A Pretentious Young Man without Too Much in his Head

Abstract

According to a certified copy of a handwritten entry in the civil register obtained from the mayor’s office in the 7th Arrondissement of Paris, Pierre Athanase Marie Plantard was born on 18 March 1920, the son of “Pierre Plantard, aged forty-two, butler”. This extract is dated 23 April 1981. Alternatively, a variant extract that appears to come from this same registry has Pierre Athanase Marie Plantard as son of “Pierre Plantard, Count of Saint Clair and Count of Rhédae [i.e., of Rennes-le-Château and environs], architect, aged forty-two”. This second extract, which is typed, is dated 22 August 1972 and was anonymously deposited in the Bibliothèque Nationale. (Or perhaps not; for although the photocopy that reached me has what appears to be a bona fide BnF stamp, the shelfmark is sufficiently indistinct to be unusable.) One of these two documents (Fig. 4.1) is bogus while the other, if valid, as I believe, cannot be legally reproduced.