title: Key to the Sacred Pattern: The Untold Story of Rennes-Le-Chateau
author:  Henry Lincoln 
description: Since 1972, Lincoln has made a career out of exposing the secret of a small village in the Pyrenees. The secret seems to have changed since Lincoln, a television writer, first began his investigation. Originally, it was about a lost treasure. In the book <i>Holy Blood, Holy Grail</i> (1982), the secret was that Jesus survived the Crucifixion and escaped with Mary Magdalene to France, where they had children. Now the secret has something to do with what Lincoln calls "structured landscapes": equidistant geographical points that, when plotted on paper, form pentacles. Although he's not exactly sure what this means, he proposes that it proves the ancients had much more sophisticated measurement abilities than previously thought. If this were the whole book, readers, especially those not schooled in geometry, would lose interest fast. Fortunately, most of Lincoln's story is about how he came to uncover the mysteries of Rennes-le-Chateau and some of the adventures and misadventures he's had along the way. Fans of the popular <i>Holy Blood, Holy Grail</i> will probably devour this, but others may think the real mystery is, How does Lincoln keep twisting the topic into new books? <i>Ilene Cooper</i>
zlib_text: ![](Images/image00493.jpeg)
  
  **T** **HE** **T** **HREE** **M** **USKETEERS**
  
   **B** **Y** **A** **LEXANDRE** **D** **UMAS**
  
  AUTHOR’S PREFACE
  
  IN WHICH IT is proved that, notwithstanding their names’ ending in OS and IS,
  the heroes of the story which we are about to have the honor to relate to our
  readers have nothing mythological about them.
  
  A short time ago, while making researches in the Royal Library for my History
  of Louis XIV, I stumbled by chance upon the Memoirs of M. d’Artagnan,
  printed—as were most of the works of that period, in which authors could not
  tell the truth without the risk of a residence, more or less long, in the
  Bastille—at Amsterdam, by Pierre Rouge. The title attracted me; I took them
  home with me, with the permission of the guardian, and devoured them.
  
  It is not my intention here to enter into an analysis of this curious work;
  and I shall satisfy myself with referring such of my readers as appreciate the
  pictures of the period to its pages. They will there