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

“A correct reply,” said Athanasius, “but wrong. Correct in logic, but wrong in truth. The author of this letter is neither mad nor one of the elect; he is, like you my dear Caspar, simply a victim of his own ignorance. What Father Angelucci witnessed, the famous Morgan le Fay, over which so much ink has been spilt, is not a miracle but a mirage . The columns this fellow from Reggio saw were doubtless those of the Greek temples of Agrigento or Selinunte, infinitely multiplied and pleasingly distorted by progressive transformation through the vapors rising from the sea. Having said that,” he added with a smile, “I would give anything to be able to witness such a fantasmagoria & above all … to be able to verify what I have just put forward.”

He wiped his forehead & immersed himself once more in his notes, without making anything of my defeat, for which I was grateful: once again a few words had been enough for him to resolve a mystery that had ever thwarted the most learned scholars & to make me aware, by comparison, of my own immeasurable ignorance.

As soon as we reached Reggio, we went with Father Angelucci to the lighthouse from which he had seen the Fata Morgana . He confirmed the details of his letter point by point & and we found him to be of perfectly sound mind, if a little rustic. Kircher explained the agencies of the spectacle he had witnessed, but even though the reverend father pretended to accept them, we could see that he didn’t believe a word of it & by far preferred miraculous explanations to those of physics.

During the week we spent in that town we went to the lighthouse every day without being granted a sight of the mirage. And, to be honest, it would have been rather unfair if a privilege that had cost our host twenty-six years of his life should have been granted us after so little effort. As the marine landscape we saw from that window was charming, it at least gave rise to pleasant conversations.

From Reggio we put out to sea &, skirting the coast of Sicily, reached the port of Valletta. Together with Frederick of Hesse we were given rooms in the palace of the Knights of the Order of Malta. The government of the island was seriously concerned about the presence of Turcoman pirates in the Tyrrhenian Sea & there was much disquiet. But Kircher, unaffected by all that, immediately set about organizing a tour of the island in order to carry out his program of observations. He started to study the plants & animals, also collecting a quantity of geological specimens.

From information supplied by one of the knights of the Order, we went to the east coast to view a cliff that had been sculpted by nature into a gigantic human figure. It was a woman’s face, which fascinated both of us by its beauty. I knew that nature, by definition, was capable of such marvels, but it is quite a different matter to contemplate the product of this magnificent art de visu . Kircher ran this way and that to vary his viewpoint, lifting up his cassock to climb the rocks more easily. He pointed out to me a very precise spot where the face could be seen but disappeared at the slightest change in the angle of observation, merging once more into the surrounding rock. He was talking to himself, laughing out loud, in one of those transports of delight that were customary with him every time he discovered something new.

“Jesus Maria! Only a few cable-lengths away from Africa, from Egypt! It’s proof. All the pharaohs and their wives in this emblematic figure! Natura pictrix , Caspar, natura pictrix! I’m on the right road, no doubt about that. Natural anamorphosis is only one of the forms of the universal analogy! I’ve never been so close to the goal …”

I had too often seen Athanasius in these states close to ecstasy to be particularly worried, but it was always amazing to see a man normally so level-headed in such a fever of excitement. When he had finished prancing around, my master sat down in the shade of the rock in question & started to write. I passed the time patiently cutting his quills, knowing that sooner or later he would tell me the result of his meditations.

Never having been so close to Egypt, Kircher confessed to me that he regretted that the Grand Duke had not asked to visit that land that in his eyes was so important for the understanding of the universe. In Valletta Athanasius was often absent for hours on end, sitting by the sea, his eyes fixed on the southeast, in the direction of the Nile, travelling in thought through those cities that are almost as old as the world. He would spend whole mornings wandering round the harbor, talking to sailors returning from Africa, avidly gathering all the information or curios these people might possess. But the time came when we had to leave Malta & start the return journey, which promised so many marvels.

After a calm passage, we disembarked at Palermo where we lodged in the Jesuit college. Frederick of Hesse having numerous official obligations to fulfill, we were free for several weeks, but before starting out on our planned tour of Sicily, Kircher had to demonstrate his talents to the teachers at the college and to the local notables, who already knew him by reputation. For several days, in this library where I am at the moment, he answered his colleagues’ questions with consummate ease, developing all the topics as they were submitted to him. He had a prodigious memory & could quote most of his sources in extenso or do extremely complex calculations without referring to a single note. His lectures were so successful that they were the talk of the town & soon he had to receive a number of aristocrats attracted by a man whose erudition was such a contrast with his youth & attractive features. The Prince of Palagonia, who prided himself on his knowledge of the sciences & astrology, attended several of these lessons & eventually invited us to go and stay at his palace on the outskirts of the town. Kircher accepted this gracious invitation, but he was so keen to begin his studies on the land of Sicily that he put it off until near the end of our stay. And that was what was agreed.

Finally the moment came when the two of us set off for Mount Etna, an expedition Athanasius had made a priority in memory of Peiresc, though it was also his own. Despite my fear of the Sicilian bandits who infested the roads, we reached Caeta Abbey unmolested. In the library Kircher and I set about making a complete inventory of the manuscripts. We were fortunate enough to find several extremely rare items such as the Hieroglyphica of Horapollon, the Pimander , the Asclepius or Book of Perfect Speech , the Arabic text of Picatrix dealing with talismans and sympathetic magic & a number of papyri that Kircher had me copy. It was an unexpected harvest & it was with light hearts that, a few days later, we undertook the ascent of Etna.

As night was falling after a long day’s walk, we came to a dilapidated cottage that was a stopping place for travelers. We had a bed for the night there & a meal as well as a guide for the last part of our venture. After supper, a frugal meal but accompanied by a good red wine from Selinunte, from the very same hills where the ancient Greeks used to grow vines, we sat down by the hearth & Kircher, a little mellow from the wine, happily agreed to explain his ideas on geology to me. Like Monsieur Descartes, he accepted the presence of a fire at the center of the terrestrial globe, miners at the coal face testifying that the heat increased with depth.

We went on talking until late into the night. Stimulated by my questions, Kircher dealt one after the other with the biggest problems set by the formation of the Earth, confiding in me that what I was hearing were the premises of a book he was preparing in secret — having been officially instructed to devote himself to Egyptology—& which he would doubtless call The Subterranean World . When we thought about getting some sleep, it was already four o’clock in the morning & since we had to rise at dawn to continue on our way to the summit, we decided to stay up. Our conversation turned to volcanoes again. Athanasius never tired of describing the fantastic upheavals the central fire could cause when it escaped by those chimneys.