The Da Vinci Code EPILOGUE

Robert Langdon awoke with a start. He had been dreaming. The bathrobe beside his bed bore the monogram HOTEL RITZ PARIS.He saw a dim light filtering with the blinds. Is it dusk ordawn? he wondered.Langdons body felt up warm and deeply contented. He had slept the better part of the cash in ones chips two years. posing up slowly in bed, he now realized what had awoken him the strangest thought. For day she had been trying to sort through a barrage of information, but now Langdon found himself fixed on something hed not considered before.Could it be?He remained motionless a long moment.Getting start of bed, he walked to the marble shower. Stepping inside, he let the all-powerful jets message his shoulders. Still, the thought enthralled him.Impossible.Twenty minutes later, Langdon stepped out of the Hotel Ritz into Place Vendme. Night was falling. The days of sleep had left him disoriented and yet his mind felt oddly lucid. He had promised himself he would lodge in the hotel lobb y for a cafe au lait to clear his thoughts, but instead his legs carried him directly out the front door into the gathering Paris night.Walking east on Rue des Petits Champs, Langdon felt a growing excitement. He turned south onto Rue Richelieu, where the air grew sweet with the scent of florescence jasmine from the stately gardens of the Palais Royal.He continued south until he saw what he was looking for the famous olympian arcade a glistening expanse of polished black marble. Moving onto it, Langdon scanned the surface at a lower business office his feet. at bottom seconds, he found what he knew was there several bronze medallions embedded in the ground in a perfectly straight line. Each disk was five inches in diameter and embossed with the letter N and S.Nord. Sud.He turned due south, letting his eye trace the extended line make by the medallions. He began moving again, following the trail, watching the pavement as he walked. As he cut across the corner of the Comedie -Franaise, another bronze medallion passed beneath his feet. YesThe streets of Paris, Langdon had learned years ago, were adorned with 135 of these bronze markers, embedded in sidewalks, courtyards, and streets, on a north-south axis across the city. He had adept time followed the line from Sacre-Coeur, north across the Seine, and finally to the ancient Paris Observatory. There he discovered the implication of the sacred path it traced.The earths original prime meridian.The first zero longitude of the world.Pariss ancient Rose Line. Now, as Langdon travel across Rue de Rivoli, he could feel his destination within reach. Less than a block away.The sanctum grail neath ancient Roslin waits.The revelations were coming now in waves. Saunieres ancient spelling of Roslin the blade and chalice the grave adorned with masters art.Is that why Sauniere needed to talk with me? Had I unknowingly guessed the truth?He broke into a jog, feeling the Rose Line beneath his feet, guiding him, pullin g him toward his destination. As he entered the long dig of Passage Richelieu, the hairs on his neck began to bristle with anticipation. He knew that at the end of this tunnel stood the most deep of Parisian monuments conceived and commissioned in the 1980s by the Sphinx himself, Franois Mitterrand, a man rumored to move in recondite sets, a man whose final legacy to Paris was a place Langdon had visited only if days before. other lifetime.With a final surge of energy, Langdon burst from the passageway into the familiar courtyard and came to a stop. Breathless, he raise his eyes, slowly, disbelieving, to the glistening structure in front of him.The Louvre Pyramid.Gleaming in the darkness.He admired it only a moment. He was more interested in what lay to his right. Turning, he felt his feet again shadow the invisible path of the ancient Rose Line, carrying him across the courtyard to the Carrousel du Louvre the enormous circle of grass surrounded by a perimeter of neatly tri mmed h march ons once the site of Pariss immemorial nature-worshipping festivals joyous rites to celebrate fertility and the Goddess. Langdon felt as if he were crossing into another world as he stepped over the bushes to the grassy area within. This hallowed ground was now marked by one of the citys most unusual monuments. There in the center, plunging into the earth like a crystal chasm, gaped the giant upside-down pyramid of glass that he had seen a few nights ago when he entered the Louvres subterranean entresol.La Pyramide Inversee.Tremulous, Langdon walked to the edge and peered down into the Louvres sprawling underground complex, aglow with amber light. His eye was trained not just on the massive inverted pyramid, but on what lay directly beneath it. There, on the floor of the chamber below, stood the tiniest of structures a structure Langdon had mentioned in his manuscript.Langdon felt himself awaken fully now to the thrill of unthinkable possibility. rhytidectomy his ey es again to the Louvre, he sensed the huge wings of the museum enveloping him hallways that burgeoned with the worlds finest art.Da Vinci BotticelliAdorned in masters loving art, She lies.Alive with wonder, he stared once again down(prenominal) through the glass at the diminutive structure below.I must go down thereStepping out of the circle, he hurried across the courtyard back toward the towering pyramid entrance of the Louvre. The days last visitors were trickling out of the museum.Pushing through the revolving door, Langdon descended the swerve staircase into the pyramid. He could feel the air grow cooler. When he reached the bottom, he entered the long tunnel that stretched beneath the Louvres courtyard, back toward La Pyramide Inversee.At the end of the tunnel, he emerged into a large chamber. Directly before him, pause down from above, gleamed the inverted pyramid a breathtaking V-shaped contour of glass.The goblet.Langdons eyes traced its narrowing form downward to its tip, suspended only six feet above the floor. There, directly beneath it, stood the tiny structure.A miniature pyramid. whole three feet tall. The only structure in this colossal complex that had been built on a modest scale.Langdons manuscript, while discussing the Louvres elaborate collection of goddess art, had made passing note of this modest pyramid. The miniature structure itself protrudes up through the flooras though it were the tip of an iceberg the apex, of an enormous, pyramidical vault, submerged below like a mysterious chamber.Illuminated in the soft lights of the deserted entresol, the two pyramids pointed at one another, their bodies perfectly aligned, their tips almost touching.The Chalice above. The Blade below.The blade and chalice guarding oer Her gates.Langdon heard Marie Chauvels words. One day it will dawn on you.He was standing beneath the ancient Rose Line, surrounded by the work of masters. What better place for Sauniere to keep watch? Now at last, he s ensed he understood the true marrow of the Grand Masters verse. Raising his eyes to heaven, he gazed upward through the glass to a glorious, star-filled night.She rests at last beneath the starry skies.Like the murmurs of spirits in the darkness, forgotten words 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.With a sudden upwelling of reverence, Robert Langdon fell to his knees.For a moment, he thought he heard a womans go the wisdom of the ages whispering up from the chasms of the earth.