William and Adso enter the finis Africae

After six days of investigation, William of Baskerville and his novice Adso of Melk finally unlocked the secret of the library's most forbidden space. Guided by a cryptic clue from Venantius of Salvemec's notes—"primum et septimum de quatuor"—and a sudden insight from Adso's mention of Salvatore's mangled Latin, William realized that the key lay in the word "quatuor" from the verse "Super thronos viginti quatuor" carved above the mirror in the south tower. Pressing the first and seventh letters of that word, Q and R, caused the mirror to swing open, revealing the entrance to the finis Africae. They entered the hidden chamber on the night of the seventh day, prepared at last to confront the mind behind the murders.

The Hidden Chamber and the Waiting Enemy

The room they entered was a heptagonal blind chamber, identical in shape to the other three tower rooms but filled with a strong musty odor. In the center, behind a table covered with papers, sat Jorge of Burgos, the blind, ancient monk who had been the library's true master for decades. He had been waiting for them since before vespers, having sealed himself inside. He calmly informed them that the abbot, Abo, was already dead, trapped in a secret stairway whose mechanism Jorge had deliberately broken. Jorge had lured the abbot there, told him the truth about the library's secrets, and then killed him to prevent any further interference. He had known William would eventually find the way, and he was ready.

The Book and the Poison

Jorge revealed the prize: the bound volume containing the Arabic and Syriac texts, the Coena Cypriani, and the Greek manuscript that was the second book of Aristotle's Poetics—the only surviving copy, which Jorge had stolen decades earlier in Silos and hidden to protect the world from its dangerous ideas about comedy and laughter. William, however, had already deduced the trap. He put on the leather gloves he had taken from the dead Severinus, knowing that the pages of the Greek manuscript had been smeared with a slow-acting poison, the same substance that had killed Venantius, Berengar, and Malachi. Jorge had prepared the book to kill anyone who read it with bare hands, and he had intended the same fate for William. But William, having learned from the blackened fingers of the victims, refused to touch the pages directly.

The Confrontation and the Fire

A long, bitter philosophical debate ensued. Jorge defended his actions as a holy duty to protect the church from a book that would legitimize laughter and mockery, undermining the fear of God that sustained the social and spiritual order. William accused him of being the true Antichrist—not a monster of flesh, but a monster of the spirit: faith without doubt, truth without mercy. As they argued, Jorge, realizing he could not poison William, began to tear the pages of the Aristotle manuscript and devour them, consuming the forbidden knowledge to ensure its final destruction. In the struggle that followed, Jorge knocked over the lamp, and the oil spilled onto a pile of dry parchments. The library, the greatest in Christendom, erupted in flames. Jorge, having eaten the poison himself, perished in the fire, and William and Adso barely escaped as the entire abbey burned.

Consequences and Aftermath

The fire raged for three days, destroying the library, the church, and most of the abbey's buildings. The monks scattered, the community dissolved. William and Adso left the smoking ruins, heading east, and eventually parted ways in Munich. The destruction of the library marked the end of an era, and William, disillusioned by the failure of his rational methods to prevent the catastrophe, confessed to Adso that he had discovered no grand design, only a series of accidents and human passions. The only truth, he concluded, was the need to free oneself from the insane passion for truth itself. Adso, years later, returned to the ruins and collected fragments of the lost books, but he could never be certain whether the story he had written contained any hidden meaning, or none at all.