Pic du Canigou
The Pic du Canigou, a nine-thousand-foot peak in the Pyrenees, became the stage for the final, spectacular act of the Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse's career. Convinced that the earth emitted a corrupting gas called Fluidum Letale, the marquis believed that life could only flourish at a distance from the ground. To prove his theory and to provide a propaganda base for his crusade, he decided to be borne to the summit and left there in the purest vital air for three weeks, after which he announced he would descend as a strapping lad of twenty.
The Expedition and Disappearance
In early December 1765, the Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse assembled a company of fearless disciples and set out for the Pic du Canigou, which was on the same longitude as Paris and considered the highest mountain in the Pyrenees. The disciples gave up shortly beyond Vernet, the last human settlement at the foot of the fearsome mountain. Undaunted, the marquis cast his garments from him in the icy cold, whooping in exultation, and began the climb alone. The last that was seen of him was his silhouette: hands lifted ecstatically to heaven and voice raised in song, he disappeared into the blizzard. His followers waited in vain that Christmas Eve for his return. He returned neither as an old man nor a young one. When the most audacious of them went in search of him the following early summer, scaling the still snowbound summit, they found no trace of him: no clothes, no body parts, no bones.
The Survival of His Teachings
Despite the marquis's physical disappearance, his teachings suffered no damage at all. Soon the legend spread that on the mountain peak he had wedded himself to the eternal Fluidum Vitale, merging with it and it with him, and now forever floated, invisible but eternally young, above the peaks of the Pyrenees. It was said that whoever climbed up to him would encounter him there and remain untouched by sickness or the process of ageing for one full year. Well into the nineteenth century, Taillade's Fluidal Theory was advocated from many a chair at faculties of medicine and put into therapeutic practice by many an occult society.
Enduring Legacy
Even today, on both sides of the Pyrenees, particularly in Perpignan and Figueras, there are secret Tailladic lodges that meet once a year to climb the Pic du Canigou. There they light a great bonfire, ostensibly for the summer solstice and in honour of St John, but in reality it is to pay homage to their master, Taillade-Espinasse, and his grand Fluidum, and to seek eternal life. The mountain thus became not a site of death but of transformation, a place where a failed scientific demonstration was recast as a myth of immortality.
