Napoleon's Pyramids by William Dietrich Page A

Christians pray for it, the Egyptians actually packed for it,” de Venture countered. “Like other early cultures, they put into their tombs what they’d need for the next journey. Nor did they necessarily pack light, and there lies opportunity. The tombs may be stuffed with treasures. ‘Please send us gold,’ rival kings wrote the pharaohs, ‘because gold to you is more plentiful than dirt.’”
    “That’s the faith for me,” General Dumas growled. “Faith you can grasp.”
    “Maybe they survived in another way, as gypsies,” I spoke up.
    “What?”
    “Gypsies. Gyptians. They claim descent from the priests of Egypt.”
    “Or they are Saint-Germain or Cagliostro,” added Talma. “Those men claimed to have lived for millennia, to have walked with Jesus and Cleopatra. Perhaps it was true.”
    Berthollet scoffed. “What’s true is that Cagliostro is so dead that soldiers dug up his grave in a papal prison and toasted him by drinking wine out of his skull.”
    “If it was really his skull,” Talma said stubbornly.
    “And the Egyptian Rite claims to be on the path to rediscovering these powers and miracles, is this not so?” Napoleon asked.
    “It is the Egyptian Rite that seeks to corrupt the principles of Freemasonry,” Talma responded. “Instead of pledging themselves to morality and the Great Architect, they look for dark power in the occult. Cagliostro invented a perversion of Freemasonry that admits women for sexual rites. They would use ancient powers for themselves, instead of for the good of mankind. It’s a shame they’ve become a fashion in Paris, and seduced men such as Count Silano. All true Freemasons repudiate them.”
    Napoleon smiled. “So you and your American friend must find the secrets first!”
    Talma nodded. “And put them to our uses, not theirs.”
    I was reminded of Stefan the Gypsy’s legend that the Egyptians might be waiting for moral and scientific advancement before yielding their secrets. And here we came, a thousand cannon jutting from our hulls.
     
     
     
    T he conquest of the Mediterranean isle of Malta took one day, three French lives, and—before we arrived—four months of spying, negotiation, and bribery. The three hundred or so Knights of Malta were a medieval anachronism, half of them French, and more interested in pensions than dying for glory. After the formalities of brief resistance, they kissed their conqueror’s hands. Our geologist Dolomieu, who had been drummed out of the Knights in disgrace after his young duel, found himself welcomed back as a prodigal son who could help in the surrender negotiations. Malta was ceded to France, the grand master was pensioned to a principality in Germany, and Bonaparte set himself to looting the island’s treasures as thoroughly as he had sacked Italy.
    He left to the Knights a splinter of the True Cross and a withered hand of John the Baptist. He kept for France five million francs of gold, a million of silver plate, and another million in the gem-encrusted treasures of St. John. Most of this loot was transferred to the hold of L’Orient. Napoleon also abolished slavery and ordered all Maltese men to wear the tricolor cockade. The hospital and post office were reorganized, sixty boys from wealthy families were sent to be educated in Paris, a new school system was set up, and five thousand men were left to garrison the island. It was a preview of the combination of pillage and reform that he hoped to accomplish in Egypt.
    It was at Malta that Talma came to me excited with his latest discovery. “Cagliostro was here!” he exclaimed.
    “Where?”
    “This island! The Knights told me he visited a quarter-century ago, in the company of his Greek mentor Alhotas. Here he met Kolmer! These wise men conferred with the grand master and examined what the Knights Templar had brought from Jerusalem.”
    “So?”
    “This could be where he discovered the medallion, deep in the treasures of the Knights of Malta! Don’t