Year: 1943, continued 1946

Important Characters: Tintin, Snowy, Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus

French Title: Les Sept Boules de Cristal

The first instalment of Tintin and Captain Haddock's expedition to the Temple of the Sun is drowned in an atmosphere of fear. Returning to the curse theme which he had already dealt with in Cigars of the Pharoah and developing the mood from The Shooting Star, Hergé's magnetic tale went further than any other in the direction of the supernatural. Signs and indications lead to a series of strange attacks which lead to a climax in the sequence at Professor Tarragon's villa.

Behind the choice of the villa in question lies a curious story. Hergé, now attaching great importance to the decoration and surroundings in his adventures, went with Edgar Pierre Jacobs to the theatre to make sketches for the music hall sequence early in the story, and he was as precise with Professor Tarragon's villa where the key scene of the book was to unfold. As Hergé described:

"Jacobs found a suitable villa, not very far from me and also in Boitsfort. So we stationed ourselves outside the house and went on sketching without worrying about anything; it would be easy, we thought, to provide a plausible explanation to a passer-by....When our work was completed, we quietly set off. At that moment two grey cars suddenly appeared packed with German soldiers and came to a halt in front of the villa - it had been requisitioned and occupied by the SS! If they had surprised us a few minutes earlier while we were sketching, we would certainly have been closely questioned."

It was not to be the Germans who asked the questions a few months after the liberation. From September 1944, all journalists who worked for a newspaper that collaborated during the occupation were temporarily banned from having their work published. Hergé was affected by this order as he had been working for Le Soir since 1940.