Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum eco foucault (highly illogical behavior txt) 📖

"You see?"

Aglte came in,impeccable as always. He shook our hands and apologized: a tiresomemeeting, quite unforeseen, forced him to remain in his study foranother ten minutes or so. He told the butler to bring coffee andbegged us to make ourselves at home. Then he went out, drawingaside a heavy curtain of old leather. It wasn't a door, and as wewere having our coffee, we heard agitated voices coming from thenext room. At first we spoke loudly among ourselves, in order notto listen; then Belbo remarked that perhaps we were disturbing theothers. In a moment of silence, we heard a voice, and a sentencethat aroused our curiosity.

Diotallevi got up andwent over, as if he wanted to admire a seventeenth-century print onthe wall by the curtain. It showed a mountain cave, to which somepilgrims were climbing by way of seven steps. Soon all three of uswere pretending to study the print.

The man we had heard wassurely Bramanti, and the sentence was: "See here, I don't senddevils to people's houses!"

That day we realizedBramanti had not only a tapir's face but also a tapir'svoice.

The other voice belongedto a stranger: a thick French accent and a shrill, almosthysterical tone. From time to time Aglie's voice, soft andconciliatory, intervened.

"Come, gentlemen," hewas saying now, "you have appealed to my verdict, and I am honored,but you must therefore listen to me. Allow me, first of all, to saythat you, dear Pierre, were imprudent, at the very least, inwriting that letter..."

"It's an extremelysimple matter, Monsieur le Comte," the French voice replied. "ThisSigner Bramanti, he writes an article, in a publication we allrespect, in which he indulges himself in some fairly strong ironyabout certain Luciferans, who, he says, make hosts fly though theydon't even believe in the Real Presence, and they transmute silver,and so forth and so on. Bon, everyone knows that the onlyrecognized Eglise Luciferienne is the one where I am the humbletauroboliaste and psychopompe, and it is also well known that mychurch does not indulge itself in vulgar Satanism and does not makeratatouille with hosts¡Xthings worthy of chan-oine Docre atSaint-Sulpice. In my letter I said that we are not vieux jeuSatanists, worshipers of the Grand Tenancierdu Mal, and that we donot have to ape the Church of Rome, with all those pyxes andthose¡Xcomment dit-on?¡Xchasubles...We are, au con-traire,Palladians, as all the world knows, and, for us, Luciferre is theprincipe of good. If anything, it is Adonai who is the principe ofevil, because He created this world, whereas Luciferre tried tooppose..."

"All right," Bramantisaid angrily. "I admit I may have been careless, but this doesn'tentitle him to threaten me with sorcery!"

"Mais voyons! It was ametaphor! You are the one who, in return, caused me to have theenvoutement!"

"Oh, of course, mybrothers and I have time to waste, sending little devils around! Wepractice Dogma and the Ritual of High Magic: we are not witchdoctors!"

"Monsieur le Comte, Iappeal to you. Signer Bramanti is notoriously in touch with theabbe Boutroux, and you well know that this priest is said to havethe crucifix tattooed on the sole of his foot so that he may treadon Our Lord, or, rather, on his...Bon, I meet seven days ago thissupposed abbe at the Du San-greal Bookshop, you know; he smiles atme, very slimy, as is his custom, and he says to me, ¡¥Well, we'llbe hearing from each other one of these evenings.' What does itmean, one of these evenings? It means that, two evenings after, thevisits begin. I am going to bed and I feel chocs strike my face,fluid chocs, you know; those emanations are easilyrecognized."

"You probably rubbed thesoles of your slippers on the carpet. ¡¥¡¥

"Yes, yes, then why werethe bibelots flying? Why did one of my alembiques strike my head,and my plaster Baphomet, it falls to the floor, and that a mementoof my late father, and on the wall three writings appear in red,ordures I cannot repeat, hein? You know well that no more than ayear ago the late Monsieur Gros accused that abbe1 there of makingthe cataplasms with fecal matter, forgive the expression, and theabbe condemned him to death, and two weeks later the poor MonsieurGros, he dies mysteriously. This Boutroux handles poisons, the juryd'honneur summoned by the Martinists of Lyon said so..."

"Slander," Bramantigrowled.

"Ah, that then! A trialin matters of this sort is always circumstantial..."

"Yes, but nobody at thetrial mentioned the fact that Monsieur Gros was an alcoholic in thelast stages of cirrhosis."

"Do not be enfantine!Sorcelery proceeds by natural ways; if one has a cirrhosis, theystrike one in the cirrhosis. That is the ABC of blackmagic..."

"Then all those who dieof cirrhosis have the good Boutroux to blame. Don't make melaugh!"

"Then tell me, please,what passed in Lyon in those two weeks...Deconsecrated chapel, hostwith Tetragramma-ton, your Boutroux with a great red robe with thecross upside down, and Madame Olcott, his personal voyante, amongother things, with the trident that appears on her brow and theempty chalices that fill with blood by themselves, and the abbe whocrached in the mouth of the faithful...Is that true or is itnot?"

"You've been reading toomuch Huysmans, my friend!" Bramanti laughed. "It was a culturalevent, a pageant, like the celebrations of the school of Wicca andthe Druid colleges!"

"Ouais, the carnival ofVenise..."

We heard a scuffle, asif Bramanti was attempting to strike his adversary and Aglie wasrestraining him. "You see? You see?" the Frenchman said in afalsetto. "But guard yourself, Bramanti, and ask your friendBoutroux what happened to himl You don't know yet, but he's in thehospital. Ask him who broke his figure! Even if I do not practicethat goety of yours, I know a little of it myself, and when Irealized that my house was inhabited, I drew on the parquet thecircle of defense, and since I do not believe, but your diablotinesdo, I removed the Carmelite scapular and made the contresign, theenvoutement retourne, ah oui. Your abb6 passed a mauvaismoment!"

"You see? You see?"Bramanti was panting. "He's the one casting spells!"

"Gentlemen, that'senough," Aglie said politely but firmly. "Now listen to me. Youknow how highly I value, on a cognitive level, these