And the secret that Nicolas never shared with anyone? It was the book from his father, The Elixir of Immortality.
WHEN THE NEW KING took the throne in 1774, Rector Charrier announced an essay contest at Lycée Louis-le-Grand. Participants were to write a tribute to Louis XVI.
The consequences of the competition were far-reaching, for they sealed not only the fate of the king but also that of all of Europe. When my great-uncle described that episode of French history to Sasha and me, I became very upset. I wasn’t angry at my great-uncle; I was furious with the king. That day marked me with antiroyalist sentiments that have lasted all my life.
In the version we heard, Nicolas wasn’t particularly fond of the king. Eloise, the wet nurse, had told him that Louis XVI loved to hunt, especially for deer, and every autumn he would visit the forest near her home city of Pau, the domain of the most noble stags. His entourage always included a great number of pompous nobles known throughout the region for their swinish and constantly drunken behavior. They manhandled women and spread chaos, boisterously joking and taunting one another. One year a thoroughly inebriated count cut the throat of a twelve-year-old girl who resisted when he tried to rape her. He disposed of the body in the forest and later acknowledged his crime without the least sign of regret. In his boundless conceit Louis waved away the accusations. He told the girl’s parents with a sneer that they would have to compensate the count for his suffering. The message was clear: Might makes right whenever the poor accuse the rich. Eloise said the people of Pau thought the Dauphin should be hung upside down at the end of a rope to send more of his blue blood to his brain. She spat on the ground three times after pronouncing the word “Dauphin.”
Nicolas had little desire to write an encomium of such a man, but he had no choice. He peered furtively into Benjamin Spinoza’s book for inspiration from that font of wisdom. He immediately came across a passage that caught his interest. The resulting essay called for thorough social reform in the kingdoms of Europe and declared that with the aim of strengthening France’s preeminent standing in the world, Louis should lead by glorious example. It was a superb text. Despite his inherent modesty Nicolas knew his essay would win. But instead of seeing it as a triumph he viewed it as a frightful danger to him, because the winner would be granted the privilege of reading his essay before King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. Nothing could possibly be more terrifying for Nicolas. Without a word he turned the essay over to Maximilien, who promptly agreed to present it to the rector as his own work.
YEARS LATER when Nicolas sat in the Conciergerie he would remember every detail of what happened after the rector had proclaimed Maximilien Robespierre the winner of the contest.
The child of poverty from Arras, assured early in his life by his mother and the bishop that his destiny would be intertwined with history, was giddy with joy and anticipation. His greatest ambition had always been meeting the king and queen.
The reading of the tribute was scheduled for eleven o’clock on the morning of November 1, 1774. The royal couple were to arrive by coach, pause on the school grounds long enough to listen to it, and then continue their journey. Maximilien was in place an hour ahead of time, on what turned out to be the coldest day of the year. The wind blew and hail battered his face. He cursed the weather and blew on his hands in an effort to keep them warm. The royal coach did not appear. Two hours after the scheduled arrival, all the other pupils had gone inside to thaw out, and Maximilien was the only one still outside. The rector waved and gestured for him to come inside, but Maximilien scornfully turned away. The rector commented that he had never seen such a stubborn young man. Nicolas was convinced that his friend was endangering his health. Their classmates thought the boy was out of his mind. Maximilien hid his disappointment at the late arrival of the king and queen, bravely resisted the grim force of the weather, and remained steadfast in his place. But when the royal coach appeared at last and drove past without stopping, he burst into tears.
Perhaps it was the five freezing hours spent in the school yard, but it might just as well have been the shattered dream of reciting a tribute directly to the king that filled Maximilian’s heart with black hatred for Louis XVI as he returned to the school. His classmates couldn’t believe their ears when they heard him heaving out his angry curses, and many shook their heads in amazement. Everyone thought he had gone mad when they heard him vow that the king would pay dearly for this, with his life. Maximilien shrieked that now his own life had meaning and purpose: He would make sure that someday the king would be executed.
“Louis must die,” he cried out, “so that the country can live!”
LATE IN MARCH 1786 Nicolas made the acquaintance of the woman who two months later would become his wife and would bear his two sons. It happened in Rome.
All of this is recorded in the little notebook smuggled in to him by Rector Charrier, the only person permitted to visit him in his prison cell. With unheard of discipline and concentration Nicolas filled it to the last line of the final page on the night before Robespierre had him beheaded. Nicolas eventually had been unable to countenance his friend’s reign of terror and had criticized him openly. It’s all there in the notebook—names, places, and dates, all those densely recorded details that summarize a man’s life.
Here he describes how he translated Benjamin Spinoza’s exalted reflections about liberty and equality into simple, immediately understandable texts peppered with slogans against tyranny. The desire for revolution had long been brewing among the common folk, bred of resentment against injustices and a long-smoldering hatred of the social order. All Nicolas did was articulate the calls to freedom and the hopes of the oppressed, expressed in pamphlets he delivered to Robespierre each month. His friend distributed them via clandestine channels to escape the censors, building up his own standing among the Jacobins at the same time.
Nicolas records in his notebook that he completed his studies and joined the bar. Many Parisians remembered Hector Spinoza and were happy to turn to the son who had followed in his father’s footsteps. They furnished him with a considerable clientele and sent him off on lengthy journeys.
He traveled to Italy in the company of Count Rémy-Bertillière to negotiate arrangements for the importation of blue marble. The billowing green landscapes of Tuscany are described with such feeling that the reader almost catches the whiff of perfume of the flowering hawthorn trees.
One day their affairs brought them to St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. It started to rain. Nicolas and the count sought shelter in one of the richly decorated chapels. They discovered they were not alone. A dark-haired beauty sat in one corner with a book in her hand. Nicolas recognized its distinctive gray cover at once. It was Système de la nature ou des loix du monde physique et du monde moral. He had a copy of the book by the Baron d’Holbach in his own library. Scandalized talk provoked by that book had spread with a speed more characteristic of epidemics. It was often denounced as “the bible of materialism.” In many parts of Europe the ignorant masses happily used it as fuel for book burnings.
Nicolas’s curiosity was piqued by the sight of that young woman sitting at the very heart of the Christian faith and reading a book that proved God does not exist. He walked up to her, bowed, stretched out a hand, and asked, “Mademoiselle, from what splendid star have you fallen so that I might have the pleasure of encountering you here?”
“I am from the Jewish ghetto here in Rome,” she replied. She gave her name as Chiara Luzzatto.
“Es de buena famiya?” inquired Nicolas with a smile. “Are you related to Moishe Chaim Luzzatto the Cabalist and philosopher?”
“Moishe was my paternal grandfather but I never met him. He died twenty years before I was born. He left Amsterdam and moved with his family to the Holy Land, where he founded a synagogue in Acre. Only a few years later his entire family perished in a plague epidemic. All, that is, except my father. He is now a rabbi here in Rome and carries on my grandfather’s work.” Nicolas
heard the pride in her voice.
It wasn’t difficult to see that Chiara had deeply impressed Nicolas, for within ten minutes he was holding her hand in his. Nicolas, who had always been abashed in the presence of women, later explained his behavior by saying that events in our lives relating to love are guided by rules more magical than rational; accordingly, it is wisest not to try to understand them.
But on that final night in the dank cell in the Conciergerie, with his whole being filled with the certainty that even if his own head would soon be lying in the basket below the guillotine, his family’s lives would continue, he wrote in the notebook, “There was a magical glow from Chiara that I knew would light up my entire existence.”
THE BIEDERSTERN FAMILY lived in Castle Biederhof, a proud edifice some twenty-five miles southeast of Vienna. It overlooked the richly endowed province of Burgenland, a region with a notably mild and agreeable climate and situated between the vast estates of the Esterházys and those of the Batthyánys.
Our great-uncle explained to me and Sasha that as far back as the Middle Ages those fields and forests were famed as Austria’s most splendid precincts for hunting to the hounds, especially in pursuit of boars, stags, deer, and foxes, and he added that the hunting dogs were usually sabuesos españoles, a medium-size hound with a graceful build, great persistence, and serene temperament. They were dogs of exceptional vigor and courage, especially when they were hunting wild game through marshes and thickets.
Those splendid lands were celebrated by many authors, above all by Franz Grillparzer and Adalbert Stifter, both of whom were frequent guests of the Biedersterns.
The imposing castle, with its walls and towers and the ancestral ghosts lurking there among the spiderwebs, had a long history that my great-uncle knew by heart. He told us that the oldest section, a castle keep with a tower one hundred and twenty feet tall, was built early in the 1330s by the fourth count of Biederhof.
THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY years later, in response to the impending threat of Ottoman Turkish troops marching northward toward Vienna, Baldemar, Count Biederstern, ordered the works that transformed the castle to a fortress, according to plans drawn up by the Italian architect Domenico Carlone.
Baldemar, an outstanding military strategist, was a most honorable exemplar of the heroism of the Biederstern family. In recognition of his contributions in defeating the Turks, Kaiser Leopold I accorded him the rank of prince, as well as the titles of Durchlaucht (Your Highness) and heroic Hochgeboren (of noble family).
WHEN HEINDRICH BECAME the head of the family, he had the castle enlarged and decorated in Empire style. The rededication took place in April 1824 in the presence of the Kaiser.
It was a glorious spectacle, the greatest event of the year for Vienna society. The vast halls, crammed with historical mementos, were crowded with the leading citizens of Vienna. In the hall of mirrors Heindrich declared to everyone that the previously drafty, dust-covered reaches of the castle had been haunted by the ghosts of earlier generations. But he invoked his late father and told his guests not to be alarmed; never again would Biederhof be haunted. A couple of the younger and more frivolous ladies seemed bored with all the portraits of uniformed ancestors, for they were regaling each other with court gossip and giggling loudly. The crowd moved on to the banquet room and a superb luncheon. In that relaxed atmosphere they felt extremely spiritual, so they dedicated themselves wholeheartedly to the champagne. The emperor himself opened the round of toasts that celebrated the successes of the Biederstern family.
HEINDRICH HAD PLANNED every detail of the reconstruction of Biederhof. He made no concessions to the Biedermeier style of the age with its over-precious exaltation of everyday objects; instead, he showed himself to be a fully competent amateur architect with practical sense and an appreciation for beauty. The monumental castle was unique in European architectural history of the early nineteenth century, not least because the gentleman who oversaw the construction spared no expense in carrying out his plans.
Heindrich was determined to achieve his grandiose political ambitions, and the magnificent castle was his headquarters. The Kaiser often visited, and it was no secret that His Majesty approved of the prince’s political career. Among the regular guests were even Archduke Karl, Archbishop Braunschweig, and the country’s most powerful politician Prince Klemens von Metternich. Heindrich had ample opportunity to keep his own bright star firmly planted at the center of the Habsburg universe.
HIS FULL NAME WAS Heindrich Friedrich Antonius Sion Nepomuk Hubertus Baldemarnes Paul Düssig von und zu Biederstern. He was the eldest son of Prince Hugo IV zu Biederstern and Princess Anna Beatrice von Metternich. His full title was His Majesty the Prince of Biederstern, Count of Eisenstadt, Baron of Mattesburg, and Prince Elector of Fertö-Hanság.
THE BIEDERSTERN LINEAGE was founded by Otto, the ur-ancestor who came out of nowhere in the obscurity of the early ninth century. Legends indicate that he must have been an unusually honorable man for his time, since he was hailed as bieder (honest).
As a consequence, therefore, their line was in fact two hundred years older than their beloved Ostarrichi, as the country was officially described in the earliest known document, signed in the year of 996.
Friedrich Bieder and his troop of eight hundred brave knights were part of the Habsburg army that at Christmas in 1276 crossed the highest part of the Grossglockner mountain range. He suffered frostbite of the hands and feet but kept alive by rubbing his limbs with warm horse dung. In the course of three days he lost four hundred soldiers to a snowstorm. Despite his severe frostbite Friedrich came down the far side of the mountains and took the enemy by surprise, slaying every last man and securing the Habsburg rule of King Rudolf throughout the realm.
For his heroic contributions he was promoted to the rank of count. Upon that occasion the appellation of Stern (star), an honorary suffix, was attached to the family name.
HEINDRICH WAS EXTREMELY PROUD to bear a family name lauded throughout the country. In private and out of earshot of others, he would express to his family the conviction that there was no one else in all of Austria, except for the Habsburgs, of higher rank or greater distinction than the Biedersterns. In any case, no other family in all of German-speaking central Europe could display in its salon an ancestral portrait painted by Leonardo da Vinci.
ALBERTINA ESTERHÁZY was Heindrich’s great love. They had met as young children and secretly pledged themselves to each other. Their mutual bond would be the sole purpose in their lives for all eternity. They saw themselves as twin stars who shone upon each other, moving inevitably to fuse and absorb each other. But their love was never to be consummated.
Albertina’s father, Prince Albert IV, was an incurable wastrel. His friends among the aristocracy referred to him as “Crazy Paja,” for he was madly rash and frequently flagrantly less than honorable, a man particularly given to living beyond his means. He prided himself on having squandered more money than anyone else in his generation.
In order to lay hands on sufficient funds to pay off some great losses—the rude creditor, a social climber with no respect for nobility, was threatening to force him into bankruptcy—the prince promised to marry off his daughter to Mattias Schwarzenberg, the eldest son of one of the empire’s wealthiest aristocratic families. And, of course, he did so without bothering to consult Albertina.
Albertina wept, cursed her father, and accused him of heartlessness. She didn’t want to hear anything about an arranged marriage and refused to meet Mattias. The prince argued that Mattias was a fantastic catch—if the young pair would just spend an hour together undisturbed and fall in love, everything would turn out splendidly for everyone. But Albertina refused to listen, even when her father pointed out that within a few years the young Schwarzenberg would inherit a huge castle and extensive estates in Bohemia.
“Father, wealth means nothing to me. My heart belongs to another,” she confessed in tears. “I love Heindrich Biederstern.”
The pr
ince pretended not to hear this. He declared that love could come flying in the window anytime at all but might be forgotten just as quickly, since love had nothing to do with building families, keeping up fortunes, or living in society.
“Allow me to decide what is best for you,” he said with that inimitable tone of superiority that was his sole talent in life. He patted his daughter’s cheek. “You know that you’re in good hands, and that way you won’t have to bother yourself with all sorts of unnecessary details. You can just be happy that you’ll have a wealthy and distinguished husband. In any case, I’ve already given my word of honor. Mattias’s father and I have decided that the wedding will take place in July, and he’s already paid me a hundred thousand schillings to cover a portion of my expenses. I would have been ruined without those funds, and we would have been forced out of the home our family has owned for three hundred years. You certainly wouldn’t want your father, a prince of the Esterházy line, to wind up in the poorhouse. Think what a disgrace that would be.”
HEINDRICH WAS CRUSHED by the news of Albertina’s upcoming wedding. He felt as if he had been robbed of his future. He simply could not understand how another man had suddenly appeared and taken away his beloved to imprison her in an undesired marriage, consecrated in the name of God and the Holy Spirit. He was convinced that he was the only man on earth who could make Albertina happy, and no other man needed her love and tenderness more than he did.
The Elixir of Immortality Page 39