The Prague Cemetery

by Umberto Eco

  Despotic governments, Simonini reflected, all follow the same logic — it was enough to read Machiavelli in order to understand what Napoleon would do. This reflection led him to another thought, which had crossed his mind while Lagrange described the book. Joly had his Machiavelli-Napoleon speak almost the same words that he, Simonini, had put in the mouths of the Jesuits in the document he'd created for the secret service in Piedmont. Evidently Joly had been influenced by the same source — in other words, Father Rodin's letter to Father Roothaan in Sue's Les mystères du peuple.

  "And so," continued Lagrange, "we are proposing to have you taken to Sainte-Pélagie as one of Mazzini's political exiles suspected of having links with French republican groups. There's a prisoner, named Gaviali, who was involved in Orsini's bomb attack. It's natural that you, being a follower of Garibaldi, a Carbonaro or whatever else, would try to make contact with him. Through Gaviali you'll get to know Joly. There's a fellow feeling among political prisoners. They're alone among villains of every kind. Get him to talk — the prison inmates bore him."

  "And how long am I to stay there?" Simonini asked, concerned about what he would have to eat.

  "That depends on you. The sooner you get the information, the sooner you leave. The word will be that the examining magistrate has acquitted you on all charges, thanks to the skill of your lawyer."

  Prison was something Simonini hadn't yet experienced. With the stink of sweat and urine, and soup that made you retch, it was not very pleasant. Simonini, thank God, like other prisoners in respectable financial circumstances, was able to receive a daily food basket.

  Off the courtyard of Sainte-Pélagie was a large hall dominated by a central stove, with benches around the walls. Those receiving food from outside generally took their meals here. Some ate hunched over their baskets, using their hands to protect their dinner from the sight of their compatriots, while others showed more generosity toward their friends and any casual neighbors. Simonini realized that the kinder ones were either the hardened criminals, who had developed a solidarity with their fellow inmates, or the political prisoners.

  Through his years in Turin, his experience in Sicily and his first years in the most disreputable back streets of Paris, he had gained sufficient insight to recognize the born criminal. He did not share the view that was circulating at the time that all criminals were runtish or hunchbacked or harelipped or scrofulous or, as the celebrated Vidocq had suggested (and Vidocq knew a thing or two about criminals, not least because he was one himself), bowlegged. They did, however, present many characteristics typical of the colored races, such as lack of body hair, small cranial capacity, receding forehead, well-developed chest, highly pronounced, protruding jaw and cheekbones, squint eyes, swarthy complexion, thick curly hair, large ears, uneven teeth, as well as emotional indifference, exaggerated desire for carnal pleasure and for wine, lack of sensitivity to pain, laziness, impulsiveness, improvidence, great vanity, passion for gambling and superstitiousness.

  Not to mention characters such as the one who sat next to him each day, as if to beg some morsel from his basket, his face etched all over by deep, livid scars, his lips swollen by the corrosive action of vitriol; the bridge of his nose slashed, his nostrils replaced by two formless holes, his arms long, hands stubby and broad, with hairs down to the fingers . . . Nevertheless, Simonini was obliged to change his ideas about the marks of delinquency upon meeting a fellow by the name of Oreste, who showed himself to be a man of such mildness, and who became, after Simonini had eventually offered him some of his food, so affectionate, as to demonstrate an almost canine devotion to him.

  Oreste's story was straightforward: he had strangled a girl who had not appreciated his advances, and was now awaiting sentence. "I don't know why she was so nasty," he said. "I asked to marry her, after all. And she laughed. As if I was a monster. I'm really sorry she's gone, but what else could a self-respecting man do in the circumstances? If I can avoid the guillotine, I suppose hard labor won't be so bad. They say you get plenty to eat."

  One day Oreste pointed someone out to me. "That one there," he said, "he's really bad. He tried to kill the emperor."

  That was how Simonini identified Gaviali, and came to meet him.

  "You conquered Sicily thanks to our sacrifice," said Gaviali. And then he corrected himself. "Or rather, not mine. They couldn't prove anything against me except that I'd had contact with Orsini. Orsini and Pieri were guillotined, Di Rudio was sent to Cayenne. But if all goes well, I'll soon be out."

  Everyone knew about Orsini, an Italian patriot who had gone to England and come back with six bombs packed with fulminate of mercury. On the 14th of January 1858, as Napoleon III was on his way to the theater, Orsini and two companions threw three bombs at the emperor's carriage, but they failed to hit their target—157 people were injured, 8 of whom died, but the emperor and empress escaped unhurt.

  Before going to the scaffold, Orsini wrote a moving letter to the emperor urging him to defend the unity of Italy, and many said that this letter had had some influence on Napoleon III's later policies.

  "I was originally the one who was supposed to make the bombs," said Gaviali, "along with a group of friends who, I may say, were geniuses when it came to explosives. But Orsini wasn't sure. Foreigners, you know, are always better than us, and he took a fancy to an Englishman, who took a fancy to fulminate of mercury. You could buy the ingredients in any chemist's shop in London, where they were used for making daguerreotypes, and here in France they put it into the paper used for making 'Chinese bonbons'—when you unwrapped them, bang, there was a big explosion, what fun. The trouble is that a bomb with a detonating explosive is not very effective unless it explodes on contact with the target. A gunpowder bomb would have produced large shards of metal shrapnel, which would have covered a radius of ten meters, whereas a fulminate bomb disintegrates immediately, and it kills you only if you're there where it falls. And at that point it's better to use a bullet, which goes as far as it goes."

  * * *

  That was how Simonini identified Gaviali, and came to meet him.

  * * *

  "You could always try again," suggested Simonini, and added, "I know someone who'd be interested in the services of a group of good explosives experts."

  The Narrator is not sure why Simonini dangled this bait. Did he already have something in mind, or did he dangle bait out of instinct, habit or prudence, since you never know what might happen? In any event, Gaviali was enthusiastic. "Let's talk about it," he said. "I'm told you'll soon be out of here, and so should I. Come and see me at Père Laurette in rue de la Huchette. I go there most evenings with my friends. The gendarmes have stopped bothering us there — they'd end up having to put all the regulars in prison, and that would be too much work, and besides, it's easy for a gendarme to get in, but not so easy to get out."

  "What a place." Simonini laughed. "I'll be there. But tell me, I've heard there's a certain Joly here who's written malicious things about the emperor."

  "He's an idealist," said Gaviali. "Words don't kill. But he's probably a good enough fellow. I'll introduce you."

  Joly was dressed in clothes that had been laundered, and he had found some way of shaving. When the privileged inmates arrived with their food baskets, he generally left the hall with the stove, keeping his own solitary company so as not to suffer the sight of other people's good fortune. He seemed about the same age as Simonini, had the piercing gaze of a visionary, though cloaked with sadness, and appeared to be a man of many contradictions.

  "Sit with me," Simonini told him. "Take something from my basket. It's too much for me. I could see right away you're not one of this bunch."

  Joly thanked him silently with a smile, was pleased to accept a piece of meat and a slice of bread, but kept to generalities. "Thank goodness my sister hasn't forgotten me," said Simonini. "She's not rich, but she looks after me well."

  "Lucky you," replied Joly. "I have no one."

  The ice had been b
roken. They spoke about Garibaldi's epic deeds, which the French had been following with great excitement. Simonini referred to his difficulties, first with the Piedmont government and then with the French, and here he was awaiting trial for conspiracy against the state. Joly said he was in prison not for any conspiracy but for the simple enjoyment of gossip.

  "To imagine that we are a necessary part of the order of the universe is, for well-read people like us, the same as superstition is for uncultured people. You cannot change the world through ideas. People with few ideas are less likely to make mistakes; they follow what everyone else does and are no trouble to anyone; they're successful, make money, find good jobs, enter politics, receive honors; they become famous writers, academics, journalists. Can people who are so good at looking after their own interests really be stupid? I'm the stupid one, the one who wanted to go tilting at windmills."

  By their third meal together Joly was still reluctant to get to the point, so Simonini tried to prompt him a little by asking what sort of dangerous book he could have written. Joly began to describe his Dialogue in Hell and, as he did so, became more and more indignant about the iniquities he had exposed, naming them one by one and analyzing them in greater detail than he had done in his tract.

  "Tyranny, you understand, has been achieved thanks to universal suffrage! The scoundrel has carried out an authoritarian coup d'état by appealing to the ignorant mob! This is a warning to us about the democracy of tomorrow."

  "Quite right," thought Simonini. "This Napoleon is a man for our times. He understands how to keep a grip on people who only seventy years ago were getting excited about the idea of cutting off a king's head. Lagrange might well think that Joly had had his informers, but clearly Joly used simple facts that were plain for all to see, so as to anticipate the dictator's next moves. More importantly, I'd like to know what he actually used as a model."

  So Simonini made a veiled reference to Eugène Sue and to Father Rodin's letter. Joly immediately smiled, almost blushing, and admitted that the idea for portraying Napoleon's sinful plans was inspired by Sue's description of them, except that Joly thought it more useful to date the Jesuitical influence back to classical Machiavellianism.

  "When I read Sue's book I realized I had found the key to writing something that would shake this country. What folly. Books are seized, they're destroyed, and you . . . it's as if you've done nothing. And I'd forgotten that Sue was forced into exile for saying even less."

  Simonini felt he'd been deprived of something that was his. It is true that he too had copied his Jesuit discourse from Sue, though no one knew that, and he wanted to use this model of conspiracy again for other ends. And here was Joly taking it from him, bringing it into the public domain, so to speak.

  Then he calmed down. Joly's book had been confiscated and he held one of the few copies still in circulation. Joly would be in prison for a few more years, by which time Simonini would have copied the whole book, using its contents perhaps to support a conspiracy by Cavour, or by the Prussian chancellery. Nobody would realize it, including Lagrange, who at most would recognize that the document was credible. The secret service in each country believes only what it has already heard elsewhere and would discount as unreliable any information that is entirely new. He could relax. He was in the fortunate position of knowing what Joly had told him, without anyone else knowing anything about it . . . except for Lacroix, to whom Lagrange had given the task of reading the Dialogue in Hell — the only one brave enough to read all of it. All he had to do, then, was eliminate Lacroix, and that would be that.

  Meanwhile, the time had come for his release from Sainte-Pélagie. He went to find Joly, bidding him farewell with brotherly warmth. Joly was greatly moved and said: "Perhaps you could do me a service. I have a friend, a man called Guédon. He may not know I'm here. Perhaps he might send me a basket of something decent to eat every now and then. That disgusting soup is giving me stomachache and dysentery."

  Joly told him he would find Guédon in a bookshop in rue de Beaune, where a group of Fourierists met. Fourierists, so far as Simonini knew, were socialists who sought to reform the human race, but without a revolution, and were therefore scorned by communists and conservatives alike. But the bookshop, it seemed, had become a safe haven for all republicans who stood against the empire, and they could meet there undisturbed because the police thought the Fourierists would not hurt a fly.

  On leaving prison, Simonini hastened to present his report to Lagrange. He had no interest in making Joly's position any worse. After all, he felt almost sorry for that Don Quixote.

  "Monsieur de Lagrange," he said, "our man is just a naive fellow hoping for a moment of fame, and everything has gone wrong for him. I got the impression that if he hadn't been encouraged by a certain colleague of yours, he wouldn't have thought of writing his tract. And his source of information, it pains me to say, is Lacroix himself. You say he read the book in order to prepare a summary of it, but he'd probably read it, so to speak, even before it was written. Perhaps it was he who'd arranged for it to be printed in Brussels. Though why he did it I have no idea."

  "No doubt on the instructions of some foreign service, perhaps the Prussians, to create unrest in France," Lagrange said. "I'm not surprised."

  "A Prussian agent in a department such as yours? I find that hard to believe."

  "Stieber, the head of Prussian espionage, has received nine million thalers to cover the whole of France with spies. He is said to have sent five thousand Prussian peasants and nine thousand domestic servants to France in order to have agents in cafés, restaurants, in the families that count, everywhere. It's not true, mind you. Very few of their spies are Prussian, or even Alsatian — they'd be recognized immediately by their accent. Most of them are good Frenchmen who do it for money."

  "Can't you identify and arrest these traitors?" Simonini asked.

  "It's not worth it. They'd only arrest ours. You don't deal with spies by killing them but by passing them false information. And to do this we need people who act as double agents. Having said that, your information about Lacroix is quite new to me. Heavens above, what a world we live in. No one's to be trusted — we must be rid of him."

  "But if you put him on trial, neither he nor Joly will admit a thing."

  "No one working for us must ever appear in a court of law, and —excuse me if I state a general rule — this applies just as well to you. Lacroix will be the victim of an accident. His widow will have a proper pension."

  Simonini didn't mention Guédon and the bookshop in rue de Beaune. He preferred to wait and see what he might find out from his visit there. He had also been exhausted by his few days in Sainte-Pélagie.

  So he went at the earliest opportunity to Laperouse, in quai des Grands-Augustins, and not downstairs, where they served oysters and entrecôtesas they used to, but upstairs, in one of the cabinets particuliers where you could order barbue sauce hollandaise, casserole au riz à la Toulouse, aspics de filets de lapereaux en chaud-froid, truffes au champagne, pudding d'abricots à la vénitienne, corbeille de fruits frais and compotes de pêches et d'ananas.

  And to the devil with those convicts — idealists, murderers or whoever they were — and their soup. Prisons are there to ensure that a gentleman can go to a restaurant without coming to any harm.

  Simonini's recollections here, as in similar instances, become confused, and some passages in his diary are disjointed. All the Narrator can do is rely upon comments added by Abbé Dalla Piccola. The two are now working at full pace and in perfect coordination . . .

  In short, Simonini realized that to be viewed favorably by the imperial service he had to give Lagrange something more. What makes a police informer truly believable? Discovering a conspiracy. He therefore had to organize a conspiracy so he could then uncover it.

  It was Gaviali who had given him the idea. Simonini went to Sainte-Pélagie and learned when he was to be released. He remembered where he would find him — at Cabaret Père Laurette
in rue de la Huchette.

  Toward the end of the street, you entered a house through a narrow opening, though hardly narrower than rue du Chat qui Pêche, which led off from the same rue de la Huchette, and indeed so narrow that it was hard to understand why they had made it so, seeing that you had to enter sideways. After climbing a set of stairs, you walked along corridors whose stone paving exuded grease, with doorways so low that it was hard to imagine how anyone could enter the rooms. On the second floor, through a more practicable doorway, you reached a large room, created perhaps by knocking together three or more former apartments. This was the salon or hall or cabaret of Père Laurette, whom no one knew because he was thought to have died some years earlier.

  There were tables all around, crowded with pipe smokers, lansquenet players and girls prematurely wrinkled, with pallid complexions, as if they were dolls for poor children, who were interested only in finding customers who hadn't quite finished their glass so they could beg them for the last drop.

  There was a commotion on the evening when Simonini arrived— someone had been stabbed, and the smell of blood seemed to have created a general tension. Apparently a madman with a cobbler's knife stabbed one of the girls, hurled the landlady to the ground when she tried to intervene, lashed out at whoever tried to stop him, and was brought down only when a waiter smashed a carafe over the back of his head. After which everyone returned to what they had been doing, as if nothing had happened.