UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY (46 page)

Only later did I realize what he had sensed — that it was one thing to talk about the Jewish involvement in Freemasonry, but the introduction of Dreyfus would mean suggesting (or revealing) that Dreyfus, as well as being a Jew, was also a Mason. That would have been unwise, given that (since Masonry thrived particularly well in the army) many of the senior officers who were prosecuting Dreyfus were probably Masons.

On the other hand, there was no shortage of other avenues to explore —and from the point of view of the readership we had built up, our cards were better than Drumont's.

About a year after
Le diable's
first appearance, Taxil said to us: "You know, when it comes down to it, everything that appears in
Le diable
is the work of Doctor Bataille. Why should anyone believe what he writes? We need a Palladian convert who reveals the sect's innermost mysteries. What is more, has there ever been a good story without a female character? We presented Sophia Sapho in a negative light. She couldn't stir the sympathies of Catholic readers, even if she were to convert. We need someone who is immediately likeable, though still a Satanist, as if her face shone with her imminent conversion, a naive Palladian ensnared by the sect of Freemasons, who gradually breaks free from that yoke and returns to the arms of the religion of her forebears."

"Diana," I said. "Diana is more or less the living image of what a converted sinner might be, given that she is either one or the other almost on command."

And that is how Diana arrived on the scene in issue number 89 of
Le diable.

Diana was introduced by Bataille, but to make her appearance more credible he immediately wrote a letter expressing dissatisfaction with the way in which she had been presented, even criticizing the picture that had been published, according to the style of the
Le diable
periodicals. I have to say that her portrait was rather mannish, and we offered a more feminine picture of Diana, claiming it was done by an artist who had been to visit her at her Paris hotel.

Diana also made her first appearance in the journal
Le Palladium Régénéré et Libre,
which presented itself as the voice of breakaway Palladians who had the courage to describe the cult of Lucifer down to the smallest detail and the blasphemous expressions used in their rituals. The horror people still felt about Palladism was so apparent that a certain Canon Mustel, in his
Revue Catholique,
spoke about Diana's Palladian dissidence as the beginnings of a conversion. Diana contacted Mustel, sending him two one-hundred-franc notes for the poor. Mustel invited his readers to pray for Diana's conversion.

I swear that Mustel was no invention of ours, nor did we bribe him, but he behaved exactly as we had hoped. And in addition to his magazine support came from
La Semaine Réligieuse
, inspired by Monsignor Fava, the bishop of Grenoble.

It was, I think, in June '95 that Diana converted, and
Mémoires d'une ex-Palladiste
was published over the next six months, once again in installments. Those who subscribed to
Palladium Régénéré
(which of course stopped publication) could transfer their subscription to the
Mémoires
or get their money back. My impression is that, apart from a few fanatics, the readers accepted the change of position. Diana the convert, after all, was telling stories that were just as bizarre as those of Diana the sinner, and it was what the public wanted. This was Taxil's basic idea — there was really no difference between describing the private love life of Pope Pius IX and the homosexual rituals of Masonic Satanists. People want what is forbidden to them, and that's that.

 

We offered a more feminine picture of Diana.

And this was exactly what Diana promised: "I will be writing to reveal all that happened in the Triangles and which I did everything I could to prevent, all that I have always despised and all that I believed to be good. Let the public judge."

Well done, Diana. We had created a myth. But she herself knew nothing about it. She lived under the effect of the drugs we administered to tranquilize her, and she responded only to our (my God, no,
their
) caresses.

I recall so vividly those times of great excitement. Diana, the angelic convert, received the love and admiration of priests and bishops, pious mothers and repentant sinners.
Le Pèlerin
recounted how a woman called Louise, who had been seriously ill, had been sent on a pilgrimage to Lourdes under the auspices of Diana and was miraculously cured.
La Croix,
the leading Catholic newspaper, wrote: "We have just read the draft of the first chapter of
Mémoires d'une ex-Palladiste,
shortly to be published by Miss Vaughan, and are overcome by an indescribable emotion. How wonderful is the grace of God in those souls who give themselves to Him." Monsignor Lazzareschi, the Holy See's delegate to the Central Committee of the Anti-Masonic Union, authorized a three-day thanksgiving to be celebrated for Diana's conversion at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Rome, and a "Hymn to Joan of Arc," supposedly composed by Diana (though it was in fact an aria from an operetta composed by one of Taxil's friends for a Muslim sultan or caliph), was performed at the Central Committee's anti-Masonic feasts and sung in several basilicas.

And then, as if the whole thing had been invented by us, a mystic Carmelite nun from Lisieux, already regarded as a saint despite her youth, interceded on behalf of Diana. This Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, having received a copy of the converted Diana's
Mémoires,
was so moved by this creature that she included her as a character in her play
The Triumph of Humility,
written for her sister nuns, in which Joan of Arc makes an appearance. And she sent Diana a photograph of herself dressed as Joan of Arc.

Diana's
Mémoires
were translated into several languages, and Cardinal Vicar Parocchi congratulated her upon her conversion, which he described as a "magnificent triumph of Grace." Monsignor Vincenzo Sardi, the apostolic secretary, wrote that Providence had allowed Diana to become part of that vile sect so that it could be crushed more effectively, and
Civiltà Cattolica
stated that Miss Diana Vaughan, "summoned from darkness into the divine light, is now using her experience in the service of the Church, with publications that are unequaled for their accuracy and utility."

I saw Boullan more regularly at Auteuil. What was his relationship with Diana? Sometimes, returning to Auteuil unexpectedly, I surprised them in each other's arms, Diana staring at the ceiling with an expression of ecstasy. But perhaps she had entered her second state, had just confessed and was enjoying the moment of absolution. More suspicious, it seemed, was her relationship with Taxil. Returning, once again without warning, I had surprised her on the couch, half dressed, in intimate contact with a cyanotic-faced Taxil. Fine, I thought, someone has to satisfy those carnal urges of the "bad" Diana, provided it isn't me. The idea of sexual contact with a woman is bad enough, but with a madwoman . . .

When I find myself once again with the "good" Diana, she rests her virginal head on my shoulder and cries, begging my forgiveness. The warmth of her head against my cheek and the breath of penitence cause me to shudder, and I immediately withdraw, inviting her to go and kneel before a holy image and pray for forgiveness.

In Palladian circles (do they really exist? many anonymous letters seem to prove it, and in any event it's quite enough to talk about something to make it exist) dark threats were being made against Diana the traitress. In the meantime, something happened that escapes me. I was about to say: the death of Abbé Boullan. And yet I have a hazy memory of him and Diana together in more recent years.

I've been overtaxing my memory. I must rest.

23

TWELVE YEARS WELL SPENT

From the diary for 15th and 16th April 1897

At this point not only do the pages of Dalla Piccola's diary intersect almost, I would say, frenetically with those of Simonini, both sometimes speaking of the same event though from differing points of view, but Simonini's own pages become erratic, as if it were difficult for him to remember the events as well as the characters and organizations with which he'd had contact over those years. The period of time that Simonini reconstructs (often confusing dates, placing first what in all probability must have occurred later) runs from Taxil's supposed conversion until '96 or '97—at least twelve years — in a series of rapid notes, some almost in shorthand, as if he feared leaving out things that suddenly came to mind, interspersed with more detailed descriptions of conversations, thoughts, dramatic events.

So the Narrator, finding himself without that well-balanced
vis narrandi
which even our diarist seems to lack, will limit himself to separating the recollections under different headings, as if the events had occurred one after the other, or each separate from the other, though in all probability they were taking place at the same time — so, for example, after a conversation with Rachkovsky, Simonini left to meet Gaviali that same afternoon. But, as they say, that's how it is.

Simonini remembers how, after urging Taxil on the path to conversion (he does not know why Dalla Piccola had then taken the whole business out of his hands, so to speak), he decided, while not actually joining the Masons, to move among circles with republican sympathies where, he imagined, he would find Masons aplenty. And thanks to the good offices of people he had met at the bookshop in rue de Beaune — in particular Toussenel — he gained admittance to the salon of Juliette Lamessine, now Madame Juliette Adam, wife of a parliamentary deputy from the republican left who was the founder of Crédit Foncier and later a senator for life. Money, high politics and culture graced the house in boulevard Poissonnière (later in boulevard Malesherbes) whose hostess was herself a writer of some note (indeed, she had published a life of Garibaldi). It also attracted such statesmen as Gambetta, Thiers and Clemenceau, and writers like Prudhomme, Flaubert, Maupassant and Turgenev, and it was here that Simonini met Victor Hugo, shortly before his death, already transformed into a living monument, fossilized by age, with the title of Senator and with the aftereffects of an apoplectic stroke.