Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris
Page 48
* ‘Let each man be content with what he has. / The dissatisfied man has nothing.’
* Hantaro Nagaoka, at Tokyo University in 1924.
* François Jollivet-Castelot, Comment on devient alchimiste: traité d’hermétisme et d’art spagyrique (Paris, 1897).
* The name ‘Fulcanelli’ may be a compound of Vulcan, patron deity of alchemy, and Helios, the sun god. The search for anagrams has proved inconclusive: Lucien Fall, fil nucléal, le cul final, etc. The preface to the second edition (1957) was written by the master’s young pupil, Eugène Canseliet. Canseliet belonged to a group called ‘The Brothers of Heliopolis’, two of whom lived in the Pigalle district, near Helbronner’s laboratory, at 59, Rue Rochechouart. They included an absinthe-addicted painter called Champagne, a son of Ferdinand de Lesseps (architect of the Suez Canal), and a man who worked for the Rhône-Poulenc pharmaceutical company. This address was listed in The Foreign Bachelor’s Secret Guide to Paris as the address of a male brothel called the ‘Sacré Cœur’. The Abwehr agent was evidently aware of this, and one can only imagine what adventures he had as a result.
* Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des Sciences, 24 May 1948 (CCXXVI, pp. 1655–56).
* Lt.-Col. Selby Skinner to Col. W. R. Shuler, 18 February 1946. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 226, Entry 210, Box 431, Folder 2.
* HLM (pron. ash-el-em ): Habitation à loyer modéré (low-cost public housing).
* CRS (pron. say-air-ess ): Compagnie Républicaine de Sécurité.
* Le Policier et les jeunes (‘The Police and Young People’), distributed by the Préfecture de Police; still in print, in a slightly modified form, in 2008.
* ‘Under the cobbles, the beach.’
* Vache: ‘cow’, equivalent here to British or American ‘pig’.
* CGT: Confédération Générale du Travail. The most powerful trades union federation, dominated by the French Communist Party.
* É lectricité de France.