The Club Dumas

“More or less. The king and the beggar play chess on a strange board where all the squares are the same color, while the black dog and the white dog, Good and Evil, viciously tear each other to pieces. The moon, representing both darkness and the mother, can be seen through the window. Think of the mythical belief that, after death, souls take refuge on the moon. You read my Isis, didn’t you? Black is the symbolic color of darkness, Cimmerian shadows, sable in heraldry, earth, night, death.... The black of Isis corresponds with the color of the Virgin, who is robed in blue and dwells on the moon. When we die, we return to her, to the darkness from which we came. That darkness is ambiguous, as it is both protective and threat­ening. The dogs and the moon can be interpreted another way. The goddess of the hunt, Artemis, the Roman Diana, was known to take revenge on those who fell in love with her or tried to take advantage of her femininity.... I assume you know the story.”

Corso, who was thinking about Irene Adler, nodded slowly. “Yes. She would let her dogs loose on such men after turning them into stags.” He swallowed in spite of himself. The two dogs in the engraving, locked in mortal combat, now seemed ominous. Himself and Rochefort? “So they’d be torn to pieces.” The baroness glanced at him, expressionless. It was Corso who was providing the context, not she.

“The basic meaning of the eighth engraving,” she continued, “is not difficult to grasp. VIC. I.T VIR. stands for a rather nice motto, VICTA iacet VIRTUS. Which means: Virtue lies defeated. The damsel about to have her throat slit, by the handsome young man in armor carrying the sword, represents virtue. Meanwhile, the wheel of fortune or fate turns inexorably in the background, moving slowly but always making a complete turn. The three figures on it symbolize the three stages which, in the Middle Ages, were referred to as regno (I reign), regnavi (I reigned), and regnabo (I will reign).” “There’s one more engraving.”

“Yes. The last one, and also the most significant picture. N.NC SC.O ten.br. LUX without doubt stands for NUNC SCIO TENEBRIS LUX: Now I know that from darkness comes light. What we have here is in fact a scene from Saint John’s Apocalypse. The final seal has been broken, the secret city is in flames. The time of the Whore of Babylon has come and, having pronounced the terrible name or the number of the Beast, she rides, triumphant, on the dragon with seven heads.”

“Doesn’t seem very profitable,” said Corso, “going to all that trouble only to find this horror.”

“That’s not what it’s about. All the allegories are kinds of compositions in code, rebuses. Just as on a puzzle page the word ‘in’ followed by the pictures of a fan and a tree make up the word ‘infantry,’ these engravings and their captions combined with the book’s text enable one to determine a sequence, a ritual. The formula that provides the magic word. The verbum dimissum or whatever it might be.”

“And then the devil will put in an appearance.”

“In theory.”

“In what language is this spell? Latin, Hebrew, or Greek?”

“I don’t know.”

“And where’s the fault Madame de Montespan mentions?”

“As I said, I don’t know that either. All I’ve been able to

establish is that the celebrant must construct a magic territory

in which to place the words obtained, having arranged them

in sequence. I don’t know that sequence, but the text on pages

158 and 159 of The Nine Doors may give an indication. Look.”

She showed him the text in abbreviated Latin. A card cov­ered with the her small, spiky handwriting marked the page.

“Have you managed to work out what it says?” asked Corso.

“Yes. At least, I think so.” She handed him the card. “There you are.”

Corso read:

It is the animal with the tail in its mouth that encircles the labyrinth

where you will go through eight doors before the dragon

which comes to the enigma of the word.

Each door has two keys:

one is air and the other matter,

 but both are the same thing.

You will place matter on the serpent’s skin

 in the direction of the rising sun,

and on its belly the seal of Saturn.

You will break the seal nine times,

and when the reflection in the mirror shows the way,

you will find the lost word

which brings light from the darkness.

“What do you think?” asked the baroness.

“It’s disturbing, I suppose. But I don’t understand a word. Do you?”