Ethan Gage Collection # 1 by William Dietrich Page B

I’m simply saying they recognize that the lost knowledge of the past is as important as scientific discovery in the future. Pythagoras himself spent eighteen years studying with the priests of Memphis. And where was Jesus for a similar time during his life, on which the gospels are silent? Some contend he studied in Egypt as well. Somewhere there is the power to remake the world, to restore harmony and recapture a golden age, which is why our slogan is ‘Order out of Chaos.’ Men like Berthollet go to examine rocks and rivers. They are hypnotized by the natural world. But you and I, Gage, we sense the supernatural one that underlies it. Electricity, for example! We do not see it, and yet it is there! We know that the world of our senses is but a veil. The Egyptians knew, too. If we could read their hieroglyphs, we would become masters!”
    Like all writers, my friend had a fervent imagination and not a lick of sense. “Electricity is a natural phenomena, Antoine. It is lightning in the sky and a shock at a parlor party. You sound like that charlatan Cagliostro.”
    â€œHe was a dangerous man who wanted to use Egyptian rites for dark purposes, but no charlatan.”
    â€œWhen he practiced alchemy in Poland they caught him cheating.”
    â€œHe was framed by the jealous! Witnesses say he healed sick people that ordinary doctors despaired of. He consorted with royalty. He may have been centuries old, like Saint Germain, who was actually Prince Ragoczy of Transylvania and who personally knew Cleopatra and Jesus. Cagliostro was a student of this prince. He…”
    â€œWas mocked and hounded and died in prison after being betrayed by his own wife, who had the reputation of being the greatest whore in Europe. You said yourself his Egyptian Rite is occult nonsense. What proof is there that any of these self-proclaimed sorcerers are centuries old? Listen, I don’t doubt there are interesting things to learn in Muslim lands, but I was recruited as a scientist, not a priest. Your own revolution has scorned religion and mysticism.”
    â€œWhich is why there’s so much interest in the mystical today! Reason is creating a vacuum of wonder. Religious persecution has created a thirst for spirituality.”
    â€œSurely you don’t think Bonaparte’s motive is…”
    â€œHush!” Talma nodded toward the coach wall. “Remember your oath.”
    Ah, yes. Our expedition leader and ultimate destination was supposed to be secret, as if any fool couldn’t guess it from our conversation. I dutifully nodded, knowing that given the wheel rumble and our position to the rear, they could hear little anyway. “Are you saying these mysteries are our true purpose?” I said more quietly.
    â€œI’m saying our expedition has multiple purposes.”
    I sat back, staring moodily at the grim hills of stumps created by the insatiable hunger the new factories had for wood. It seemed like the forests themselves were being recruited for the wars and trade spawned by revolution. While industrialists grew rich, the countryside grew bare and cities became shrouded in stinking fogs. If the ancients could do things by clean magic, more power to them.
    â€œBesides, the knowledge to be sought is science,” Talma went on. “Plato brought it to philosophy. Pythagoras brought it to geometry. Moses and Solon brought it to law. All are different aspects of Truth. Some say it was the last great native pharaoh, the magician Nectanebo, who lay with Olympias and fathered Alexander the Great.”
    â€œI’ve told you I don’t want to emulate a man who died at thirty-two.”
    â€œIn Toulon you will meet the new Alexander, perhaps.”
    Or perhaps Bonaparte was simply the latest momentary hero, onedefeat away from obscurity. In the meantime, I’d milk him for a pardon for a crime I hadn’t committed by being as ingratiating as I could tolerate.
    We left the