On 8th September Paul Saussez published on his FaceBook page the following post [I hope he does not mind me cross-posting this as I consider it a an important testimony & was, after all, already in the public domaine];
"Here are some instructive excerpts from an e-mail that Paul Rouelle sent me on June 10 2019 in response to my questions about Philippe de Chérisey and the coding of the epitaph of Marie de Negre;
"It is possible that Philippe participated in the “coding”, but he is not the author. In other words, he was the “director”, and sometime actor, of a script that he did not write. For him, at the beginning, this story was in the tradition of “Copains” by Jules Romans. But things took on a scale and importance he didn't expect. It is Umberto Eco who gives the best description of this story: “a reality surpassed by the fiction that it induced”.
His friendship with Pierre Plantard (a long-standing friendship) pushed him to “play the game”, and he did so until the moment of the clash between Pierre and him. After that, he withdrew - I must say - sometimes clumsily, as evidenced by these “confessions” in “Pierre et Papier”. It must also be said that he had a fairly serious grudge against J-L Chaumeil. There are lots of things to say about this, but it would take up too much space.
Two things to remember:
1- I confirm that Philippe went to find a Liège scholar to ask him for an accurate and authentic copy of the Codex Bezae, two years after the publication of the “parchments”. So, in the best case scenario, he had only known a dubious version, or one that had already been tampered with by someone else.
2- Philippe was completely incapable of writing a complete line in uncial...
So, it is not impossible that, at the beginning, he “played his role” in this “Julius Romans” story, then he gradually realised that – as he told us clearly- “everyone is being manipulated, even you, but you don’t know it”>.
This little sentence is worth thinking about.
Subsequently, he emerged from this adventure: children's theater, television, writing of a monumental “Dictionary of Tréma”, etc. He mostly left Liège...
Dreamer and poet, extraordinarily erudite, Philippe had found the role of his life, the one that allowed him to “be” his character. The disillusionment was terrible. Another little sentence to meditate on: “Sometimes, cinema makes me.”
That said, Philippe never mentioned anything other than the Madeleine spring, near which he loved to read, write and dream. On the other hand, he often spoke to us about the “Tomb of the Great Roman”, who died from a fatal fall following the breakage of a wheel of his chariot on the Roman road which passed along the side of Cardou. He would have been buried in a cave near Rennes-les-Bains.
Philippe was surprised and amused by my analysis of Nerval:
“And the cave fatal to imprudent guests, where the defeated dragon sleeps the ancient seed” (Delfica)”.
I have posted this as I feel some of my readers here on this website will find this rather enlightening.