CHAPTER 39
THROUGH THE HOTEL WINDOW, Nicole now looked at the streets that in distant centuries had witnessed all the events that changed the course of humanity.
— Apparently it doesn't make sense — she said.
The phrase eternalized by the hands protected by a Caesar.
— From what history tells us, Roman emperors didn't appear until two thousand years after Moses existed!
— That's true — completed the woman — the people who founded Rome, at the time of Moses, should still be in the stone age, they shouldn't even dream that they would still create a fabulous civilization. But the sixth sentence tells us, eternalized... This does not mean the concomitant existence in the same historical period, but that Moses had his memory kept for eternity by someone protected by a Caesar!
— That seems impossible to me — replied Nicole Hulmann — the Roman emperors would never commission a statue to honor any statesman other than those of Rome itself!
— I think I have an answer — said Father Roman Green, getting up from the comfortable sofa where he had been!
— Speak then — Gregory said, a hint of skepticism in his voice.
— Nick — continued the priest — what are the most precious artifacts in the St. Petersburg museum?
She thought for a while and said doubtfully:
— The Faberge Eggs?
— Yes... Fabergé Eggs!
Greg had heard about eggs before, but he still couldn't connect one fact to another.
— Yes, the Fabergé Eggs. — Insisted the priest —, the Tsar of Russia, remember?
— How did I not think of that before?!
— What do Faberge Eggs have to do with Moses? — Greg asked still trying to associate one thing with the other.
— With Moses there is no relation — exclaimed the girl — but with the Roman Caesar, yes; see, Fabergé Eggs were commissioned by the Tsar of Russia from the most famous Russian goldsmith, Peter Carl Fabergé.
— Explain further — said Gregory Evans.
— It so happened that when my grandfather and I were at the museum in Saint Petersburg seeing the magnificent examples of the famous Russian master, I asked the origin of those pieces and then my grandfather explained that the famous Fabergé Eggs were an order from Tsar Alexander III for his wife, the Tsarina Maria Feodorovna, to be given by the sovereign at Easter. The link with the enigma is in the word tsar, the title of Russian emperors, a corruption of the original Roman Caesar, just as the German emperor before World War II was called kaiser, a title that also originated from the Roman Caesar.
— Does that mean then — Nicole concluded — that the riddle is not about a Roman emperor, but about a Russian or German monarch?
— That's what I think, Nick, it looks like a statue of Moses made by some artist protected by a patron who could be either a Russian Tsar or a German Kaiser. It was very common at the time of the great European monarchies, that potentates received artists from all over the world: musicians, painters, sculptors and philosophers in their courts and palaces, giving them shelter and protection. In exchange, the artist lent the brightness of his personality to these courts and palaces and enriched the monarchs, dukes and other powerful people who were graced with works of art that, nowadays, are often priceless.
Nicole Hulmann brought the subject back to what was troubling her.
— Mom — Nicole turned back to the computer monitor — how do we find out about this artist and the monarch to whom the riddle refers?
— It's very simple...
She then told what they would do.