In 1634, while staying with a friend in Amsterdam, the philosopher René Descartes seduced Helena, a servant in the house, and nine months later, Helena had a daughter. Francine. Descartes adored her. Francine and her mother came to live near him, and though he told others that Helena was his servant, and Francine his niece, Descartes planned to move to France with them, so his daughter could be educated there. But when she was five, Francine caught scarlet fever. Three days later, she died.

The presence of a beloved daughter—the absolute absence of a beloved daughter. It makes no sense. Philosophers are no better at this than the rest of us. Time is to blame. Time is to blame because we cannot reverse it, we cannot go back and have things come out a better way. We all long to see our daughter sitting again at the kitchen table, spooning up her soup. Sleeping soundly in her bed, tucked to the tips of her ears in warm quilts.

Before she was buried, Descartes measured Francine's small body. Forehead to chin. Shoulder to fingertip. Hip socket to sole. He began construction. The doll's face and limbs were carved of wood, but inside the wood were mechanisms that enabled her to move, to sit up and smile when her father opened her special box, a box like a small padded coffin built to fit her. Descartes hoped for even more: I am now dissecting the heads of different animals to explain the make-up of imagination, memory, etc. (Did his research reveal to him the mechanics of our souls? We don't know. That letter was lost.) Descartes traveled everywhere with his doll, and slept with his arm protectively over her box, which was always next to his bed.


Years later, Queen Kristina of Sweden persuaded Descartes to be her tutor in philosophy. He boarded the Queen's ship, bound for Stockholm. Each night of the voyage he took the doll from her box and spent the evening with her. The crew thought he'd hidden a stowaway. They heard him talking at length, laughing, sometimes singing. They told the captain. The captain entered Descartes' cabin while he was at lunch and opened Francine's box. The doll sat up. Thinking she was a child, the captain reached over to help her out. His hand met not a hand but a block of wood, carved to the size of a child's small hand. She smiled at him. The demon smiled at him! The captain ordered his men to take hold of her—"Get rid of it!" he screamed—and threw her overboard.

Was this a second death? Was the doll alive? Whether she was alive, whether the doll had a soul, Descartes didn't know; but when she was with him, he wasn't alone. Of that he was certain.


Descartes' habit was to lie in bed until noon. Especially in cold weather. He had vivid dreams, walking through gardens or enchanted forests while meditating upon a philosophical problem. Some nights demons pursued him; some nights he discovered and read rare volumes of poetry or mathematics. Every morning there was a period of uncertainty: was he awake or was he asleep? He reached for his notebook and pen, mingling his philosophy with his dreams.

But Queen Kristina had scheduled their lessons for five in the morning, and would not be dissuaded. She'd been Queen since she was six years old. Now she was nineteen. Later in the day she would study fencing and military strategy and ride her horses. She wished to privilege philosophy, and Descartes, by placing him at the start of her day. She wanted to know what love was: emotionally, medically, philosophically. She asked Descartes to describe love's physical manifestations (blushing, trembling, an increase in pulse and breathing) and to instruct her on how to rid herself of these effects, while learning to recognize them in others. Kristina dressed warmly for their meetings, in men's coats and pants. She was very scientific. She had already decided never to marry.

Descartes no longer kept Francine's box by the side of his bed. He positioned it near the fireplace, to keep it warm. The nights were so cold he'd taken to sleeping in a large chair next to the hearth. Sleeping upright confused him. When he woke he felt, for a moment, that he wasn't supposed to have been asleep, that he'd neglected someone or some duty by dozing off. He tended to the fire, covered himself with blankets from his bed, and dozed again, always waiting for the knock at his door, which always came too soon.

I am sick, Descartes complained in a letter, but I must report to the Court of Learning in the middle of their everlasting night, to discuss with Her Majesty how she may realize her dream to make Stockholm the Athens of the North. Descartes laughed to himself as he wrote. To make an Athens of this small dark outpost! He started to reach for Francine's box, to laugh with her. He often forgot her box was empty. He picked up his pen and continued, I have promised to help her. The Queen is young and ambitious and perhaps she will succeed, in spite of Stockholm's natural obstacles of climate and geography.

A response to Descartes' letter arrived a month later: If the darkness and cold do not suit you, my friend, leave Stockholm and live near me again. We can talk late into the night, which is not as long as Sweden's, and no one will drag you from the meditations of your bed.

The letter came too late. Sweden had its coldest winter in sixty years. Descartes contracted pneumonia, and ten days after submitting to Queen Kristina his plan to transform Stockholm into the Athens of the North, he was dead.

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