Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum by eco foucault (important books to read .txt) 📗

"Vision," Rodin says,"be mine; for just one instant crown with pleasure a life spent inthe hard service of a jealous divinity, assuage with one lubriciousembrace the eternity of flame to which your sight now plunges me. Ibeseech you, brush my face with your lips, you Antinea, you MaryMagdalene, you whom I have desired in the presence of saints dazedin ecstasy, whom I have coveted during my hypocritical worship ofvirginity. O Lady, fair art thou as the sun, white as the moon; loI deny both God and the saints, and the Roman pontiff himself¡Xno,more, I deny Loyola and the criminal vow that binds me to mySociety. A kiss, one kiss, then let me die!"

On numbed knees hecrawls, his habit pulled up over his loins, his hand outstretchedtoward unattainable happiness. Suddenly he falls back, his eyesbulging, his features convulsed, like the unnatural shocks producedby Volta's pile on the face of a corpse. A bluish foam purples hislips; from his mouth comes a strangled hissing, like ahydrophobe's, for when it reaches its paroxysmal phase, as Charcotrightly puts it, this terrible disease, which is satyriasis, thepunishment of lust, impresses the same stigmata as rabidmadness.

It is the end. Rodinbursts into insane laughter, then crumples to the floor, lifeless,the living image of cadaveric rigor.

In a single moment hewent mad and died in mortal sin.

I push the body towardthe trapdoor, careful not to dirty my patent-leather boots on thegreasy soutane of my last enemy.

There is no need forLuciano's dagger, but the assassin can no longer control hisactions, his bestial compulsion to murder over and over. Laughing,he stabs a lifeless, dead cadaver.

* * *

Now I move with you tothe trap's rim, I stroke your throat as you lean forward to enjoythe scene, I say to you, "Are you pleased with your Rocambole, myinaccessible love?"

And as you nodlasciviously and sneer, drooling into the void, I slowly tighten myfingers.

"What are you doing, mylove?"

"Nothing, Sophia. I amkilling you. I am now Guiseppe Balsamo and have no further need ofyou."

The harlot of theArchons dies, drops to the water. With a thrust of his knife,Luciano seconds the verdict of my merciless hand, and I say to him:"Now you can climb up again, my trusty one, my black soul." As heclimbs, his back to me, I insert between his shoulder blades a thinstiletto with a triangular blade that leaves hardly a mark. Down heplunges; I close the trapdoor: it is done. I abandon the sordidroom as eight bodies float toward the Chatelet by conduits knownonly to me.

I return to my smallapartment in the Faubourg Saint-Honore", I look at myself in themirror. There, I say to myself, I am the King of the World. From myhollow spire I rule the universe. My power makes my head spin. I ama master of energy. I am drunk with command.

* * *

Alas, life's vengeanceis not slow in coming. Months later, in the deepest crypt of thecastle of Tomar, I¡Xnow master of the secret of the subterraneancurrents and lord of the six sacred places of those who had beenthe Thirty-six Invisibles, last of the last Templars and UnknownSuperior of all Unknown Superiors¡Xshould win the hand of Cecilia,the androgyne with eyes of ice, from whom nothing now can separateme. I have found her again, after the centuries that intervenedsince she was stolen from me by the man with the saxophone. Now shewalks on the back of the bench as on a tightrope, blue-eyed andblond; nor do I know what she is wearing beneath the filmy tullethat bedecks her.

The chapel has beenhollowed from the rock; the altar is surmounted by a canvasdepicting the torments of the damned in the bowels of Hell. Somehooded monks stand tenebrously at my side, but I am not disturbed,I am fascinated by the Iberian imagination...

Then¡XO horror¡Xthecanvas is raised, and behind it, the admirable work of someArcimboldo of caves, another chapel appears, exactly like this one.There before the altar Cecilia is kneeling, and beside her¡Xicysweat beads my brow, my hair stands on end¡Xwhom do I see,mockingly displaying his scar? The Other, the real GiuseppeBalsamo. Someone has freed him from the dungeon of SanLeo!

And I? It is at thispoint that the oldest of the monks raises his hood, and I recognizethe ghastly smile of Luciano, who¡XGod knows how-escaped mystiletto, the sewers, the bloody mire that should have dragged hiscorpse to the silent depths of the ocean. He has gone over to myenemies in his rightful thirst for revenge.

The monks slough offtheir habits; they are head to toe in armor, a flaming cross ontheir snow-white cloaks. The Templars of Provins!

They seize me, turn mearound, toward an executioner standing between two deformedassistants. I am bent over, and with a searing brand I am made theeternal prey of the jailer as the evil smile of Baphomet isimpressed forever on my shoulder. Now I understand: I am to replaceBalsamo at San Leo¡Xor, rather, to resume the place that wasassigned to me for all eternity.

But they will recognizeme, I tell myself, and somebody will surely come to my aid¡Xmyaccomplices, at least¡Xa prisoner cannot be replaced withoutanybody's noticing, these are no longer the days of the IronMask...Fool! In a flash I understand, as the executioner forces myhead over a copper basin from which greenish fumes are rising:vitriol!

A cloth is placed overmy eyes, my face is thrust into the devouring liquid, a piercingunbearable pain, the skin of my cheeks shrivels, my nose, mouth,chin, a moment is all it takes, and as I am pulled up again by thehair, my face is unrecognizable¡Xparalysis, pox, and indescribableabsence of a face, a hymn to hideousness. I will go back to thedungeon like those fugitives who, to avoid recapture, had thecourage to disfigure themselves.

Ah, I cry, defeated, andas the narrator says, one word escapes my shapeless lips, a sigh,an appeal: Redemption!

But Redemption fromwhat, old Rocambole? You knew better than to try to be aprotagonist! You have been punished, and with your own arts. Youmocked the creators of illusion, and now¡Xas you see¡Xyou writeusing the alibi of a machine, telling yourself you are a