Robert Langdon had awoken to a start. This was better than the previous two days of sleep he had avoided. He had dreamt for the first time in days. Confused, he sat up looking at the light trying to make its way through the blinds, Was it dusk or dawn? he thought. Langdon’s body was filled with content at the warmth he was feeling. Standing up, he had realized what at really awakened him….. the strangest thought. For days he has tried to sort his thoughts with reasoning but now he found himself fixed on something he hadn’t considered before.
Could it be? Enthralled, he stood still for what seemed an eternity. He decided a shower could do his thoughts a favor, so he walked to the glass panes and stepped inside. He let the water cleanse himself as well as his thoughts. Impossible. After his shower he dressed himself and left the hotel room. Langdon stepped out of the Hotel Ritz into Place Vendome. Night was on the horizon. The days without sleep left him disoriented…… yet he felt lucid. He had promised himself to stop and get a coffee but his legs had lead him into the streets of Paris.
Walking east on Rue De Petits Champs, Langdon felt an excitement only a little child on his birthday would feel. As if he was receiving a present from his mind. He turned south onto Rue Richelieu, where the air was filled with the essence of sweet jasmine blossoming from the stately gardens of the Palais Royal. He continued south until he saw what he was looking for—the famous royal arcade- a shimmering expanse of polished black marble. Moving towards it, Langdon examined the surface beneath his feet.
Within seconds, he found what he was looking for, what he knew was there—several bronze medallions embedded into the ground in a symmetrical line. Each disk was five inches in diameter and displayed the letters N and S. Nord. Sur. He turned due south, letting his eye follow the trace of the extended line formed by the medallions. He began moving again, following the trail, watching the changing pavement with every step he took. As he cut through the corner of the Comedie-Francaise , another medallion passed underneath his feet. Yes!
The streets of Paris, Langdon had learned years prior, were adorned with 135 of these bronze markers, frozen in sidewalks, courtyards, and streets, on a north-south axis across the city. He had once traced the steps from Sacre-Couer, north across the Seine, until its zenith at the ancient Paris Observatory. There he discovered the significance of the sacred path. The earth’s original prime meridian. The first zero longitude of the world. Paris’s ancient Rose Line. Now, as Langdon scurried across Rue de Rivoli, he could sense the power his destination exhibited, within his reach, less than a block away.
The Holy Grail ‘neath ancient Roslin waits. The revelations were coming in waves of intensity. Sauniere’s ancient spelling of Roslin…. the blade and chalice… the tomb decorated with masters’ art. Is that why Sauniere needed to talk with me? Hadi unknowingly guessed the truth? He broke into a sprint in excitement no longer having the patience to wait for the anticipation it held. Feeling the Rose line beneath his feet, guiding him, pulling him towards his destination, he continued on. As he entered the long tunnel of Passage Richelieu, he could have exploded at the emotions he was undergoing.
He knew that at the end of this tunnel was the most mysterious of Parisian monuments—conceived and contracted in the 1980s by the Sphinx himself, Francois Mitterrand, a man rumored to move in secret circles, a man whose final legacy was a place in Paris Langdon had visited himself days before. With a final surge of energy, Langdon ran from the passageway into the familiar courtyard and came to a sudden halt. Breathless, he raised his disbelieving eyes, slowly, to the glistening structure standing tall in front of him. The Louvre Pyramid. Gleaming in the abyss, he admired it only for a second.
He was more intrigued in what had been on display to his right. Turning, he felt his feet again tracing the invisible path of the Rose Line, carrying him across the courtyard to the Carrousel du Louvrethe enormous circle of grass surrounded by a perimeter of trimmed hedges in a neatly order-once the site of Paris’s primeval nature-worshipping festivals. Langdon felt as if he crossed into a new dimension, a new world, as he stepped over the bushes to the grassy area within the circle. This sacred ground was now marked by one of the city’s most unusual monuments.
There in the center gaped the giant inverted pyramid of glass that he had seen when he entered the Louvre subterranean entresol. La Pyramide Inversee. Trembling, Langdon walked to the edge and looked down into the Louvre’s underground complex, aglow with light. His eye was memorized not by the pyramid, but with what laid beneath it. There, on the floor of the chamber below, stood the tiniest of structures…. a structure Langdon had written about in his manuscript. Filled with curiosity and wonder, he stared once again down below through the glass at the tiny structure that laid beneath. I must go down there!
Stepping out of the circle, he ran across the courtyard back to the towering entrance of the Louvre. The last of the people visiting that day were trickling out of the museum. Pushing through the revolving door, Langdon descended from the staircase into the pyramid. He could feel the air get cooler the farther he went down. When he reached the bottom, he walked into the tunnel that stretched beneath the Louvre’s courtyard, back toward La Pyramide Inversee. At the end of the tunnel, he entered a large chamber. Directly in front of him, hanging from above, gleamed the inverted pyramid-a breathtaking V-shaped contour of glass.
The Chalice. Langdon’s eyes traced its narrowing form right to its tip, suspended only six feet from the ground. There, directly beneath it, laid the small structure. A miniature pyramid, only about three feet tall—the only structure in the colossal complex built on a smaller scale. Langdon’s manuscript had made a passing note of this pyramid. “The miniature structure itself protrudes up through the floor as though it were the tip of an iceberg—the apex of an enormous, pyramidical vault, submerged below like a hidden chamber. ”
Illuminated with soft lights, the two pyramids pointed towards each other as if they were mirroring each other, perfectly aligned, their tips almost touching. The Chalice above while the Blade was below. The blade and chalice guarding o’er Her gates. He was standing directly underneath the Rose Line, surrounded by the works of masters. What better place for Sauniere to keep watch? Finally, he sensed he fully interpreted the true meaning of the Grand Master’s verse. Lifting his eyes to the heavens, he gazed through the glass upwards.
She rests at last beneath the starry skies. Like the whispers of lost spirits, words of forgotten memories echoed. The quest for the Holy Grail is the quest to kneel before the bones of Mary Magdalene. A journey to pray at the feet of the outcast one. Like a sudden surge of energy, filling him with reverence, he fell to his knees. For a moment, he thought he had heard the voice of a woman echoing the deserted chamber… whispering from the ends of the earth… to only make him think of the unbelievable. He had found the Holy grail with Da Vinci’s code
