Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [83]
On the third day, our guide took us to the bar of a hotel in a renovated part of the upper city, on a street full of luxury antique shops. He was to meet an Italian gentleman, he told us, who wanted to buy—and for the asking price—a painting of his, three meters by two, in which teeming angelic hosts waged the final battle against the opposing legions.
And so we met Signor Aglie. Impeccably dressed in a double-breasted pin-striped suit despite the heat, he wore gold-rimmed eyeglasses and had a rosy complexion, silver hair. He kissed Amparo’s hand as if he knew of no other way to greet a lady, and he ordered champagne. When the painter had to leave, Aglifc handed him a pack of traveler’s checks and said to send the picture to his hotel. We stayed on to chat. Aglie spoke Portuguese correctly, but it sounded as if he had learned it in Lisbon. This accent made him seem even more like a gentleman of bygone days. He asked about us, commented on the possible Genevan origin of my name, and expressed curiosity about Amparo’s family history, though somehow he had already guessed that the main branch was from Recife. About his own origins he was vague. “I’m like many people here,” he said. “Countless races are represented in my genes...The name is Italian, from the ancient estate of an ancestor. Perhaps a nobleman, but who cares these days? It was curiosity that brought me to Brazil. All forms of tradition fascinate me.”
He told us he had a fine library of religious sciences in Milan, where he had been living for some years. “Come and see me when you get back. I have a number of interesting things, from Afro-Brazilian rites to the Isis cults of the late Roman Empire.” “I adore the Isis cults,” Amparo said, who often, out of pride, pretended to be silly. “You must know everything there is to know about them.”
Aglie replied modestly: “Only what little IVe seen of them.” Amparo tried again: “But wasn’t it two thousand years ago?” “I’m not as young as you are.” Aglie smiled.
“Like Cagliostro,” I joked. “Wasn’t he the one who was heard to murmur to his attendant as they passed a crucifix, ‘I told that Jew to be careful that evening, but he just wouldn’t listen’?”
Aglie stiffened. Afraid I had offended him, I started to apologize, but our host stopped me with an indulgent smile. “Cagliostro was a humbug. It’s common knowledge when and where he was born, and he didn’t even manage to live very long. A braggart.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Cagliostro was a humbug,” Aglie repeated, “but that does not mean that there have not been—and still are—privileged persons who have lived many lives. Modern science knows so little about the aging process. It’s quite possible that mortality is simply the result of poor education. Cagliostro was a humbug, but the Comte de Saint-Germain was not. He may not have been boasting when he claimed to have learned some of his chemical secrets from the ancient Egyptians. Nobody believed him, so out of politeness to his listeners he pretended to be joking.”
“And now you pretend to be joking in order to convince us you’re telling the truth,” Amparo said.
“You are not only beautiful, but extraordinarily perceptive too,” Aglie said. “But I beseech you, do not believe me. Were I to appear before you in the dusty splendor of my many centuries, your own beauty would wither, and I could never forgive myself.’’
Amparo was conquered, and I felt a twinge