Certain Immortals I Could Name

The Comte de Saint-Germaine works late night at the University Library. We don’t know what he is studying and it isn’t clear that he is the Comte de Saint-Germaine, but he fits all the qualifying criteria. The beard that looks like a disguise, the archaic language use and, most importantly, the name-dropping of long dead personages.

I only mention this because a similar character appears in Umberto Eco’s ‘Foucault’s Pendulum,’ and whilst both his character and mine are very definitely mortal men doomed to die they still have a certain majesty and mystery around them that make you realise that learning for-the-sake-of-learning can be respectable in its own right.

Even if it does drive you mad.

The FHG tells me that I will, one day, become such a figure. I don’t know whether that scares or pleases me.