The story of laughter lacks its first stone. We have brief news of a pedestal; the testimony of a gap that, in its omission, reveals the vestiges of something indecipherable. Amidst a chaos of barely visible ruins, he tries to unravel that unknown, and sets out on an expedition in search of Gelos, the Spartan god of laughter. Along the way, the narrator evokes other investigations: those that gave meaning, hope and comfort to four German philologists –Ernst Robert Curtius, Wilhelm Jaeger, Erich Auerbach and Walter Benjamin–; as well as childhood memories that, once again, tell a story a hundred times repeated: the discovery of friendship and literature. In this essay, woven with narrations, images and quotes, the author reconstructs a small temple awaiting the sacred.