Free The Lafayette Sword by Eric Giacometti Page A

top of the poster, two bare-breasted women with wings were holding up a pyramid with an eye in t he center.
    Antoine Marcas contemplated the poster as he sat in his threadbare armchair. Someday he’d fix up his apartment, but he had more important things on his mind at the moment. He had taken a taxi back to his place a few hours earlier. He hadn’t wanted to bother any of his colleagues or brothers. Now he was waiting for the grand secretary.
    Marcas felt a tug in his heart every time he looked at the poster. For more than two hundred years, it had symbolized an ideal that men had fought and died for.
    He had a weakness for the 1793 version, in which the writers, one of them a brother, had added several articles, including the last one, the thi rty-fifth.
    â€œWhen the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people and for each portion of the people the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable o f duties.”
    The article was a bit too subversive for some, and it had been removed from official versions that c ame later.
    Marcas knew that his predilection for this document was a bit old-fashioned in a modern-day France, where attachment to founding principles verged on being outmoded. He had tried to teach his son, Pierre, about the deeper meaning of the revolutionary declaration, but he had given up. The boy was clearly bored. How could his antique document and its principles compete with plasma screens and game consoles? Marc as sighed.
    Who still worried about human rights in this day and age? Well, at least he did. He had made it a habit to read and reread the articles the way other people were motivated to read the Scriptures day in and day out. He had even stopped once at the Concorde Metro station under the square where Louis XVI was executed. He had spent a quarter of an hour going over the entire text, which was written on the station’s tiled walls. Commuters had stared at him. He didn’t care. If only more people took the time.
    He poured a second glass of orange juice and returned to the subject foremost on his mind.
    He couldn’t understand why the killer had left him alive. How was he going to find him? He’d been obsessing over this since leaving the hospital. He hadn’t had a chance to check in with Hodecourt, who was still officially in charge, so he didn’t know if his colleague had come up with anything. But Marcas did have one clue: the man’s supposed vengean ce degree.
    In France, as elsewhere, the majority of Freemasons stopped with the degree of master. But a minority progressed over the years, or an entire lifetime, through higher degrees that largely focused on Masonic symbols. Many of these Masons eagerly collected medallions with strange names, such as Grand Elect, Knight Rose Croix, and Prince of the Tabernacle. The names made Marcas smile, but he respected the brothers who undertook this particular path. Those he’d met had always impressed him with their knowledge.
    He headed to the library and swore. He had lent out his copy of the Dictionnaire thématique illustré de la franc-maçonnerie by Jean Lhomme, Edouard Maisondieu, and Jac ob Tomaso.
    He took out his cell phone and called the man who could help him: Pragman, a Belgian brother who had a Masonic blog. It was a mine of in formation.
    Pragman answered on the third ring. “How are you, brother?”
    â€œFine. I need your help. Would you happen to have the thematic dictionary on hand?”
    â€œO f course.”
    â€œCan you look up the higher degree s for me?”
    The brother in Brussels quickly scanned the text until he found what Marcas was looking for. Each major Masonic jurisdiction worked in one of three rites: the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, the Rectified Scottish Rite, or the French Rite. Each had a hierarchy of degrees that every Mason, in theory, could progres s through.
    â€œHere it says that in the Ancient and Accepted