When I got back, I told the story to Belbo and Diotallevi, and we ventured various hypotheses. Perhaps Salon, a gossiping eccentric who dabbled in mysteries, had happened to meet Ardenti, and that was the whole story. Unless Salon knew something about Ardenti’s disappearance and was working for the ones who had caused him to disappear. Another hypothesis: Salon was a police informer….
Then, as our Diabolicals came and went, the memory of Salon faded, was lost among his similars.
One day, Agliè came to the office to report on some manuscripts Belbo had sent him. His opinions were precise, severe, comprehensive. Agliè was clever; it didn’t take him long to figure out the Garamond-Manutius double game, and we now talked openly in front of him. He understood: he would destroy a text with a few sharp observations, then remark with smooth cynicism that it would be fine for Manutius.
I asked him what he could tell me about Agarttha and Saint-Yves d’Alveydre.
“Saint-Yves d’Alveydre…” he said. “A bizarre man, beyond any doubt. From his youth he spent time with the followers of Fabre d’Olivet. He became a humble clerk in the Ministry of the Interior, but ambitious … We naturally took a dim view of his marriage to Marie-Victoire….”
Agliè couldn’t resist shifting to the first person, as if he were reminiscing.
“Who was Marie-Victoire? I love gossip,” Belbo said.
“Marie-Victoire de Risnitch, very beautiful when she was the intimate of the empress Eugénie. But by the time she met Saint-Yves, she was over fifty. And he was in his early thirties. For her, a mésalliance, of course. What’s more, to give him a title, she bought some property—I can’t remember where—that had belonged to a certain Marquis d’Alveydre. So, while our unscrupulous character boasted of his title, in Paris they sang songs about the gigolo.
Since he could now live off his income, he devoted himself to his dream, which was to find a political formula that would lead to a harmonious society. Synarchy, as opposed to anarchy. A European society governed by three councils, representing economic power, judicial power, and spiritual power—the Church and the scientists, in other words. An enlightened oligarchy that would eliminate class conflicts. We’ve heard worse.”
“What about Agarttha?”
“Saint-Yves claimed to have been visited one day by a mysterious Afghan, a man named Hadji Scharipf, who can’t have been an Afghan, because the name is clearly Albanian…. This man revealed to him the secret dwelling place of the King of the World, though Saint-Yves himself never used that expression: he called it Agarttha, the place that cannot be found.”
“Where did he write this?”
“In his Mission de l’Inde en Europe, a work that, incidentally, has influenced a great deal of contemporary political thought. In Agarttha there are underground cities, and below them, closer to the center, live the five thousand sages that govern it. The number five thousand suggests, of course, the hermetic roots of the Vedic language, as you gentlemen know. And each root is a magic hierogram connected to a celestial power and sanctioned by an infernal power.
The central dome of Agarttha is lighted from above by something like mirrors, which allow the light from the planet’s surface to arrive only through the enharmonic spectrum of colors, as opposed to the solar spectrum of our physics books, which is merely diatonic.
The wise ones of Agarttha study all holy languages in order to arrive at the universal language, which is Vattan. When they come upon mysteries too profound, they levitate, and would crack their skulls against the vault of the dome if their brothers did not restrain them. They forge the lightning bolts, they guide the cyclic currents of the interpolar and intertropical fluids, the interferential extensions in the different zones of the earth’s latitude and longitude.
They select species and have created small animals with extraordinary psychic powers, animals which have a tortoise shell with a yellow cross, a single eye, and a mouth at either end. And polypod animals which can move in all directions. Agarttha is probably where the Templars found refuge after their dispersion, and where they perform custodial duties. Anything else?”
“But … was he serious?” I asked.
“I believe he was. At first, we considered him a fanatic, but then we realized that he was referring, perhaps in a visionary, figurative way, to an occult direction of history. Isn’t it said that history is a bloodstained and senseless riddle? No, impossible; there must be a Design.
There must be a Mind. That is why over the centuries men far from ignorant have thought of the Masters or the King of the World not as physical beings but as a collective symbol, as the successive, temporary incarnation of a Fixed Intention. An Intention with which the great priestly orders and the vanished chivalries were in touch.”
“Do you believe this?” Belbo asked.
“Persons more balanced than d’Alveydre seek the Unknown Superiors.”
“And do they find them?”
Agliè laughed, as if to himself. “What sort of Unknown Superiors would they be if they allowed the first person who comes along to know them? Gentlemen, we have work to do. There is one more manuscript here and—what a coincidence!—it’s a treatise on secret societies.”
“Any good?” Belbo asked.
“Perish the thought. But it could do for Manutius.”
Unable to control destinies on earth openly because governments would resist, this mystic alliance can act only through secret societies…. These, gradually created as the need for them arises, are divided into distinct groups, groups seemingly in opposition, sometimes advocating the most contradictory policies in religion, politics, economics, and literature; but they are all connected, all directed by the invisible center that hides its power as it thus seeks to move all the scepters of the earth.
—J. M. Hoene-Wronski, quoted by P. Sédir, Histoire et doctrine des Rose-Croix, Bibliothèque des Hermétistes, Paris, 1910
One day I saw Signor Salon at the door of his laboratory. Suddenly, for no reason, I expected him to hoot like an owl. He greeted me as if I were an old friend and asked how things were going at work. I made a noncommittal gesture, smiled at him, and hurried on.
I was struck again by the thought of Agarttha. Saint-Yves’s ideas, as Agliè had explained them, might be fascinating to a Diabolical—but certainly not alarming. And yet in Salon’s words and in his face, when we met in Munich, there had been alarm.
So, as I went out, I decided to drop in at the library and look for La Mission de l’Inde en Europe.
There was the usual mob in the catalog room and at the call desk. With some shoving I got hold of the drawer I needed, found the call number, filled out a slip, and handed it to the clerk. He informed me that the book had been checked out—and, as usual in libraries, he seemed to enjoy giving me this news. But at that very moment a voice behind me said, “Actually, it is available. I just returned it.” I looked around and saw Inspector De Angelis.
And he recognized me—too quickly, I thought, since I had seen him in circumstances that for me were exceptional, whereas he had met me in the course of a routine inquiry. Also, in the Ardenti days I had had a wispy beard and longer hair. What a sharp eye!
Had he been keeping me under surveillance since my return to Italy? Or was he simply good at faces? Policemen had to master the science of observation, memorize features, names…
“Signor Casaubon! We’re reading the same books!”
I held out my hand. “It’s Dr. Casaubon now. Has been for a while. Maybe I’ll take the police entrance exam, as you advised me that morning. Then I’ll be able to get the books first.”
“All you have to do is be here first,” he said. “But the book’s returned now, and you can collect it. Let me buy you a coffee meanwhile.”
The invitation made me uncomfortable, but I couldn’t say no. We sat in a neighborhood café. He asked me how I happened to be interested in the mission of India, and I was tempted to ask him how he happened to be interested in it, but I decided first to deflect his suspicion. I told him that in my spare time I was continuing my study of the Templars. According to Eschenbach, the Templars left Europe and went to India, some believe to the kingdom of Agarttha. Now it was his turn. “But tell me,” I asked, “why did you take out the book?”
“Oh, you know how these things go,” he replied. “Ever since you suggested that book on the Templars to me, I’ve been reading up on the subject. I don’t have to tell you that after the Templars, the next logical step is Agarttha.” Touché. Then he said: “I was joking. I took out the book because…” He hesitated. “The fact is, when I’m off duty, I like to browse in libraries. It keeps me from turning into a robot, a mechanical cop. You could probably express the idea more elegantly…. But tell me about yourself.”
I gave a performance: an autobiographical summary, down to the wonderful adventure of metals.
He asked me: “In that publishing firm, and in the one next door, aren’t you doing books on the occult sciences?”
How did he know about Manutius? From information gathered years before, when he was keeping an eye on Belbo? Or was he still on the Ardenti case?
“With characters like Colonel Ardenti turning up constantly at Garamond, and with Manutius there
