early December 1765

In early December 1765, the Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse, a man who had already turned his back on life at the court of Versailles and retired to his estates to live for science alone, reached a critical juncture in his career. Having founded the first Lodge of the Vital Fluidum with 120 members in Montpellier and established branches in Marseille and Lyon, he now decided to dare the move to Paris and from there to conquer the entire civilized world with his teachings. But first he wanted to provide a propaganda base for his crusade by accomplishing some heroic feat, one that would overshadow the cure of the cave-man, indeed all other experiments.

The Expedition to the Pic du Canigou

To achieve this, the marquis assembled a company of fearless disciples and joined them on an expedition to the Pic du Canigou, which was on the same longitude with Paris and was considered the highest mountain in the Pyrenees. Though on the threshold of senescence, the man wanted to be borne to the summit at nine thousand feet and left there in the sheerest, finest vital air for three whole weeks, whereupon, he announced, he would descend from the mountain precisely on Christmas Eve as a strapping lad of twenty. The disciples gave up shortly beyond Vernet, the last human settlement at the foot of the fearsome mountain. But nothing daunted the marquis. Casting his garments from him in the icy cold and whooping in exultation, he 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.

Aftermath and Legend

His followers waited in vain that Christmas Eve for the return of the Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse. He returned neither as an old man nor a young one. Nor when early summer came the next year and the most audacious of them went in search of him, scaling the still snowbound summit of the Pic du Canigou, did they find any trace of him: no clothes, no body parts, no bones. His teachings, however, suffered no damage at all. On the contrary. Soon the legend was abroad that there on the mountain peak he had wedded himself to the eternal fluidum vitale, merging with it and it with him, and now for ever floated – invisible but eternally young – above the peaks of the Pyrenees, and 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. And 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.