The Jewels of Paradise
“She dipped back into Steffani’s life at the time he was working as a diplomat, first in Hanover and then in Düsseldorf, where he moved in 1703. He worked to facilitate the making of treaties and to arrange princely marriages, though with little apparent success. He failed to prevent his former patron Maximilian Emanuel from getting mixed up in a war against England and Germany he had no chance of winning, and he failed to arrange a marriage between Maximilian Emanuel and Sophie Charlotte, who turned him down, got an upgrade, and ended as Queen of Prussia. Poor woman, she held the title for only a few years before dying at the age of thirty-six, though in the few years she was queen she won the friendship of Leibniz. Caterina recalled the frequent references to her in the letters found in the trunk, the queen who “had so honored” Steffani with her friendship. Did Andrea Moretti, she wondered, feel himself so honored by the friendship of Caterina Pellegrini?She continued to read the acc...ount of the tangled history of the times in which Steffani had lived and worked, when Protestant and Catholic monarchs fought for the souls, and taxes, of whole nations.MoreLess
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