by Eco, Umberto
After the first meeting, when Taxil had tucked into his food with such great enthusiasm, the fake Maître Fournier invited him to Père Lathuile, a popular little restaurant at the Barrière de Clichy, where you could eat a renowned poulet sauté and an even betterknown tripes à la mode de Caen — to say nothing of its cellar — and between one smack of the lips and another, he asked whether, for a respectable payment, Taxil might be prepared to write his memoirs as an ex-Mason for some publisher or other. At the mention of payment, Taxil indicated he was most interested in the idea. Simonini arranged a further appointment and went straight off to see Father Bergamaschi.
"Bear in mind, Father," he said, "we are dealing here with a diehard enemy of the Church, whose anticlerical books are no longer bringing him the income they once did. He's also well acquainted with the Masonic world against which he holds a deep grudge. All that's needed is for Taxil to convert to Catholicism, to recant all his antireligious works and expose all the secrets of Freemasonry, and you Jesuits would have a tireless propagandist at your service."
"But a person doesn't convert just because you tell him to."
"With Taxil, I think it's only a question of money. All you have to do is tickle his fancy for spreading false information, and let him imagine himself on the front page, and he'll change his allegiance. What was the name of that Greek who burned down the Temple of Diana at Ephesus just so everyone would talk about him?"
"Herostratus. Yes, of course," said Bergamaschi, pondering. "And yet, the ways of the Lord are infinite . . ."
"How much can we give him for a clear conversion?"
"A sincere conversion ought to be made freely, ad majorem Dei gloriam.Having said that, we shouldn't be too fussy. But don't offer him more than fifty thousand francs. He'll say it's too little, so point out to him that first of all, he's saving his soul, which is priceless, and second, if he writes against the Masons he will enjoy the benefit of our distribution system, which means hundreds of thousands of copies."
Simonini wasn't sure he'd be able to secure the deal, so he took the precaution of going to Hébuterne and telling him there was a Jesuit plot to persuade Taxil to turn against the Masons.
"If only it were true," said Hébuterne. "Just for once my opinions coincide with those of the Jesuits. You see, Simonini, I speak to you as a dignitary of no little importance in the Grand Orient, the only true Masonic order, which is lay, republican and, although anticlerical, not antireligious, since it recognizes a Great Architect of the Universe — so each person is free to recognize him as the Christian God or as an impersonal cosmic force. The presence of that rascal Taxil is still causing us embarrassment, even though he's been expelled. What is more, we wouldn't be upset if an apostate began saying things about Freemasonry that were so terrible that no one could believe them any longer. We are expecting an attack from the Vatican, and we don't expect the pope to be particularly gentlemanly. The Masonic world is tainted by various confessions, and the writer Ragon, many years ago now, listed seventy-five kinds of Freemasonry, fifty-two rites, thirty-four orders (including twenty-six androgynous orders) and fourteen hundred grades of ritual. And I could tell you about the Knights Templar and Scottish Freemasonry, about the Rite of Heredom, the Rite of Swedenborg, the Rite of Memphis and Misraim (established by that scoundrel and charlatan Cagliostro), and then Weishaupt's 'Unknown Superiors,' the Satanists, Luciferians or Palladians as they are otherwise known . . . It's all Greek to me. The various satanic rites bring us the worst publicity of all, and even some of our more respectable brethren have taken part in them, perhaps for purely aesthetic reasons, without realizing the harm they're doing us. Proudhon may have been a Freemason for only a short time, but forty years ago he wrote a prayer to Lucifer: 'Come, Satan, come, thou the calumniated of priests and kings! Let me embrace thee and press thee to my bosom!' That Italian Rapisardi wrote Lucifero, which was the usual myth about Prometheus, and Rapisardi wasn't even a Freemason, but Garibaldi praised him to the skies, and so it's now taken as gospel that the Freemasons worship Lucifer. Pope Pius IX never failed to find the devil behind everything that Freemasonry did. Then some time ago the Italian poet Carducci, part republican and part monarchist, a great windbag and unfortunately a great Freemason, wrote a hymn to Satan, crediting him with the invention of the railways. Carducci then claimed that Satan was a metaphor, but by that time everyone seemed to think the cult of Satan was the Masons' principal amusement. In short, our brethren wouldn't be displeased if a person who had already been long disgraced, notoriously expelled from Freemasonry and a blatant turncoat, were to start a series of violently libelous pamphlets against us. It would be a way of getting back at the Vatican, driving it onto the side of a pornographer. If you accuse a man of murder, you might be believed, but if you accuse him of eating children for lunch and dinner like Gilles de Rais, no one will take you seriously. If you reduce anti-Freemasonry to the level of the feuilleton,you have reduced it to colportage. So, yes, we could do with people who bury us in mud."
From this, it was clear that Hébuterne was shrewder and more intelligent than his predecessor Lagrange. He was unable to say there and then how much the Grand Orient might be able to invest in such a venture, but his reply came a few days later: "One hundred thousand francs. But on condition that it is complete and utter rubbish."
Simonini therefore had 150,000 francs for buying rubbish. If he offered Taxil only 75,000 francs, with the promise of a large circulation, he would say yes immediately, considering the difficulty he was in. And 75,000 would be left for Simonini. A fifty percent commission wasn't bad.
On whose behalf could he make the offer to Taxil? On behalf of the Vatican? Maître Fournier, the notary, didn't have the appearance of a papal plenipotentiary. Perhaps he could arrange a visit from someone like Father Bergamaschi. After all, that's the whole point of priests, so that people can convert and confess their murky pasts to them.
But when it came to murky pasts, should Simonini trust Father Bergamaschi? Taxil mustn't be left in the hands of the Jesuits. There had been atheist writers who had sold a hundred copies of a book and then fallen to their knees before the altar and recounted the story of their experience as converts, boosting their sales to two or three thousand. After all, when it came down to it, the anticlericalists counted for something among the republicans in the city, but the reactionaries who dreamt of the good old days, of king and curate, lived in the countryside and, even excluding those who couldn't read (though the priest would read to them), were legion, like demons. By keeping Father Bergamaschi out of it, Taxil could be offered a deal on his new publications and invited to sign a contract whereby whoever was collaborating with him would be entitled to ten or twenty percent on his future works.
In 1884 Taxil had dealt the ultimate blow to the feelings of good Catholics by publishing The Secret Loves of Pius IX,defaming a pope now dead. In the same year the reigning pope, Leo XIII, published his encyclical Humanum Genus,which was a "condemnation of the philosophical and moral relativism of Freemasonry." And in the same way as he had railed against the monstrous errors of socialists and communists in his encyclical Quod Apostolici Muneris, this time he directed his attack at the doctrines of Freemasonry, exposing the secrets that made its followers captives and prone to every kind of crime, since "this continual pretense and desire to remain hidden, this binding of men, like vile slaves, to the arbitrary will of others, and to abuse them as blind instruments for any enterprise, however evil it be, and to arm their right hands for bloodshed after securing impunity for the crime, are excesses from which nature recoils." Not to mention the naturalism and relativism of Freemasonry's doctrines, which made human reason the sole judge of everything. And it was perfectly clear what the results would be: the pope stripped of his temporal power, the intention to annihilate the Church, marriage made into a simple civil contract, the education of children no longer carried out by priests but by lay teachers, and the teaching that "all men have the same rights, and are in every res
pect of equal and like condition; that every man is, by nature, independent; that no one has the right to command another; that it is tyranny to require men to obey any authority other than that which emanates from themselves." So for the Freemasons "the origin of all civil rights and duties is in the people, or in the state," and the state could only be godless.
It was obvious that "once the fear of God and reverence for divine laws is taken away, the authority of rulers trampled upon, sedition permitted and approved, and the popular passions urged on to lawlessness, with no restraint save that of punishment, revolution and universal subversion will necessarily follow . . . which is the deliberate plan and open purpose of many associations of communists and socialists: to such intentions the Masonic sect cannot properly describe itself as hostile."
News of Taxil's conversion had to break as soon as possible.
At this point Simonini's diary becomes confused. It seemed he could no longer remember how Taxil was converted, or by whom. It was as if his memory were leaping ahead, allowing him to remember only that Taxil, in just a few years, had become a Catholic voice against Freemasonry. After proclaiming, urbi et orbi,his return to the bosom of the Church, he published Les frères troispoints (the three points being those of the thirty-third Masonic degree), Les mystères de la Franc-Maçonnerie(with dramatic illustrations of satanic invocations and hideous rites) and immediately afterward Les soeurs Maçonnes,which described the (hitherto unknown) female lodges — and a year later La Franc-Maçonnerie dévoilée,followed by La France Maçonnique.
From these first books the description of an initiation was enough to make readers shudder. Taxil had been summoned to attend the Masonic lodge at eight o'clock one evening, and was met at the door by a brother. At eight-thirty he was shut inside the Chamber of Reflection, a small closet decorated with black walls, death's heads and crossbones and inscriptions such as, "If vain curiosity brings you here, depart now!" All of a sudden the gaslight flame dimmed, a false panel slid back along grooves hidden in the wall, and Taxil looked down into an underground chamber lit with grave lamps. A freshly cut human head lay on a block from which trickled blood, and as he recoiled in horror, a voice that seemed to come out of the wall cried: "Tremble, O profane one! You see before you the head of a false brother who revealed our secrets!"
It was, of course, a trick, observed Taxil, and the head must have been that of a stooge whose body was hidden in the empty cavity of the block. The wicks of the lamps had been soaked in camphorated alcohol mixed with coarse cooking salt, known by fairground conjurers as the "infernal blend," which emits a greenish light and gives a cadaverous appearance to the face of the person pretending to be beheaded. But he had heard of other initiations where walls were made with frosted mirrors onto which, as soon as the flame of the gas jet was lowered, a magic lantern made moving, ghost-like figures appear, and masked men who surrounded a figure in chains and rained dagger blows upon him. This all goes to show what shameful means were used by the lodge to exert control over impressionable aspirants.
* * *
He published Les frères trois-points (the three points being
those of the thirty-third Masonic degree), Les mystères
de la Franc-Maçonnerie (with dramatic illustrations
of satanic invocations and hideous rites) . . .
* * *
After this, a so-called Brother Terrible prepared the profane, removing his hat, coat and right shoe, rolling up his right trouser leg above his knee, exposing his arm and chest on the side of his heart, blindfolding him and turning him around several times. After making him climb up and down various steps, the Brother Terrible took him to the Hall of the Lost Steps. A door opened, and a Brother Expert, using an instrument consisting of large clashing springs, simulated the sound of enormous chains. The postulant was taken into a room where the Expert held the point of a sword to his bare chest and the Master asked, "Profane, what do you feel at your chest? What do you have on your eyes?" The aspiring Mason had to reply, "A thick blindfold covers my eyes, and I feel the point of a weapon at my chest." And the Master: "This metal, sir, always raised to punish disobedience, is the symbol of remorse that would strike your heart if, to your disgrace, you should become a traitor to the society you wish to enter; and the blindfold over your eyes is the symbol of the blindness of the man who was ruled by his passions and immersed in ignorance and superstition."
Then someone took hold of the aspiring Mason, turned him around several times until he began to feel dizzy, then pushed him in front of a large screen made of several layers of thick paper, similar to the hoops through which circus horses jump. At the command for him to enter the cavern, the poor fellow was shoved with great force against the screen, the paper broke, and he fell onto a mattress positioned on the other side.
Then there was the "everlasting staircase," which was actually a treadmill, where the blindfolded aspirant found there was always another step to climb, and each step lowered as he climbed it. Thus he continued to climb for half an hour without knowing what height he had reached, though he was still at the same level as when he started.
They also pretended to subject the apprentice to bloodletting and baptism by fire. For the blood, a Brother Surgeon bound his arm and pricked it fairly forcefully with the point of a toothpick, and another brother dripped a tiny amount of warm water over the postulant's arm so he thought it was his blood that was flowing. For the trial of the red-hot iron, one of the Experts rubbed a part of the aspirant's body with a dry cloth and then placed a piece of ice on it, or the hot part of a candle that had just been blown out, or the base of a liqueur glass heated with burning paper. Finally the Master told the aspirant about the secret signs and special mottoes used by the brothers to recognize each other.
Simonini now recalled these works of Taxil's, not as an instigator but as a reader. Nonetheless, he remembered that before each new work of Taxil's appeared, he would go (having therefore read it in advance) and describe its contents to Osman Bey as if they were extraordinary revelations. It was true that on the following occasion Osman Bey would point out that everything Simonini had told him on the previous occasion had then appeared in a book by Taxil. To this it was easy for Simonini to reply that, yes, Taxil was his informer, and it was hardly his fault that, after having revealed Masonic secrets to him, Taxil had sought financial gain by publishing them in a book. Otherwise Simonini would have had to pay to stop him from publishing his experiences — and in saying this, he fixed Osman Bey with an eloquent stare. But Osman replied that money spent on persuading a chatterbox to keep quiet was money wasted. Why should Taxil be made to hold his tongue about the very secrets he had just revealed? And, understandably suspicious, Osman offered Simonini no revelation in exchange concerning what he had learned about the Alliance Israélite.
* * *
At the command for him to enter the cavern, the poor fellow was shoved with great force against the screen, the paper broke, and he fell onto a mattress positioned on the other side.
* * *
At which point Simonini stopped passing information to him. But as he wrote in his diary, Simonini reflected on this problem: "Why do I remember giving Osman Bey information I'd received from Taxil, but nothing about my dealings with Taxil?"
Good question. If he remembered everything, he wouldn't be here writing down what he was gradually piecing together. Quelle histoire!
With that sage comment, Simonini went to bed, reawakening on what he thought to be the following day, bathed in sweat as if after a night of bad dreams and indigestion. But returning to his desk, he discovered he had awoken, not the next day, but two days later. During not one but two nights of restless sleep, Abbé Dalla Piccola, not content to dump corpses in Simonini's own personal sewer, had made his inevitable appearance, describing events about which the captain clearly knew nothing.
22
THE DEVIL IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
14th April 1897
Dear Captain Simonini,
Once again, where your ideas are confused, my memories are much clearer.
I remember meeting Monsieur Hébuterne and then Father Bergamaschi as if it were today. I go on your behalf to receive the money I had to give (or should have given) to Léo Taxil. Then I visit Taxil, this time on behalf of Maître Fournier, the notary.
"Monsieur Taxil," I say, "I have no wish to use my clerical attire as a ploy to persuade you to recognize our Lord Jesus Christ, whom you deride. Whether or not you go to hell is a matter of supreme indifference to me. I am not here to offer you any promise of eternal life, but rather to inform you that a series of publications condemning the crimes of Freemasonry would find a readership of right-thinking people, which I have no hesitation in describing as vast. Perhaps you have no idea what it is worth for a book to have the support of every monastery, every parish church, every diocese, not just in France but far away throughout the world. As proof that I am not here to convert you but to help you make money, I will tell you right away what my modest proposals are. All you must do is sign papers assuring me (or rather, the religious congregation I represent) twenty percent of your future rights, and I'll introduce you to some one who knows more than you about the mysteries of Freemasonry."
I imagine, Captain Simonini, that we agreed the famous twenty percent of Taxil's rights would be split between the two of us. I then made him the further offer: "There are also seventy-five thousand francs for you — don't ask where they come from, though my priestly dress might offer you some clue. Seventy-five thousand francs are yours, on trust, before you begin, but on one condition: that tomorrow you publicly announce your conversion. On these seventy-five thousand francs — seventy-five thousand, I say — you have no percentage to pay. That's because when you deal with people like me and those who have sent me, you're dealing with people for whom money is the devil's excrement. Count it: there are seventy-five thousand here."