Jean-Marie Blas De Robles - Where Tigers Are at Home

Jade sur la prairie; sens à l’omble-chevalier; échelle craquante; bière de paille; oui, le labyrinthe; horde de choucas, hein; l’ambre triste a entendu l’arum de France; le rayon de la colombe a taillé en pièces le pisteur; lardez son épave; l’aisance verse le viol, Henri; sel de loupe; destin de Rancé, pourparlers, orphie, cheval de pont, singe dupe; Parme épluche le trou; badinerie rôde; rat, si, vous; l’oeuf de lièvre anti-jet tue l’aura du dard; les beaux jours invertissent; taillez, dupes, l’âge récent du désordre; entravez le péché; germe de poule; baigner la fourmi; voir le moulin du doute; senteur marine; faire la sauce de la fin; signe jaune, vous, Eyck; sève délivrée, corde essentielle …

Kircher worked on this night & day for two weeks without the least success & he was sadly thinking he would have to admit he was baffled when his friend, the doctor Alban Gibbs, came to see him.

“The expedition should have returned two days ago,” Dr. Euclides said, wiping his spectacles, “Countess Carlotta is really very worried about her son … you don’t happen to have heard anything from Elaine?”

“Not a thing,” Eléazard replied. “Having said that, there’s no reason to get alarmed, people don’t disappear like that nowadays.”

After having wished she were dead a few weeks ago, he was suddenly afraid some evil spirit might have granted this idle wish of wounded self-esteem.

“No doubt, my friend, no doubt,” Euclides said, “I simply wanted to warn you. By the way, how’s your daughter? I miss her a lot, you know. I enjoyed watching her grow up.”

“To tell you the truth, I’ve no idea. I have the impression she hasn’t gotten through adolescence yet. She tells me what I want to hear and I’m forced to believe her. Which doesn’t stop me worrying; one of these days I’m going to turn up at her place to see for myself. I can understand why she wanted to get away from me, but it does make things damn complicated. She even refused to let me have a telephone installed for her.”

“You just have to be patient, I imagine. Though … Recognizing the moment when indulging your children is the only effective way of helping and the moment when it becomes neglect — no, that’s not the right word, let’s say renunciation — that’s what must be difficult.”

“That’s what I’m asking myself all the time, as you can imagine. I try to do what’s best, but that’s the standard excuse for the most stupid mistakes, which isn’t very reassuring.”

“Come on, chin up! Things always sort themselves out in the end. They have to get better before they can get worse again.”

“If there’s one thing I like about you, it’s your ‘optimism,’ ” Eléazard said in friendly mockery.

“I got out of bed on the wrong side this morning so you’ll have to go somewhere else if you’re looking for comfort. What can I get you? You’ll join me, won’t you? I need a little glass of something to turn my mind to brighter thoughts.”

“It’s all right,” Eléazard said, getting up. “I’ll see to it. Cointreau, cognac?”

“Whatever you’re having,” Euclides said, making himself comfortable in his chair again.

Eléazard poured two cognacs and sat back down opposite his host.

“To Moéma,” the old man said. “May she not settle down too quickly, it’s bad for your health.”

“To Moéma,” Eléazard responded, looking pensive. “And to you too, Euclides.”

“Right, perhaps you will now tell me to what I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

“The Kircher biography, as always. I hope you don’t find it too tedious.”

“On the contrary, as you well know. It’s the kind of mental exercise I delight in and it’s excellent for my last remaining neurons; old machines need more care and attention than new ones.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have anything by Mersenne or La Mothe Le Vayer in your library? I’m sure Father Kircher, or at least Caspar Schott, plagiarizes them in certain passages.”

“What makes you think that?”

“A sense of déjà vu, certain free-thinking turns of phrase, little anomalies that don’t tally with what I remember. I’ve written to a friend in Paris to ask him if he can do some research along those lines, but I wondered if you perhaps could help me save time.”

Dr. Euclides closed his eyes and concentrated for several seconds before replying. “No, I’m sorry, I’ve got nothing by them. I do remember having studied them at the seminary, Mersenne especially, as I’m sure you can imagine. A fine mind, by the way, who unjustly remains in the shadow of his friend Descartes. You could perhaps consult Pintard— Les Érudits libertins au XVII esiècle— I’m not absolutely sure about the title, but it’ll be shelved under history. I’ve got two or three things on rationalism and Galileo as well, but I don’t think they’d be much use to you.”

“I should never have accepted such a commission,” Eléazard sighed, shaking his head. “I really need to be in Paris or Rome to study the manuscript properly. I haven’t a hundredth of the things I need.”

“I can well believe that. Let us assume, since everything seems to be leading you to that conclusion”—Dr. Euclides leaned toward Eléazard, resting his elbows on his knees—“let us assume Schott or Kircher did plagiarize this or that author, and let us assume you have the formal proof you’re looking for: tell me sincerely, what difference would it make?”

Disconcerted by Euclides’s question, Eléazard gathered his thoughts, carefully choosing his words as he replied. “I will have shown that, as well as having been wrong about everything, which is excusable, he was also a sanctimonious hypocrite, a man who consciously cheated the people of his day.”

“And you would be going down the wrong road … insofar as you would be confirming something of which you are already sure, even before having examined your hypothesis as what it must remain until the end: a hypothesis . Although I’m not clear about the reasons, I have gathered that you don’t like this poor Jesuit very much. Every time you talk about him, it’s to criticize him for something, in general terms for not having been Newton, Mersenne or Gassendi … Why would you want him to be anything other than himself, Athanasius Kircher? Take a look at La Mothe Le Vayer, for example, a free thinker, a skeptic after your own heart. Now there’s a nasty piece of work for you! He denied his fine ideas ten times over, out of ambition, out love of power and money. Newton, Descartes? Look closely and you’ll see that they’re not as pure as the history of science, the new Legenda Aurea , would have us believe. As soon as you are interested in something or someone, they become interesting. It’s a truism. The converse is also true: you decide someone’s a rogue and he’ll become one in your eyes, as sure as eggs are eggs. It’s autosuggestion, my friend. All of history is nothing but this self-hypnosis in the face of the facts. If I could persuade you, by putting on an act, that you had swallowed a bad oyster, you’d be sick, physically sick. I don’t know who or what put it into your head that Kircher was contemptible, but that’s what has happened and nothing will make you change your mind as long as you haven’t identified the process that has led you to ‘somatize’ this result.”

“You are laying it on a bit thick, Doctor,” Eléazard said, slightly ill at ease. “History is what really happened. Kircher didn’t decipher the hieroglyphs, though he thought, or gave the impression that, he had. No one can maintain the opposite without being looked on as a crank. Most of the scholars of his day suspected that was the case before there was any actual proof. Today it’s a fact.”