The package that was delivered to Caffe Bene

I might be off in some dead end direction here. Relates to the years 1799, 1802, 1808 from Echo-64 and possibly 1974 along with the current literature trend.

Caffe Bene, 816 Broadway, New York, NY 10003, used to be Place Des Vosges Antiques.

In 1799 Place Des Vosges in Paris was renamed from Place Royal by Napolean.

In 1802 Victor Hugo was born, and later lived at Place Des Vosges.

In 1808 Gérard de Nerval was born.

Both Nerval and Hugo were part of the Romantic movement in France.

So that could tie up the 3 Careers years. On to the History year of 1974…

Now, as this ARG seems to keep linking to music videos:

The English rock band Traffic included the jazz-rock track “Dream Gerrard” in their 1974 album When the Eagle Flies. Lyrics are known to be mainly written by Vivian Stanshall after reading the Nerval’s biography.

Am i completely lost here?

This is a shot in the dark, but since Waking Titan seems to come from Ruins of Mars: Waking Titan, I decided to do a search of “Mars 1974”. The Mars 4 orbiter reached Mars on Feb 10, 1974. You can read all the info here: Mars program - Wikipedia
Probably totally unrelated.

I did look at that too but considered the author of the book to be a little too obscure and the link a little too direct.

The first 3 seem like a plausible link. But from 1808 it feels kind of unrelated.
There should be a meaning to (place des) vosges too, if this link was to be true.

Nice searching though!

Thanks, and i think you are right about 1808. I was unsure of the vague link too so im glad you mention it.

So dumping Nerval from this and going back to places Hugo lived i did find he moved to a place called Couvent des Feuillantines (Convent of Feuillantines) in 1808. Hugo also wrote a poem called Aux Feuillantines (part of Les Contemplations), which is basically about a book that is out of reach. Makes me think its pointing back to the antique book shown in the second pdf.

The poem is badly translated:

"My two brothers and I were all children.
Our mother used to say: Play, but I defend
. Whether walking in the flowers and you climb ladders

. Abel was the eldest, I was the smallest
we
Let us eat our bread with so much appetite, Let the women laugh when we passed by them, and

we would go up to play in the loft of the convent
, and there, while playing, we often watched
On the top of a wardrobe an inaccessible book . "
"We climbed up one day this black book,
I do not know how we made for it,
but I remember it was a Bible.

It felt a censer old book smell.
We went in happy A corner to sit,

everywhere, what happiness, what a delirium, then we opened it on our knees,
And from the first word it seemed so sweet
That we forgot to play, we began to read.

We read all three well, all morning,
Joseph, Ruth and Boaz, the good Samaritan,
and still more charmed the evening we relûmes.

Like children, they took a bird of the heavens,
if called Laughing and amazed, cheerful,
To feel in their hand the sweetness of their feathers. "

I have spent some time looking for that book but no luck. The closest i could find only relates to the design of the ship on the book which is artwork by William Timlin with a similar hull, two masts and either a phoenix or dragon on the figurehead. Timlin’s art is from his book The Ship That Sailed to Mars, but i still feel like that isnt a strong link.

The poem says it’s a black book, so I agree it isn’t a strong link. The book from the pdf does intrique me though, because if we can’t find any other pictures of it, then it is either A. A fabrication, made recently to look old. or B. Is so old and obscure no other pictures have ever been taken of it. If either is true, then it is probably a red herring because there is no way to link it to anything else.

@DevilinPixy found a picture of a very similar book which could be a reproduction that was sold on Ebay. I cant find the Ebay page for it now but it didnt say anything other than the description Devilin gave in this post. If its not a reproduction then the pdf image alone doesnt give enough information to find a meaning.

Thanks, I hadn’t read that post very closely. It seems as though the picture of the book cover was just intended to point out the location of Cafe Bene, and since that live drop was already picked up, that part of the puzzle has already ended.

I did not include the Ebay link, because I doubt it has any use, but here ya go …
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Lot-of-2-Embossed-Hand-Painted-Hand-Tooled-Leather-Book-Covers-Italian-/191998839060

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