O, Draconian devil! Oh, lame saint!

The dying words of Louvre curator Jacques Saunière, scrawled in blood on the parquet floor of the Grand Gallery, form one of the most enigmatic and layered clues in the novel. The phrase "O, Draconian devil! Oh, lame saint!" appears alongside a scrambled Fibonacci sequence and a postscript instructing the reader to "Find Robert Langdon." This message, written with a black-light stylus and invisible to the naked eye until illuminated by ultraviolet light, is the centerpiece of the crime scene that draws symbologist Robert Langdon into the investigation.

Structure and Initial Interpretation

The message is composed of three distinct parts: a numeric sequence (13-3-2-21-1-1-8-5), the two-line poetic exclamation, and the postscript "P.S. Find Robert Langdon." Captain Bezu Fache initially interprets the phrase as a literal accusation of devil worship, given the pentacle drawn on Saunière's abdomen. Langdon, however, recognizes the pentacle as a pre-Christian symbol of the sacred feminine and the goddess Venus, and he struggles to reconcile the apparent demonic reference with Saunière's known expertise in goddess iconography. The choice of English rather than French for the message further puzzles the investigators, as Saunière was a native French speaker.

Decryption as Anagram

The true meaning of the phrase is unlocked by Robert Langdon in the emergency stairwell of the Louvre. Drawing on the clue provided by the scrambled Fibonacci sequence—which indicates that order must be restored—Langdon realizes the words are an anagram. Rearranging the letters of "O, Draconian devil! Oh, lame saint!" produces "Leonardo da Vinci! The Mona Lisa!" This revelation transforms the message from a cryptic accusation into a precise directional clue, pointing Sophie Neveu toward the Mona Lisa painting in the Salle des Etats. The anagram is consistent with Saunière's known hobby of creating wordplay based on famous artworks, as he had previously created an anagram of Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Connection to the Keystone and the Priory of Sion

The anagram serves as the first step in a chain of clues designed by Saunière to lead his granddaughter, Sophie Neveu, to the Priory of Sion's keystone. The reference to the Mona Lisa prompts Sophie to visit the painting, where she discovers a hidden key behind another Da Vinci work, Madonna of the Rocks. This key, bearing the Priory's seal of a fleur-de-lis and the initials P.S., ultimately grants access to a safe-deposit box at the Depository Bank of Zurich, which contains the cryptex—the keystone itself. The phrase thus functions as a multi-layered device: it captures the attention of the police, ensures the involvement of cryptographers (and therefore Sophie), and provides the specific location for the next stage of the treasure hunt.

Thematic Significance

The anagram embodies the novel's central themes of hidden knowledge and the reinterpretation of established symbols. The phrase's surface meaning—a reference to a "Draconian devil" and a "lame saint"—plays on the Church's historical demonization of pagan symbols, a process Langdon explains in detail. The true meaning, pointing to Leonardo da Vinci and the Mona Lisa, reinforces the novel's argument that Da Vinci's art contains encoded messages about the sacred feminine and the true nature of the Holy Grail. The anagram also demonstrates Saunière's ingenuity and his use of wordplay as a means of communicating with his granddaughter, whom he had not spoken to in ten years, thereby bridging their estrangement through a shared intellectual puzzle.