Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [60]
“But all this, really, is guesswork,” Belbo said.
“It started with guesswork, yes. I’m just explaining why I set out to explore Provins. But now we come to the actual story. In the center of Provins is a big Gothic building, the Grange-aux-Dimes, or tithe granary. As you may know, one of the sources of the Templars’ strength was that they collected tithes directly and didn’t have to pay anything to the state. Under the building, as everywhere else, there’s a network of passages, today in very bad condition. Well, as I was going through archives in Provins I came across a local newspaper from 1894. In it was an article about two dragoons, Chevalier Camille Laforge of Tours and Chevalier Edouard Ingolf of Petersburg—yes, Petersburg!—who had visited the Grange a few days earlier. Accompanied by the caretaker, they went down into one of the subterranean rooms, on the second level belowground. When the caretaker, trying to show that there were other levels even farther down, stamped on the earth, they heard echoes and reverberations. The reporter praised the bold dragoons, who promptly fetched lanterns and ropes and went into the unknown tunnels like boys down a mine, pulling themselves forward on their elbows, crawling through mysterious passages. And the paper says they came to a great hall with a fine fireplace and a dry well in the center. They tied a stone to a rope, lowered it, and found that the well was eleven meters deep. They went back a week later with stronger ropes, and two companions lowered Ingolf into the well, where he discovered a big room with stone walls, ten meters square and five meters high. The others then followed him down. They realized that they were at the third level, thirty meters beneath the surface. We don’t know what the men saw and did in that room. The reporter admits that when he went to the scene to investigate, he lacked the courage to go down into the well. I was excited by the story and felt a desire to visit the place. But many of the tunnels had collapsed since the end of die last century, and even if such a well did exist at that time, there was no way of telling where it was now.
“It suddenly occurred to me that the dragoons might have found something down there. I had recently read a book about the secret of Rennes-le-Chateau, another story in which the Templars figure. A penniless and obscure parish priest was restoring an old church in a little village of some two hundred souls. A ‘, stone in the choir floor was lifted, revealing a box said to contain ; some very old manuscripts. Only manuscripts? We don’t know ( exactly what happened next, but in later years the priest became immensely rich, threw money around, led a life of dissipation, and was finally brought before an ecclesiastical court. What if something similar had happened to one of the dragoons? Or to both? Ingolf went down first; let’s say he found some precious object small enough to be hidden in his tunic. He came back up and said nothing to his companions. Well, I am a stubborn man; otherwise I wouldn’t have lived the life I have.”
The colonel ran his fingers over his scar, then raised his hands to his temples and brushed his hair toward his nape, making sure it was in place.
“I went to the central telephone office in Paris and checked the directories of the entire country, looking for a family named Ingolf. I found only one, in Auxerre, and wrote a letter introducing myself as an amateur archeologist. Two weeks later I received a reply from an elderly midwife, the daughter of the Ingolf I had read about. She was curious to know why I was interested in him. In fact, she asked: For God’s sake, could I tell her anything? I realized there was a mystery here, so I hurried to Auxerre. Mademoiselle