And, without giving Atto time to respond, the old man succumbed to a bout of almost silent laughter which made him quake from within, in a crescendo of spasms. The trembling shook him vigorously from head to foot, so much so that his youthful escorts had to struggle to prevent him from losing his balance. This mad outburst of hilarity seemed at times to border on suffering and monstrously deformed his features, while tears ran copiously down his cheeks.
'But take care,' the Jesuit raved on, struggling to speak. 'The magnet also lies concealed in Eros, whence sin may arise, and you have the magnetic eye; but the Lord does not want sin, no, the Lord does not want that,' and he raised his stick clumsily, trying to strike Abbot Melani.
At that point, the two servant girls restrained him and one of them calmed him, leading him to the door of the church. Several churchgoers, distracted from prayer, looked curiously at the scene. The abbot stopped one of the two girls: 'Why did he come to me?'
The girl, overcoming the natural shyness of simple people, explained that the old man often accosted strangers and importuned them with his lucubrations.
'He is German. He has written many books, and now that he is no longer his own master, he keeps repeating their titles. His colleagues are ashamed of him, he keeps confusing the living and the dead, and they rarely let him out. But he is not always in that state: I and my sister, who usually accompany him on his walks, find that at other times he has all his wits about him. He even writes letters, which he gives us to send.'
Abbot Melani, after initially being irritated by the old man's aggression, was in the end softened by this sorry tale.
'What is his name?'
'He is known to many in Rome. His name is Athanasius Kircher.'
Such was my surprise that I trembled from head to foot.'Kircher? But was that not the Jesuit man of science who you said had found the secret of the plague?' I exclaimed excitedly, recalling how the guests at our inn had discussed Kircher animatedly at the beginning of our imprisonment.
'Exactly,' Atto confirmed. 'But perhaps the time is ripe for you to know who Kircher really was. Otherwise, you would not understand the rest of the story.'
And so it was that Atto Melani helped me to understand how re- splendently Kircher's star and that of his infinite doctrine once shone in the firmament and how for many years every single word of his was treasured as the wisest of oracles.
Father Athanasius Kircher spoke twenty-four languages, many of them learned after lengthy sojourns in the Orient, and he had brought with him to Rome many copies of Arabic and Chaldean manuscripts, as well as a truly vast exposition of hieroglyphs. He also had a profound knowledge of theology, metaphysics, physics, medicine, mathematics, ethics, aesthetics, jurisprudence, politics, scriptural interpretation, moral theology, rhetoric and the combinatory art. Nothing, he was wont to say, is more beautiful than the knowledge of the totality, and he had indeed, in all humility and ad maiorem Dei gloriam revealed the gnomonic mysteries and those of polygraphy, magnetism, arithmology, musurgy and phonurgy and, thanks to the secrets of the symbol and of analogy, he had clarified the abstruse enigmas of the kabbala and of hermeticism, reducing them to the universal measure of primal sapience.
He then carried out extraordinary experiments with mechanisms and marvellous machines of his own invention, collected by him in the museum which he founded at the Roman Collegio, including: a clock activated by a vegetable root which followed the sun's peregrination; a machine which transformed the light of a candle into marvellous forms of men and animals; and innumerable catoptric machines, spagyric ovens, mechanical organs and sciatherical dials.
The learned Jesuit gloried justly in having invented a universal language whereby one could communicate with anyone throughout the whole world, and which was so clear and perfect that the Bishop of Vigevano had written to him enthusiastically, claiming that he had learned it in just over an hour.
The venerable professor of the Roman College had also revealed the true form of Noah's Ark, and succeeded in establishing the number of animals which it contained, in what manner were ordered within it cages, perches, mangers and water troughs and even where the doors and openings were situated. He had demonstrated geometrice et mathematice that if the Tower of Babel had been completed, its weight would have been such as to tilt the terrestrial globe.
But, above all, Kircher was a natural philosopher exceedingly well versed in antique and unknown languages. He had deciphered the hieroglyphs of the Alexandrine obelisk which now stood in the fountain erected in the Piazza Navona by the Cavalier Bernini. The tale of the obelisk was perhaps the most extraordinary to be told concerning him. When the enormous stone relic was found buried among the ruins of the Circo Massimo, the Jesuit was immediately called to the place where it had been discovered. Although only three of the four sides of the obelisk were visible, he had foreseen the symbols which would appear on the side that remained buried, and his prediction had proved correct even in its most abstruse details.
'But, when you met him, he was… how could one put it?…' I objected at that point in the narration.
'Say it outright. He was senile.'
Indeed, that was so, at the end of his life, the great genius grew demented. His spirit, explained Atto, had evaporated, and his body was soon to know the same fate. Father Kircher in fact died one year later.
'Folly makes all men equal, kings and peasants,' said Abbot Melani, who added that he had in the days that followed made a couple of visits to well-connected acquaintances, and had received confirmation of the painful situation, despite the Jesuits' endeavours to ensure that it was bruited abroad as little as possible.
'I now come to the point,' said the abbot, cutting short the discussion. 'If your memory serves you well, you will recall that in Colbert's study, the main thing that I found was correspondence sent from Rome and addressed to Superintendent Fouquet, written in prose which appeared to be that of an ecclesiastic, in which mention was made of unspecified secret information.'
'I remember, of course.'
'Well, the letters were from Kircher.'
'And how can you be sure of that?'
'You are right to doubt: I must again explain to you the illumination which came over me today. I am still overcome by the emotion that it caused me-and emotion is the handmaid of chaos; while what we need is to put facts in order. As you will perhaps recall, when examining the letters, I noted that one of them curiously began with the words mumiarum domino, which I was at the time unable to understand.'
'That is true.'
'Mumiarum domino means 'to the master of the mummies' and certainly refers to Fouquet.'
'What are mummies?'
'They are the corpses of ancient Egyptians contained in sarcophagi and preserved from decay using bandages and mysterious treatments.'
'Still, I do not understand why Fouquet should be 'the master of the mummies'.'
The abbot picked up a book and handed it to me. It was a collection of poems by Signor de la Fontaine, he who in his verses had lauded the singing of Atto Melani. I opened at a page where he had placed a bookmark and indicated a few lines.*
'It is a poem dedicated to Fouquet. Have you understood?'
'Not a lot,' I replied, irritated by that prolix and incomprehensible poem.'
'Yet it is all quite simple. Cephrim and Kiopes are the two Egyptian mummies which Superintendent Fouquet had acquired.
I shall take your time and my own. / If I see that you're conversing, / I shall wait most patiently / in this superb apartment / where, from a strange land, / recently, after great wanderings / (not without labour and at some expense) / of Kings Cephrim and Kiopes were brought / the coffin, tomb or bier: / for the kings themselves are dust. /… / So I left the gallery / most content, despite my chagrin, / for Kiopes and Cephrim, / For Horus and all his lineage / and for many another personage.
La Fontaine, who was his great admirer, speaks of them in this witty little poem. Now, I ask you: who, here in Rome, was interested in ancient Egypt?'
'That I know: Kircher.'
'Correct. Indeed, Kircher had personally studied Fouquet's mummies, travelling to Marseilles, where they had
