“What do you want me to do?” he eventually asked after thinking it over.
“I have already started divorce proceedings,” she replied, trying to recover her composure. “I know him well, he didn’t intend that, he can’t have intended it … But there comes a moment when one has to answer for one’s actions before men, so that one can answer for them before God. This crime must not go unpunished … I want justice to be done, Monsieur Von Wogau, by any means you judge necessary to bring that about.”
“I will see to it,” Eléazard said gently. “It’s very courageous of you.”
“That’s not the word,” Carlotta protested, eyebrows raised. “No, I don’t think that’s the right word …”
CHAPTER 24
Which tells of the unexpected way in which Kircher managed to decipher the sibylline writing of the French; in which we make the acquaintance of Johann Grueber & Henry Roth on their return from China & hear how they quarreled about the state of that realm
WITH HIS EXPERIENCED eye, Alban Gibbs noticed at once his friend’s worried appearance. Kircher made no attempt to deceive him; this affair with the secret message was threatening his own reputation but also risked undermining the Society’s standing, which was much more important. Explaining the details of the mystery to him, he eventually showed him the note with the text &, since Alban Gibbs did not know French at all, translated it:
“Jade on lea sense at char ladder cracky,” he said in lugubrious tones, “chaff ale yea daw maze horde hey amber sad heard France arum …”
I saw Gibbs repress a slight smile: my master’s knowledge of English was perfect, but he had never succeeded—because he had never tried—to get rid of his strong German accent, which people regularly made fun of. This did not bother Kircher & he concentrated on his translation. Far from refining his pronunciation it seemed to me that he was actually trying to distort it even more.
“Dove ray have heck tout lard her wreck ease pour rape Harry lens salt fate of Rancé parley gar deck horse dupe ape …”
He stopped, looking thoughtful, as if he were going through the words he had just spoken in his mind. Then he repeated, “parley gar deck horse dupe ape,” & his face lit up. “Danke, mein Gott!’1 he suddenly exclaimed &, with a little dance step (something I had never seen him do before), “Parley gar deck horse dupe ape! Ho, ho! I’ve got it, my friends, I’ve got it! And it’s all thanks to you, Alban.”
Gibbs gave me a worried look & I felt a shiver of fear myself at the idea that my master might have gone beyond the borders of his mind.
“Parma pare hole,” Kircher went on, increasingly exultant, “jape rove, rat if ye egg hare anti toss kill aura dace heyday invert hew dupe recent mess age! It works, my friends! Fetter sin germ hen, lave ant see doubt mill sea scent sauce end do … And it’s already 3 October! Sign yellow ye Eyck rid sap rope main … My God, Louis XIV! We must hurry, we’ve wasted too much time already!”
Kircher seemed to wake from a dream. Becoming aware of our presence & our dumbfounded expressions, he gave us the explanation of his agitation while he dressed to go out: “You must excuse my haste, but this is a most serious matter. It is essential I communicate the contents of this letter to the Supreme Pontiff.”
“But … the code,” I ventured to ask.
“Nothing simpler & nothing more ingenious. Listen to what I’m saying as if I were speaking French: parley gar deck horse dupe ape. What do you hear but: par les gardes corses du Pape? That is the way the whole message works, you can reconstitute the meaning easily. Wait for me here, I’ll be back before long.”
As soon as my master had left, I pounced on the letter & unravelled the text following his indication:
Je donne licence à Charles de Créqui, Chevalier de mes ordres & Ambassadeur de France à Rome, d’oeuvrer avec toute l’ardeur requise pour réparer l’insulte aux Français par les gardes corses du Pape. Par ma parole, j’approuve, ratifie & guarantis tout ce qu’il aura décidé en vertu du présent message. Fait à Saint-Germain, le 26 d’août 1662. Signé Louis & écrit de sa propre main.2
Alexander VII was delighted with Kircher’s success; he immediately had the two guards who had molested the Duke hanged & made dispositions to keep the French in Rome under surveillance.
The days that followed this episode, which Athanasius had merely seen as an occasion to exercise his skill, took on a different aspect. Kircher realized that a secret language was as useful as a universal language & was related to it as darkness is to light. In this my master was not for one moment thinking of serving kings or other persons who wanted to hide their correspondence, but simply of serving the truth. For if it was good to reveal knowledge & propagate it, it was not less necessary, sometimes, to restrict certain information to those wise enough to make proper use of it. Which the priests of ancient Egypt had done by inventing the hieroglyphs, as had a number of other nations such as the Hebrews with their Cabbala, the Chaldaeans or even the Incas of the New World. Accordingly my master decided to invent a language that was truly indecipherable & while I put the finishing touches to his Polygraphia, he devoted himself entirely to that project.
The year 1664 was marked by the return to Rome of Father Johann Grueber. When, eight years previously, he had been about to go to China, he had promised Kircher, at his request, to be his eyes there and to observe everything he could, down to the least details that might serve to satisfy his curiosity about that country.
Aged forty-one, Johann Grueber looked much younger, despite the strain of the journey. He was a sturdy man with a massive but well-proportioned head, a flowing beard & fairly long black hair, which he threw back over his shoulders. His skin had been tanned by the desert sun, his gestures were slow & measured. His gray eyes, slanting as if from his long stay in China, had a slightly timid, almost dreamy look that still seemed to be fixed on those marvelous countries that he admitted he had only left with great regret. Of a jovial disposition, great courtesy & a very pleasant German frankness, he was such a gentleman that even if he had not been a Jesuit he would have enjoyed the esteem of everyone he encountered.
Father Henry Roth was a striking contrast with Grueber: small & puny with sparse white hair, he compensated for his apparent constitutional weakness with a moral rigor and authority in dogma that impressed us all.
After the effusive welcome home & a few days rest, the two travelers came to recount to Kircher everything they had observed during their peregrinations. Aware that my master was working on a major book about China, they humbly decided that there was no point in publishing their own writings on the subject; however, unwilling to allow the spiders & worms to eat away at this precious material in a corner of the library, they happily entrusted it to Kircher so that he could incorporate their observations in his book, which, in truth, was the best way of making them known to the widest number of people.
The first news we heard from Grueber’s lips was the death of our dear Michal Boym, which affected my master more than I can say …
After leaving Lisbon at the beginning of 1656, Father Boym had arrived in Goa one year later. Held up in that town for various reasons, later besieged by the Dutch, he had only reached the kingdom of Siam in 1658. Once he was in Macau & still bearing letters from Pope Alexander VII for the Chinese Empress Helena & the eunuch general Pan Achilles, he found that the Portuguese authorities refused him permission to return to China out of fear of reprisals against them from the Tartars. Determined to face any danger to accomplish his mission, Father Boym embarked in a junk, accompanied by the convert Xiao Cheng, & reached Tonkin, from where he reckoned he could cross unseen into China. In 1659, after further delays while looking for guides capable of helping them to cross the frontier, the two men finally succeeded in entering the Celestial Empire by the province of Kwangsi. It was, alas, only to find all the passes blocked by the Tartar army. Seeing that it was impossible to continue by that route, Boym decided to return to Tonkin to try another way, but the government of that country would
not authorize this. Trapped in the jungle, where he was hiding from the Tartars & depressed by the failure of his mission, Boym was struck down with the “Vomito negro” & called on his Maker after suffering terrible agonies. Faithful to his master even in those extremely distressing moments, Xiao Cheng buried the good father beside the road, together with the missives for which the unfortunate man had given his life, then planted a tree on his grave and escaped through the mountains. One year later he reached Canton, which Grueber happened to be visiting, & recounted the sad end of that excellent man to him.
Kircher had a mass said in memory of his friend during which he gave a sermon recalling Boym’s numerous works on botany while emphasizing the human qualities of a man who, from that moment on, could be looked upon as a martyr to the faith.
These reflections on the difficulties encountered by Boym in carrying out his mission made it necessary to have a report on developments in China, which Father Roth provided for us quickly, but leaving no doubt as to his familiarity with the material. To spare the reader tiresome details, it is sufficient to recall that the heir to the Ming emperors, his son Constantin & all his faithful followers, among whom was the eunuch Pan Achilles, were exterminated in 1661 by the Tartar armies of Wu San-Kuei in the province of Yunnan, where they had taken refuge. Since 1655 the Tartar Emperor Shun-chih, founder of the Ch’ing dynasty, had made great & ultimately successful efforts to establish his power in a China that had finally been completely conquered. An enlightened sovereign, patron of Chinese arts & letters, he had succeeded in restoring peace to his kingdom & governed with discretion a nation that hardly looked favorably on his race. From invader, he transformed himself into the defender of China &, what was very important for the Church, showed greater favor to our Jesuit missionaries than any monarch before him, an attitude that allowed us great hope for the progress of the Christian religion in those distant lands.
Grueber, however, modified this idyllic report.
“What distressed me most,” he said, “was to see, while I was traveling upriver on a Dutch boat, the cruelty with which the Tartars treated the Chinese pulling our vessel, which was simply the result of the natural hatred between the two nations. To tell the truth, hatred is nothing but cold, pernicious malice; it’s always sitting on a few serpent’s eggs from which it hatches out an infinite number of disasters &, not content with pouring its venom over particular places & at particular times, goes to the ends of the earth & on to eternity. This teaches us that it is difficult to make a whole empire love a man, as if one were claiming one could start friendships by cannon fire. Don’t keep going on about a Nero, a Caligula, a Tiberius, a Scylla or other Roman emperors, don’t talk to me of the Scythians, the Etruscans & other nations who boasted of their cruelty. I can truly say that I have never seen anything more cruel, nor more perfidious than the behavior of the Tartars toward their wretched captives. I have seen those stony-hearted creatures smile at the terrible groans, even at the death throes of the poor Chinese worn down by hunger, blows & labor. You would say, Father Athanasius, that they were made up of instruments of torture or, rather, demons that had slipped into that beautiful kingdom to make it into a hell on earth. They think that the principal mark of their power is to squeeze the life out of those miserable bodies drop by drop; would it not be more secure & more useful for these proud conquerors to assuage the just rancor of their vanquished subjects, to adopt gentler habits, pleasures without such excesses, splendor without such deviousness & devotion without so many crimes and torments—”
Father Roth protested, accusing his colleague of exaggeration in the picture he had painted, but Kircher intervened to calm them down. “There are, alas, some loves and hates that one cannot put on & take off as easily as a shirt. Anger is more transitory, more specific, more seething & easier to cure, but hate is more deep-rooted, more general, more joyless & irremediable. It has two notable properties, one of which consists of aversion & flight, the other of persecution & harming. These degrees of hatred are so widespread in nature that they can even be found in brute beasts who, no sooner have they been born, than they are pursuing their enmities and wars in the world. A little chicken with its shell still stuck to it has no fear of a horse or an elephant—which ought to seem such frightening animals to those unaware of their natures—but it is already in terror of the sparrow-hawk & as soon as it sees one goes to hide under its mother’s wing. The lion trembles at the crow of the cock; the eagle hates the goose so much that just one of its feathers will burn the whole of a goose’s plumage; the stag persecutes the snake, for by breathing deeply at the entrance to its hole, it pulls it out & devours it. There is also eternal enmity between the eagle & the swan, between the crow & the kite, the mole & the owl, the wolf & the sheep, the panther & the hyena, the scorpion & the tarantula, the rhinoceros & the viper, the mule & the weasel, & between many other animals, plants or even rocks that are repugnant to each other. These harmful contradictions also exist among the idolaters & can be seen, you say, between the Tartars & the Chinese, but God has made it possible for us, in contrast to the rest of the natural world, to overcome these antagonisms & settle differences in a merciful way. And there can be no doubt that the progress of the Christian religion in the land of China will extinguish these enmities just as thoroughly as water will destroy the immemorial hatred opposing wood to fire.
“But tell me,” he went on with a smile, “haven’t you brought back any curios from China that might help to lessen my ignorance about that realm and what there is there?”
Father Roth nodded his agreement, took a handful of dried plants out of his bag, handed them to Kircher. “Even though this herb, which they call cha or tea, exists in numerous locations in China, it grows better in some places than in others. They make a beverage with it that they drink very hot & its beneficial properties are widely known, since not only all the inhabitants of the great empire, but also those of India, of Tartary, of Tibet, of Mogor & all the regions of the Orient take it up to twice a day—”
Kircher gestured him to stop. “There is no need to go on,” he said in friendly tones, “for I already know this remarkable herb. I would never have believed it had so many beneficial properties if the late lamented Father Boym had not made me try it some years ago. As I have been taking it regularly since then, I can tell you that, having a purgative quality, it opens up the kidneys marvelously so that their ducts become very wide & allow urine, sand & stones to pass through; it similarly purges the brain & prevents smoky vapors from troubling it, so that there is not a more effective restorative for scholars & men who are so overloaded with business they are constantly compelled to burn the midnight oil: taking this herb not only helps them to bear their work & relieves their weariness, providing the strength necessary to go without sleep, it also gives so much pleasure to one’s taste buds that once one has accustomed oneself to its acrid & slightly insipid taste, one cannot stop oneself taking as much as one can. What we can say is that the coffee of the Turks & the cocolat or chocolate of the Mexicans, which seem to have the same effect, do not do so to the same extent, since cha has a more temperate quality than the two others; we have noticed that cocolat is too warming in summer & coffee excites the bile to an extraordinary degree, which is not the case with cha, since one can take it at all times & with benefit, even if one were to take it a hundred times a day.”
Father Roth could not conceal his disappointment at not having been able to provide a surprise for my master. He still congratulated him and gave him the cha he had brought from India so that he could compare its flavor and properties with that of China, a present for which Kircher expressed his great satisfaction.
“I thought of you as well,” said Grueber, taking a little package out of his cassock. “Here is a paste made out of a certain herb of the province of Kashgar. It is called Quey or ‘the herb that banishes sorrow’ & possesses, as its name indicates, the quality of producing joy & laughter in those who have taken it. Even better, it is a tonic and
stimulates the heart, a quality I have observed myself on numerous occasions when I was eating it to help me climb the steep slopes of Tibet.”
“It could be,” Kircher replied, “that we have a similar herb here, namely Apiorisus, & I would have no difficulty believing such a plant was to be found in that country, if it was said to be poisonous; but you say it is one of the cardiac plants that promote good health, which I cannot understand and will not subscribe to until I have tried it.”
“If you insist, Reverend, but you will have to mix it with jam or honey, since by itself it is unpleasant to the palate.”
At a sign from my master I was about to do the necessary when the gong sounded. By the communication tube the porter announced that Cavaliere Bernini was requesting an interview. Kircher had him sent up immediately, delighted at the thought of seeing his old friend again.
“To work! To work!” Bernini cried when he appeared on the threshold of the library. “Alexander has need of us.”
Kircher went over to him, not without apologizing to those present for the sculptor’s impetuous nature. “So,” he said, “could you tell me the reason for this deafening entry?”
“Of course, Reverend, nothing simpler. I have just heard, from a very reliable source, that the Supreme Pontiff, in imitation of the late Pamphilius, wants to erect an obelisk in Piazza della Minerva & has seen fit to involve us once more in the design of the project. I therefore came as quickly as I could to give you the news, knowing you would be as delighted as I am.”
“I am, indeed, very pleased, but are you absolutely sure of what you say?”
Bernini went up to my master and whispered a few words in his ear.
Where Tigers Are at Home Page 55