I passed by. I imaginedmyself dwindling, an ant-sized, dazed pedestrian in the streets ofa mechanical city, metallic skyscrapers on every side. Cylinders,batteries, Leyden jars one above the other, merry-go-roundcentrifuges, tourniquet elec-trique a attraction et repulsion, atalisman to stimulate the sympathetic currents, colonnadeetincelante formee de rieuf tubes, electroaimant, a guillotine, andin the center¡Xit looked like a printing press¡Xhooks hung fromchains, the kind you might see in a stable. A press in which youcould crush a hand, a head. A glass bell with a pneumatic pump,two-cylinder, a kind of alembic, with a cup underneath and, to theright, a copper sphere. In it Saint-Germain concocted his dyes forthe landgrave of Hesse.
A pipe rack with tworows of little hourglasses, ten to a row, their necks elongatedlike the neck of a Modigliani woman, some unspecified materialinside, and the upper bulge of each expanded to a different size,like balloons about to take off. This, an apparatus for theproduction of the Rebis, where anyone could see it.
Then the glassworkssection. I had retraced my steps. Little green bottles: a sadisthost offering me poisons in quintessence. Iron machines for makingbottles, opened and closed by two cranks. What if, instead of abottle, someone put a wrist in there? Whack! And it would be thesame with those great pincers, those immense scissors, those curvedscalpels that could be inserted into sphincters or ears, into theuterus to extract the still-living fetus, which would be groundwith honey and pepper to sate the appetite of Astarte... The room Iwas now crossing had broad cases, and buttons to set in motioncorkscrews that would advance inexorably toward the victim's eye,the Pit and the Pendulum. We were close to carfeature now, to theridiculous contraptions of Rube Goldberg, the torture racks onwhich Big Pete bound Mickey Mouse, the engrenage exterieur a troispignons, triumph of Renaissance mechanics, Branca, Ramelli, Zonca.I knew these gears, I had put them in the wonderful adventure ofmetals, but they had been added here later, in the last century,and were ready to restrain the unruly after the conquest of theworld; the Templars had learned from the Assassins how to shut upNoffo Dei when the time of his capture came; the swastika ofSebotten-dorf would twist, in the direction of the sun, thetwitching limbs of the enemies of the Masters of the World. Allready, these instruments awaited a sign, everything in full view,the Plan was public, but nobody could have guessed it, the creakingmechanical maws would sing their hymn of conquest, great orgy ofmouths, all teeth that locked and meshed exactly, mouths singing intick-tock spasms.
Finally I came to theemetteur a etincelles soufflees designed for the EifFel Tower, forthe emission of time signals between France, Tunisia, and Russia,the Templars of Provins, the Pau-licians, the Assassins of Fez.(Fez isn't in Tunisia, and the Assassins, anyway, were in Persia,but you can't split hairs when you live in the coils ofTranscendent Time.) I had seen it before, this immense machine,taller than I, its walls perforated by a series of portholes, airducts. The sign said it was a radio apparatus, but I knew better, Ihad passed it that same afternoon. The Beaubourg!
For all to see. And, forthat matter, what was the real purpose of that enormous box in thecenter of Lutetia (Lutetia, the air duct in a subterranean sea ofmud), where once there was the Belly of Paris, with thoseprehensile proboscises of vents, that insanity of pipes, conduits,that Ear of Dionysius open to the sky to capture sounds, messages,signals, and send them to the very center of the globe, and then toreturn them, vomiting out information from hell? First theConservatoire, a laboratory, then the Tower, a probe, and finallythe Beaubourg, a global transmitter and receiver. Had they set upthat huge suction cup just to entertain a handful of hairy, smellystudents, who went there to listen to the latest record with aJapanese headset? For all to see. The Beaubourg, gate to theunderground kingdom of Agarttha, the monument of the ResurgentesEquites Synarchici. And the rest¡Xtwo, three, four billion ofthem¡Xwere unaware of this, or forced themselves to look the otherway. Idiots and hylics. While the pneumatics headed straight fortheir goal, through six centuries.
* * *
Unexpectedly, I foundthe staircase. I went down, with increasing caution. Midnight wasapproaching. I had to hide in my observation post before Theyarrived.
It was about eleven. Icrossed the Lavoisier hall without turning on the flashlight,remembering the hallucinations of that afternoon. I crossed thecorridor with the model trains.
There were alreadypeople in the nave: dim lights moving, the sound of shuffling, ofobjects being dragged.
Would I have time tomake it to the sentry box? I slipped along the cases with the modeltrains and was soon close to the statue of Gramme, in the transept.On a wooden pedestal, cubic in form (the cubic stone of Yesod!), itstood as if to guard the entrance to the choir. My Statue ofLiberty was almost directly behind it.
The front panel of thepedestal had been lowered, a kind of gangplank allowing people toenter the nave from some concealed passage. In fact, an individualemerged from there with a lantern¡Xa gas lantern, with coloredglass, which illuminated his face in red patches. I pressed myselfinto a corner, and he didn't see me. A second man joined him fromthe choir. "Vite," he said. "Hurry. In an hour they'll behere."
So this was thevanguard, preparing something for the rite. If there weren't toomany of them, I could still reach Liberty before They arrived¡XGodknows from where, and in what numbers¡Xby the same route. For along while I crouched low, following the glints of the lanterns inthe church, the regular alternation of the lights between greaterand lesser intensity. I calculated how far they moved away fromLiberty and how much of it
