Pierre Pons Article in La Depeche (1979)
(Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris, DÉPÔT LÉGAL, 4° Z Piece 1182, 02-03-1979). Page 5. French original

Sunday 4th February 1979

A new mystery!

New pieces are added every day to the gigantic jigsaw that is the story of this famous treasure discovered by the parish priest of Rennes-le-Château.
Although “Étude de le vraie langue celtique et le cromleck de Rennes-les-Bains” (Study of the true Celtic language and cromlech of Rennes-les-Bains), written by Abbé Boudet in 1886, adopts a fairly esoteric approach, Simon Capéllou's “De quelques lieux celtiques” (Some Celtic places), published a century earlier, could have been a precursor.
This latter book, which was once in the library in Saint-Girons, where it was consulted by a scholar a few years ago, is no longer there. Despite extensive searches, it has never been found. Yet another mystery!

Could the key to the enigma of Rennes-le-Château, which would lead us to the famous treasure discovered by Abbé Saunière, lie in a work that, at first glance, seems to be one of the more innocuous books on the subject – a book in which its author, Abbé Boudet, in undertaking a “study of the true Celtic language and the cromlech of Rennes-les-Bains”, disclosed the existence of a burial-site more or less concealed by codes and ciphers?

Perhaps!

One after the other, three reprints of this hitherto almost unknown work have just appeared in bookshops, one from a Belgian publisher in roneotyped form, the other from the publisher Belfont (followed by a “Notice to the reader” by Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair, who claims to be a descendant of the Counts of Rhedae, the ancient Visigothic capital which is none other than the present-day village of Rennes-le-Château), and, finally, as a “Demeure Philosophale”, including a preface by one of the writers most familiar with this enigma, namely Gérard de Sède, whose book “Signé Rose Croix”, published by Plon, is a leading work of authority on this subject.

These publications are all it took to fire up the imagination of treasure-hunters and researchers alike: people like Franck Marie, who runs the collective known as the “Secretariat for research and special studies: ancient truths”.

Marie’s “Étude Critique” has taken him quite a long way, since in his book he states that “Jules Verne and Abbé Boudet spoke the same language.”

The question is, which language did they speak?

Although “Jules Verne Year” (2005) came to an end last December, Verne’s “extraordinary voyages” have been with us every year for the past century, as Franck Marie explains, adding that it is no coincidence that the names of some of the French visionary’s heroes have curious analogies with placenames in the Haut-Razès.

Marie follows the footsteps of “César Cascabel“”, whose first name is that of a farm near Bellegarde, and whose surname refers to a rock on the estate of “Sainte-Croix”, a short distance from Rennes-le-Château, as well as tracking down “Capitaine Bugarach” on the slopes of the peak overlooking the Aude valley where the farm known as “Capitaines” is located.

All these literary allusions might suggest that, despite his remarkable erudition and patient research, the author is no more than a gullible dreamer, were it not for the fact that, during his investigations at the Bibliothèque Nationale, he stumbled across a strange pamphlet with the bizarre title “Le Serpent Rouge” (The Red Serpent).

The hanged men of March 1967.

This more or less “hermetic” work, which deals with the Rennes-les-Bains region without actually mentioning it once, was legally deposited on 15th February 1967 by one Pierre Feugère. Its co-authors are shown as the depositor himself, Louis Saint-Maxent and Gaston de Koker.

The legal deposit stamping and the classification of this work as available to readers were carried out on 20th March of the same year.

However, following a succession of dramatic events these basic administrative formalities provided a fresh impetus to the story of the “Treasure of Rennes-le-Château”, as the three co-authors were subsequently found hanged in their homes within hours of each other: Louis Saint-Maxent was found hanged at 7am on Monday 6th March; Gaston de Koker at 9am on the same day; and Pierre Feugère at 6.20am on Tuesday 7th March.

It is a curious coincidence that the death by hanging of these three men occurred nineteen days after the “Le Serpent Rouge’ was deposited at the Bibliothèque nationale, and sixteen days before the manuscript became public knowledge. Franck Marie puts forward several hypotheses, one of which implicates the “Rosicrucian” Masonic Order of the Priory of Sion, which may have incited the indiscreet men to commit suicide after they had revealed, through the “Le Serpent Rouge”, a secret that they had no right to know.

I therefore wanted to check the veracity of Marie’s writings. If the death certificates of the three co-authors of “Le Serpent Rouge” were indeed registered in Argenteuil, Ermont and Pontoise on the dates indicated and under numbers 212, 40 and 66 respectively, since 5th June 1956 (see the “Journal officiel” of 20th June 1956, number 167) the existence of the Priory of Sion, the Masonic Order of the Rose Cross, has once again been officially recognised in France.

This organization was registered at the sub-prefecture of Saint-Julien-de-Genevois in Savoie. Some people think it has similarities with the Grand Lodge Alpina in Switzerland.

Abbé Saunière's close friend and confidant.

Recently, when I was pondering these strange facts, I received a letter from a well-known figure in Toulouse, Maître François Bousgarbiès, honorary solicitor to the court, who told me: “My father, Clément Bousgarbiès, mayor and regional councillor of Saint-Hilaire in the Aude, was a solicitor in Limoux, where he died at the age of 96. He was also involved with the thermal baths at Rennes-les-Bains, and was the lawyer, close friend and confidant of Abbé Saunière. I’m convinced that he was probably the only person who knew the origin of the treasure discovered by the parish priest of Rennes-le-Château... Saunière died during the Great War of 1914-1918. Before I went to the front, I asked my father to tell me the source of the extravagant sums that had been spent by the priest of a sparsely-populated and almost inaccessible village high up in the mountains. My father had refused to tell me on the grounds of professional secrecy, but I'm sure he was bound by some other duty of honour. Saunière had also given him a strange gold coin, of unknown design, very old, with a lamb on one side, which my father carefully concealed, and which I have never found”.

I wanted to know more, so I visited Maître Bousgarbiès at his town-house in Toulouse. He told me that his father, who had won a scholarship to the Collège of Castelnaudary, had gone on to become a teacher. When he was posted to Nice he befriended certain Freemasons... perhaps he himself had been initiated, but he did tell me me about a Scottish Rite Lodge and that he had met foreigners there (perhaps Swiss), and had added, “It’s actually been said that Saunière negotiated beyond the Alps the sale of part of the treasure”. Is there a connection with Switzerland? I don’t know, but you must admit that it’s rather mysterious.

All these curious coincidences came back into my mind. What could these two men possibly have had in common? Of course, there was the traditional link between lawyer and client, but perhaps there was something else? That’s when I stumbled across an old issue of Alpina, the organ of the Grande Loge Suisse, dated 1968.

In an article, Ernest Moser, after pointing out the similarities between the rituals of the High Degrees and the texts of the Gospels, wrote: “Freemasonry is a Western and Christian creation…” This perhaps explains why the wealthy city solicitor had been the intimate and confidant of the poor country parish priest.

But that doesn’t explain everything, in particular the astonishing series of murders that struck down all those who, whether before Abbé Saunière or after him, took an interest in this mysterious treasure, new victims of which are revealed in Franck Marie’s “Étude Critique.”

Pierre PONS

Extract from ‘La Dépêche’