7 h 49 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 7 h 49 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if your noblest duty makes you the perfect victim of a fraud?
In André Gide’s The Vatican Cellars, a rumour spreads through Catholic circles: the pope is imprisoned beneath the Vatican, replaced by an impostor. Rescue demands money and secrecy. Earnest, inexperienced Amédée Fleurissoire sets out to help, trusting a story that gives others power over him.
Around him, certainties shift. Anthime Armand-Dubois exchanges scientific unbelief for Catholic faith after an apparent miracle. Respectable novelist Julius de Baraglioul wants human conduct to make sense. But his young half-brother Lafcadio is fascinated by acting without a practical motive, bringing freedom into uncomfortable contact with moral responsibility.
What you’ll discover
- A rescue built on rumour Follow a supposed sacred mission that turns trust, secrecy, and money into tools of deception.
- Certainty with shifting foundations Watch Anthime change his beliefs while holding fast to the comfort of being certain.
- Freedom without a reason Meet Lafcadio, whose fascination with motiveless action presses against ordinary ideas of moral responsibility.
- Comedy with a painful edge Enter encounters where one person sees noble duty and another sees someone to exploit.
- Order under pressure See Julius’s wish for understandable motives tested by a young man who questions their necessity.
Who will love it
You will love this if you enjoy sly comedy, clever swindles, strange moral puzzles and characters who change their minds mid-sentence. Readers of Dostoevsky or Voltaire will find much here.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A prayer unsettles a proud unbeliever
- Julius mistakes rules for a person
- An inheritance comes without a name
- A false crusade offers real purpose
- Goodness leaves Amédée open to fraud
- A theory approaches a railway compartment
- Sincerity matters more than religious display
- Freedom becomes a question about motives
- Real encounters put performed roles to the test
Who’s who
- Lafcadio WluikiA nineteen-year-old orphan with many uncles, a sharp mind and a taste for risk, who discovers a wealthy father and wants to learn what he truly desires.
- Julius de BaraglioulA respectable novelist who hopes to join the Academy has just questioned his own books and now wants to write something bolder about a gratuitous crime.
- Amédée FleurissoireA frail, trusting husband from Pau who leaves home for the first time to save a pope he believes is imprisoned.
- ProtosLafcadio's clever old schoolmate, now a swindler who plays priests and professors and runs a gang called the Centipede.
- Anthime Armand-DuboisA Freemason scientist in Rome who experiments on animals, rages against God, and is then healed and converted in a single night.
- Carola VenitequaA warm, worn Parisian woman who lives with Protos and Lafcadio in turn and quietly tries to protect a stranger.
- Geneviève de BaraglioulJulius's eldest daughter, who tends sick children in a Paris hospital and is drawn to the young man who saved two children from a fire.
- Arnica FleurissoireAmédée's gentle wife, once mocked for her botanical name, who loves her husband and believes the countess's secret.
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The Vatican Cellars
by André Gide · 1914
Lafcadio, nineteen, learns he has a rich father, while a pious swindle drags an innocent pilgrim to Rome.
Medium level2–5 hours to read2 languages
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In short
What if the one crime nobody could explain were the one nobody could solve? A young man steps into a railway compartment at night, and a pious fraud, a novelist's theory and a boy's private notebook all rush toward that moment.
The Vatican Cellars at a glance
- Reading time
- About 4 h 35 min3 h 35 min fast, 5 h 25 min slow
- Length
- 65,200 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1914by André Gide
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A scientist who denies God meets a prayer
In 1890 the Freemason Anthime Armand-Dubois comes to Rome to treat his rheumatic body. He walks with a crutch and never forgives God for his illness. His wife Véronique is devout, and the two live with their backs turned. He turns the orangery into a laboratory and works on living animals.
He explains every animal act as a tropism, a simple reply to a stimulus. He learns that Véronique lights candles for him before a roadside Madonna, and he breaks off the statue's hand with his crutch.
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- 15-minute summary
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Details
- First published
- 1914
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 5 h 0 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Gide, André. The Vatican Cellars. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-vatican-cellars.
Gide, A. (2026). The Vatican cellars. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-vatican-cellars (Original work published 1914)
Gide, André. The Vatican Cellars. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-vatican-cellars.
@book{gide2026vatican,
author = {Gide, André},
title = {The Vatican Cellars},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-vatican-cellars},
note = {First published 1914}
}
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What is The Vatican Cellars about?
It follows a Freemason scientist, a novelist, a trusting little man from Pau and a young man named Lafcadio. A swindle about a captive pope draws them together, while the book asks whether a person can act for no reason at all.
What does the title The Vatican Cellars mean?
The title comes from the fake story that the pope is held prisoner in hidden places beneath Rome. Amédée has the Vatican cellars on his mind, and Protos jokes that Cave, the name he signs, means beware in Latin.
What is a gratuitous act in this book?
It is an act done with no motive such as profit, duty or passion. Julius develops the idea as a novelist's theory, and Lafcadio lives it, rescuing children and risking his life for the pleasure of choosing freely.
The author
André Gide
1869–1951 · French novelist
André Gide was a French author born in Paris in 1869. He lived in France and died in Paris in 1951. He wrote novels, essays, plays, and journals. His books include The Vatican Cellars, published in 1914, and The Counterfeiters, published in 1925. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947.
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