing along what he had been told by his sources in Frankfurt, that Archduke Matthias’s primary stratagem for persuading the seven Electors that upon His Majesty’s death the crown ought to go to Margaretha, his eldest, instead of Heinrich, his firstborn son, had little to do with the latter’s alleged illegitimacy, as that line of argument, even if it overcame the challenge of His Majesty’s Edict of Legitimation, which is doubtful, would of course disqualify not only Heinrich but Margaretha as well. “Matthias is more clever than that!” No, his case rested not on Prince Heinrich’s alleged illegitimacy but on his alleged insanity, for which the Archduke’s main piece of evidence, and in fact his sole piece of evidence, was the unfortunate act that took place in Heinrich’s turret in the middle of November, two Sundays before the start of Advent. The Court Chamberlain’s sources in Frankfurt said that Archduke Matthias could not go two sentences without referring to “the things Heinrich did to the barber-surgeon’s daughter.” A devilishly clever politician, Archduke Matthias deployed the phrases “the things Heinrich did to the barber-surgeon’s daughter” or “the unspeakable atrocities Heinrich committed on the evening of November fourteenth” to imply, without ever explicitly asserting it, that Prince Heinrich was not of sound mind. Through shrewd repetition Matthias invested the words “Heinrich’s behavior on the night of November fourteenth” with the meaning of the unsaid words “Heinrich’s madness,” or even—and it seemed to the astronomer that the Chamberlain shot him a pointed glance—“Heinrich’s inherited madness.” “From our earliest youth,” muttered the Emperor, gazing at the horn, “Matthias has always called me mad. My gentleness he took for madness. My inwardness—madness. That I am soft-spoken makes me, for Matthias, mad … My interest in gems, madness, my interest in trompe l’oeil, in tapestries featuring elements of trompe l’oeil, madness, my interest in mechanics, madness, in emblems, madness.” The Chamberlain: “But it was always a political maneuver to call you mad, from the time you were boys,” and the Emperor, with, as the astronomer told Leibniz, sudden startling cogency, bellowed: “No, my dear Chamberlain, it is not always about politics! He truly thinks me mad, he truly thinks me truly mad, imagine being told by your little brother that you speak too close to other people’s faces, and realizing that he is right! What he and everyone else knew how to do naturally I had to learn. Why? Conversations he could follow I could not. Why could he follow them? Why could I not? Our father used to bring farces to the Hofburg, French farces in private productions, he and my brothers adored those French farces but for me they were private nightmares. They used to laugh and laugh at them, our father would laugh, so would Matthias, so would Albert, and so would Ernst, and so so would I, laugh and laugh I mean, but all the time I was laughing I was wondering: Can everyone tell that I don’t know why I am laughing? Watching Father’s face to know when to start laughing and when to stop … Sometimes I had an inkling why I was laughing but usually that inkling was wrong, it was actually something else that was funny, the thing that I thought was funny was usually really serious. A horrible thing, my dear Chamberlain, to laugh and laugh yet not know why you are laughing … when everyone else in your family seems to know … To not have inherited the family sense of humor: horrible … It is horrible, and it’s not politics when Matthias yells: Crazy Rudolf doesn’t know why he’s laughing! This happened once, I forgot to keep an eye on my father’s face and I kept laughing long after everyone else stopped laughing. And Matthias stood up, mid-farce, and pointed at me, and shouted: Look, Crazy Rudolf doesn’t know why he’s laughing, he’s laughing and he doesn’t know why!” The Emperor gazed at the bowl. “And I am the eldest, remember, I should know why I’m laughing. So I said: I know exactly why I’m laughing. And our father said: Let him be, Matthias. And I said: No, it’s fine, I know why I am laughing! And Matthias said: Good, then tell us what’s so funny, Crazy Rudolf. And I said something, and obviously whatever I said wasn’t the funny thing because suddenly everyone else was laughing, roaring with laughter, my whole family and even the actors. And Albert, obviously feeling guilty, or maybe it was Ernst actually, said, You’ve got to brush up on your French, Rudolf! And Matthias cried: He understands French perfectly, it’s not the French he doesn’t understand! Meaning I suppose that it was the human affairs. None of this, so far as I can tell, my dear Chamberlain, touches on imperial politics rather than simple, straightforward brotherly cruelty, save insofar as I know that Father always lamented that the son of his who inherited his melancholy was next in line for the throne while the son who inherited his sense of humor, plus his equestrian prowess, was not … I have never been comfortable on a horse, by the way, Matthias has always been comfortable on horses, he belongs on a horse, I don’t, I do not see what that has to do with politics…” The Court Chamberlain begged His Majesty’s forgiveness. “I only meant that as long as I have known him, I’ve always understood the Archduke best when I understand him as a wholly rational, wholly political being, as political reason incarnate.” The Emperor, satisfied, gazed intensely at the horn, the astronomer told Leibniz. The Court Chamberlain went on: “And it is part of his political genius to refer in Frankfurt only to Heinrich’s behavior, never once to his soul or state of mind. Here Matthias was a step ahead of us. While we suspected, rightly, that he would make the case for Heinrich’s being mad, we assumed, wrongly, that he would do so in those terms … And we assumed that the moment he turned the Frankfurt conclave into a referendum on the state of Heinrich’s mind, or soul, it would—like all symposia that seek to settle a matter incapable of being settled, for it is well known that the state of one’s soul is opaque to others, murky also to oneself, and seen clearly only by God—descend into an anarchy of opinion and interpretation, an anarchy without end. And if, as happens often enough, the disputants decided to truncate their otherwise infinite deliberations and solve the insoluble by appealing to the most prestigious man of science in their vicinity, whose expert judgment all would agree to abide by … well, in case of that, we had briefed fourteen of Frankfurt’s most eminent physicians, each of whom, if summoned, was prepared to testify, firstly, that Prince Heinrich’s mania on the night in question was consistent only with a blockage of the so-called pineal net, a membrane the many holes of which ordinarily allow the spirit to ascend and descend as it wishes, but which when blocked will induce the tics, perverse temptations, and sad thoughts that led to the unfortunate death and defenestration on November fourteenth of the barber-surgeon’s daughter; secondly, that Prince Heinrich’s mood from the morning of November fifteenth to the present day indicates beyond doubt that his pineal net holes have cleared up considerably, possibly completely; and thirdly, that these holes could be kept permanently clear (and so Heinrich permanently sane) simply by the ingestion once a week between his bloodletting and his bath of an electuary composed of pearls, amber, violets, verbena, barley, lettuce seed, the cordial powder aromaticum rosarum, and three droplets of human breast milk, as well as liberal quantities of saffron, honey, and sweet clover.”