MISTER MYSTERY RESPONDS

I don't know if you have ever seen yourself in this circumstance, but I assure you that being in the company of three great Rosicrucian masters and not being able to find the way out of a neighborhood makes you feel quite depressed. In the first place, you begin to doubt the wisdom of your companions. In moments like this you are reminded, for example, of the episode in which Papus transformed the members of Mme Verdurin's salon into babies. And then it comes to your mind that right on the floor below Verdurin's home, there was a babies' nursery. And secondly, you start to doubt your own wisdom. (It's not that I have a reputation as a great Rosicrucian master, but in certain Parisian circles I'm considered "a guy not as dumb as he looks".) In short, in moments like this, you pose the great questions of human existence, such as... Well, nothing specific springs to my mind right now, but give me a reasonable time to reflect calmly (say a week), and I...

One day, the trusted men of Papus (or G é rard Encausse in case his wife does not hear us) were called to an urgent meeting at the headquarters of the Rosicrucian Order on the Rue des Chartres. When I arrived I found a painter standing on a staircase, replacing the sign above the door's  lintel. Apparently, the Order had recently changed its name. It was no longer called "The Rosicrucian Order of the Temple" but "The Templar Order of the Rosicrucian." The painter was saying nasty things about the board of directors concerning its compulsive tendency to change the name of the Order. I left the irate man and entered the ancient stone building. There I met the Marquis de Guaita and Josephin P é ladan (who, by means of a sprinkling can, was watering the “ clod ” on his head). After a while, Papus burst into the room in a state of great stress, as we deduced from his attitude of beating his head against the walls. When, as a result of the blows, he collapsed in a fa...

I have never considered myself a man of action (my favorite action is to go to sleep immediately after taking a good nap). However, the day we recovered the book fallen from the sky, I discovered that if the circumstance required it, I could become, say, one of the three musketeers. In the feat that concerns us, the other two were Péladan and Papus. And our D'Artagnan was the Marquis de Guaita, who, thanks to his rabbit costume, had managed to infiltrate a dungeon in the Elysée palace as soon as the operation began. Having already one of our men infiltrated in the palace, it was only a matter of time before the others met with him. And so it happened shortly after, as one after another we went jumping to the other side of the wall. Once the four of us inside the palace, we only had to get hold of the key of the dungeon, escape without the jailers noticing, and register the palace until we found the credenza that hid the valuable book. My companions did me the honor of entrusting me...

The Marquis de Guaita, Josephin Péladan and myself (the three only living beings who knew the existence of the mysterious book fallen from the sky) had been recruited by Papus to recover that valuable jewel of occult literature. After an intense interrogation to the administrator of the Rosicrucian Order, Papus learned that, during his absence, they had sold some furniture from the headquarters of the Order, and among them the credenza in which Papus was so interested. His interest was more than justified: in it Papus had made, without anyone knowing, a secret panel to hide the valuable book. He also obtained information regarding the buyer of the credenza: none other than the President of the Republic, by then Émile Loubet, in order to decorate his private chambers in the "palais de l'Elysée". Papus gathered the above-mentioned members of the Order and raised the imperative need to recover the book. In my naiveté, I suggested that we go to the Elysée and ask the Presiden...

Papus invited me to visit the headquarters of the newly created Rosicrucian Order. (It was the same building since the 17th century. The only thing that changed regularly was the Order’s name and its statutes.) It was located near Notre Dame, at the historic heart of Paris. And although we were far from there, Papus proposed to walk. Fortunately, an incident halfway shortened considerably the time of the journey. While we were walking, Papus continued to reveal things about the mysterious book fallen from “above”. Very few people knew its existence: now I was part of that privileged nucleus. I thanked him for the honor and insinuated that I would like to leaf through its pages. He laughed and turned to give me a smack. But I saw it coming and bent down quickly, with such bad luck that the one who got the smack in the face was a lady who passed by carrying a parasol. Thanks to this lady, who persecuted tirelessly Papus while hitting him with the parasol on his back, we reached the Order...

It took Papus and me several days to locate the relatives of the hostess and guests of Mme Verdurin’s salon in order to return them, rejuvenated, to their loved ones. Meanwhile, I tried to worm Papin’s secret out of him: “How did you obtain your powerful magic?” I never get tired of asking. I knew that, with this tactic, he would end up getting tired of hearing me. And indeed, in the end, he gave up and agreed to reveal his secret to me: His magical wisdom came from a book. Precisely at that moment we passed a bookstore and I hurried to ask him the title of the book to acquire it at that very moment. But it turned out that it was not a book that was sold in bookstores. In fact, he was convinced that It was a unique book in the world. "And how did that book end up in your hands?” I wanted to know stung by curiosity. He pointed up and said: "It came from above". I thought he meant that it was a revealed book, like the “Book of Revelations", a book revealed to men by a...

"Do you know how to diaper babies?" Was the first thing Papus told me when he rushed out of Madame Verdurin's salon. I had to ask him to repeat the question several times because I thought I had not heard correctly. When I finally made sure I had understood the question correctly, I could not help but notice his belly. When I saw him for the first time several weeks ago, he already had a prominent belly, but now I realized that that belly had been increasing progressively in size. A shudder ran through my spine. "Are you going to have a child?" I asked, stunned. And I quickly added: “Well, I warn you, it's not my son”. Then he began to laugh out loud while I didn’t take my eyes off her belly, which, with every laugh, rose and fell as if it were alive or enclosed a living being inside it. When he finished laughing, he grabbed me by the arm and, avoiding the carriages that passed through the boulevard, made me enter the building from which he had just left. He...

The next day another occultist named Joséphin Péladan joined our group. Péladan always wore by way of hat a large lump of earth which he referred to as “my clod”. (Later I found out that a flowerpot had fallen on his head years ago from a balcony and he found that it suited him well.) For a week we were writing the statutes of a new Order. In my naivete, I asked why we needed a new Order if we already had one. Papus’ answer was that the current Order was for holidays and Sundays, and this one was for working days. Then the question arose as to what the point of that distinction was since almost all the members of the Order were aristocrats who had not worked in their lives. This replica generated some tension, which Papus relieved by slapping me around a little bit. In fact, the debates came up constantly because everyone had their own vision of how reality was seen from the corner of the eye (which, according to Péladan, is the real reality while the other is pure mirage). Rasputin wa...

When all the guests had left the castle, we were only my astral self, the Marquis (nicknamed the “Prince of Rosicrucians”), Papus (whose real name was Gérard Encausse, but he did not dare to publish it for fear that his wife discovered that he was involved in esoteric matters and report it to the authorities), and a weird monk plugged in by the Tsar of Russia and named Rasputin of whom we all distrusted, but whom we tolerated because he washed the dishes, swept, ironed the shirts, cooked, darned, and made the beds. (The Marquis had given holidays to all the domestic service in order to be free to dress up as a rabbit without being laughed at.) We kept our secret meetings in one of the towers of the castle in the light of candles. These consisted of the Marquis doing his imitation of a rabbit and the rest of us trying to hold our laughter, except Rasputin who never laughed and considered the imitation of the Marquis “a true masterpiece of idiocy”. The Marquis confessed to us that since ...

I’ve been rummaging in the book stalls along the Seine in search of some book about those mysterious travels that Papus referred to the other day. I thought I had found one, but it turned out it had nothing to do with the subject. The title confused me: "Austral travels". But it made no sense: austral means southern, and I had not always traveled towards the South when I thought I was imagining. I checked it with the compass: the Luxembourg Gardens are Northeast, not southern. I had no choice but to arrange another appointment with this Papus, although I didn’t like him sniffing me. The meeting has taken place this very afternoon at Mme de Villeparisis’ home. Without their knowing it, I had hired an ambulance to remain stationed near the house just in case, but thank goodness it has not been necessary. Papus is not as fierce as he appears. He is forced to pretend so that people do not make fun of his theories. Spiritually, he is much more evolved than most of us. For example,...

It had already darkened in Paris at eight o'clock in the afternoon when I moved in the wings of imagination to the home of Madame de Villeparisis, who welcomed me with open arms and invited me to enter a private room where there was a man sitting in an armchair. She introduced him to me as Papus. And although I had never heard of him, it turned out that he was a well-known occultist and hypnotist who moved in the circles of Parisian high society. He was a big man, with a long square beard, lively eyes and a somewhat fierce expression on his face. Suddenly he got up and, as if he were a feline, he began to sniff at me wrinkling his nose. Then he opened my mouth wide and I'm not sure if he tried to put his head in it or just look inside. "Have you eaten gherkins?" he asked. And Mme de Villeparisis explained to me that he could not stand gherkins, especially if they were dressed in vinegar. Then the three of us took a seat and, at his request, I explained the problem I h...