The Name of the Rose

“Night, in which, if it were to summarize the prodigious revelations of which it speaks, the title would have to be as long as the chapter itself, contrary to usage”

In the musty room, Jorge is waiting, “looking at [them] as if he could see” (563). He has been here since the afternoon, after Abo summoned him to a private meeting. William pleads for the life of the trapped man, but Jorge says he has broken the mechanism that opens the doorway. It is the abbot, and by now, he is dead. Abo had figured out Jorge’s involvement and declared the finis Africae would be opened–there would be no more secrets. In order to deceive Abo, Jorge promised to kill himself in a way that would preserve the honor of the abbey; Abo would then come here to ‘discover’ the body. To set his trap, Jorge sends Abo through the passageway that only he knew about.

William has figured out that Jorge has been the mastermind of the library for forty years. He is the unknown librarian whose handwriting appears in the ledger William had examined earlier that day. When Jorge realized he was going blind and could no longer control the library, he had an abbot appointed whom he could manipulate, and successive librarians whom he could bend to his will.