Twenty-Seven

saint-gervais, france, 1860

“Non Degenera Alchemia,” the retired magician read aloud.

Something to do with alchemy. Robert-­Houdin knew basic Latin, and he knew of alchemists. He, in fact, had many books on the subject. Not one but two rooms of his home had been designated as libraries, filled with over a thousand volumes both accumulated by himself and given to him by friends. He devoured books the way some men devoured bottles of wine. It had been an obsession of his ever since he was a young man. While studying to be a clockmaker, he ordered a set of books on the subject. After the books arrived, he unwrapped the paper packaging and found there had been a mistake. Not truly a mistake, though. It was fate. Instead of books on the craft of clockmaking, he had been sent books on the mechanics of magic.

Instead of returning the books, he read them. To the curious boy, the idea of true magic opened up a world of possibilities. But where the books explained the technical structure of magic tricks, it seemed to Robert-­Houdin that they failed to elevate the conjuring tricks into a true art form. Why was magic lower-class entertainment of the streets? Would French society not appreciate skillfully enacted illusions in the comfort of the theater?

From that moment on, the clockmaker was no more. The formally dressed stage magician who became the Father of Modern Magic was born.

He performed on stages across Europe, honing his craft. He spoke often of the fated books that showed him the path to his true destiny. He wasn’t sure he actually believed in fate, yet it made for a good story. Because of it, friends and well-wishers often gave him strange books on a wide range of subjects. Alchemy was as strange a subject as one could find, and therefore several dozen acquaintances had brought him alchemy books over the years.

But Non Degenera Alchemia enticed him more than the others.

He ran his weathered fingers over a woodcut of a globe encircled by flames. He hadn’t noticed before that the globe was also a face. It screamed in agony.

A knock on the drawing room door startled him. He’d been so caught up in the wonderful and horrible illustrations that he’d lost all track of time.

“Well, mon ami,” he whispered to the stone beast, “our illusion will have to wait.” He closed the book. Was it his imagination, or did the scent of decay permeating the room disappear as soon as the book snapped shut?

When Robert-­Houdin returned to the drawing room the following day, the strange alchemy book lay open on the side table. He narrowed his eyes. His wife knew he hated it when she fussed with his books. At least she hadn’t covered up the carving again.

He glanced at the clocks in the room, all of which kept perfect time, from the grandfather clock next to the window to the glass clock on the mantel. Three hours until dinner. He would not let himself get distracted by the illustrations again. He wished to find a passage to read that would sound mysterious to his audience, providing the drama to elevate his illusion to the perfection he demanded.

Ah! There it was! He took back what he was thinking about his wife. She’d selected—accidentally, almost certainly—a page with a perfect section of text. It was almost as if it was calling to him …

He shook his head, feeling the aches of old age as he did so. As he lifted the book into his hands, the pain in his joints lightened, as if the book itself were affecting his body. “Bof!” He was definitely growing fanciful in his old age. It wasn’t the book itself. It was the anticipation of creating a new illusion that made him feel young again.

He mouthed the Latin words on the page. Three lines of text. A strange combination of words, he could tell, even though he didn’t speak Latin well. He’d studied Latin in school, of course, but the method of study was so rote that he’d memorized written passages without understanding their meaning. He formed the words of the first sentence. In spite of his incomprehension, the first line rolled off his tongue. He practiced it again. Yes, he liked the sound of it. Very theatrical. The first two were easy, the last more difficult. He decided he would try again later.

That night after dinner, he moved the statue onto the small stage he’d erected at the house. The automaton would take much more work to complete, but in the meantime he could practice timing with the stone beast.

Alone in the miniature theater, Jean Eugène Robert-­Houdin licked his dry lips, looked out over the empty chairs, and read the incantation. His shoulders drooped. The words fell flat, and not because of the lack of an audience. The words were incomplete. The first two lines screamed to be read with the next. He licked his dry lips and read the last line of text. His tongue stumbled over the foreign words.

Squaring his shoulders, he tried again. The words again came haltingly, as if he were trying to speak backward. He knew an English magician who read backward to pretend he was conjuring the Devil. This Latin evoked a feeling at least as dangerous.

He read the words again. Better. They became easier each time he tried. Having practiced, he turned at a right angle to the empty seats, facing the stone carving, and read the three lines together.

The heavy book became light in his hands, as if an illusion using ether were in play. He glanced upward, annoyed. Someone was surely playing a joke on him, using fishing wire hanging from the ceiling to lift the book without him seeing the mechanism. Yet he saw no wires. His eyesight was not as good as it once was. To be sure he wasn’t missing anything, Robert-­Houdin held the newly light book in one hand and swiped his other hand above the book. His fingers did not find any wires. What type of illusion was this?

He looked back to the stone gargoyle—but the creature was gone.