from
The Prague Cemetery
by
Umberto Eco

You have them around as soon as you are born, when they baptize you; you have them at school, if your parents have been so fervent as to send you to them; then first communion, catechism, confirmation; there’s a priest on your wedding day to tell you what to do in bed, and the day after at confession to ask you how many times you did it [...]

They keep saying that their kingdom is not of this world, then take everything they can lay their hands on.

Who knows how many other people in this world still think they are being threatened by some conspiracy? Here’s a form to be filled out at will, by each person with his own conspiracy.

Dumas had a truly clear understanding of the human mind. What does everyone desire, and desire more fervently the more wretched and unfortunate they are? To earn money easily, to have power (the enormous pleasure in commanding and humiliating your fellow man) and to avenge every wrong suffered (everyone in life has suffered at least one wrong, however small it might be). And that is why in Monte Cristo he shows how to amass great wealth, enough to give you super-human power, and how to make your enemies pay back every debt. But why, everybody asks, am I not blessed by fortune (or at least not as blessed as I would like to be)? Why have I not been favored like others who are less deserving? No one believes their misfortunes are attributable to any shortcomings of their own; that is why they must find a culprit. Dumas offers, to the frustration of everyone (individuals as well as countries), the explanation for their failure. It was someone else, on Thunder Mountain, who planned your ruin.

On reflection, Dumas had invented nothing. He had merely put into story form what, according to my grandfather, Abbé Barruel had already shown. This led me to think, even then, that if I wanted to sell the story of a conspiracy, I didn’t have to offer the buyer anything original, but simply something he already knew or could have found out more easily in other ways. People believe only what they already know, and this is the beauty of the Universal Form of Conspiracy.

He realized, as he gradually gained the cautious trust of his master, that his main business did not consist so much of what a notary does, such as proving wills, gifts, property transactions and other contracts, but rather of testifying gifts, transactions, wills and contracts that had never taken place. In other words, Notaio Rebaudengo drafted false documents for substantial sums of money, imitating where necessary the handwriting of others and providing witnesses whom he recruited in the neighboring taverns.

“Let me be clear, my boy,” Rebaudengo explained, all formality now gone. “What I produce are not forgeries but new copies of genuine documents that have been lost or, by simple oversight, have never been produced, and that could and should have been produced.”

“I always trust my clients, because I serve only honorable people.”

“But if by chance the client had lied to you?”

“Then it is he who has sinned, not me. If I had to start worrying whether the client might be lying, I would no longer be in this profession, which is based on trust.”

“Napoleon,” Bergamaschi continued, “had sought once and for all to destroy the socialists, revolutionaries, philosophers, atheists and all those vile rationalists who espouse national sovereignty, free inquiry and religious, political and social freedom. He had sought to dissolve the legislative assembly, to arrest the representatives of the people on allegations of conspiracy, to decree a state of siege in Paris, to shoot without trial those bearing arms at the barricades, to ship the most dangerous figures to Cayenne, to crush freedom of association and of the press, to send the army into its fortresses and then to bombard the capital, reducing it to ashes, until no stone was left standing, and thereby bringing victory to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church on the ruins of modern Babylon. Then he had called upon the people by universal suffrage to extend his presidential power for ten years, and afterward transformed the republic back into an empire, universal suffrage being the only remedy against democracy because it includes the rural populations still loyal to the voice of their priests.”

Bianco read the report with great care, looked up from what he had been reading, fixed me in the eye and said it was material of the greatest importance. Once again, he had confirmed my view that when a spy sells something entirely new, all he need do is recount something you could find in any secondhand book stall.

“All you can say is that you want to unite Italy so as to create one country. If the people are suffering, they will suffer whether united or divided, and I don’t know if you’ll be able to stop that suffering.”

“But the people will have freedom and schools,” I told him.

“Freedom is not bread, nor are schools. Perhaps such things are enough for you up there in Piedmont, but not for us Sicilians.”

“What do you want, then?”

“Not a war against the Bourbons, but a war by the poor against those who are starving them, who aren’t just at court, but all over the place.”

“And that includes you monks, whose monasteries and lands are everywhere?”

“Yes, it includes us – indeed us first, before everyone else! But with the Gospel and with the Cross. Then I’d come. Your way is not enough.“

From what I’d learned at university about the famous Communist Manifesto, this monk must be one of them.

I have heard it said that over a billion people inhabit the earth. I don’t know how anyone could count them, but from one look around Palermo it’s quite clear that there are too many of us and that we’re already stepping on each other’s toes. And most people smell. There isn’t sufficient food. Just imagine if there were any more of us. We therefore have to cull the population. True, there are plagues and suicides, capital punishment, those who challenge each other to duels and who get pleasure from riding at breakneck speed through woods and meadows. I’ve even heard of English gentlemen who go swimming in the sea and, of course, drown. But it is not enough. Wars are the most effective and natural way imaginable for stemming the increase in human numbers. Once upon a time, when people went off to war, didn’t they say it was God’s will? But to do so, you need people who want to fight. If no one wants to fight, no one will die. Then wars would be pointless. So it’s vital to have men like Nievo, Abba and Bandi who want to throw themselves in the line of fire. Others like me can then live without being harassed by so many people breathing down our necks.

In other words, although I don’t like them, we do need noble-spirited souls.

Despotic governments, Simonini reflected, all follow the same logic – it was enough to read Machiavelli in order to understand what Napoleon would do.

“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.”

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

“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.”

Toussenel spoke to me about capitalism, which he said was poisoning modern society.

“And who are the capitalists? The Jews, the rulers of our time. The revolution last century cut off the head of Louis Capet. This century’s revolution ought to cut off the head of Moses. I shall write a book about it. Who are the Jews? They’re all those who suck the blood out of the defenseless, the people. They’re Protestants, Freemasons. And, of course, the people of Judah.”

“But Protestants are not Jews,” I ventured.

“Jew and Protestant are the same,” Toussenel said. “The English Methodists, the German Pietists, the Swiss and the Dutch all learn to read the will of God from the same book as the Jews – the Bible, a story of incest and massacres and barbarous wars, where the only way to win is through treachery and deception, where kings have men murdered so they can take their wives, where women who call themselves saints enter the beds of enemy generals and cut off their heads. [...] The problem is exposing the conspiracy of money. Why does an apple in a Paris restaurant cost a hundred times more than in Normandy? There are unscrupulous races who live on the flesh of others, merchant races like the ancient Phoenicians and Carthaginians. And today it’s the English and the Jews.”

I was doubtful that documents against the Jesuits would be saleable. Perhaps to the Freemasons, but I still had no point of contact with their world. Writings against the Freemasons might have been of interest to the Jesuits, but I didn’t yet feel able to produce any. Against Napoleon? Certainly not to sell them to the government. And the republicans were a good potential market, but after Sue and Joly, there was little more to be said. Against the republicans? Here again, it seemed as if the government had all it needed. And if I offered Lagrange information on the Fourierists, he would have laughed – who knows how many of his informers had already visited that bookshop in rue de Beaune?

Who was left? The Jews, for heaven’s sake!

Prevention is best – it’s better to punish first, before any crimes are committed.

“A good secret agent is lost when he has to deal with something that has already happened. Our job is to make it happen first.”

Being thought of as a spy was very profitable, as everyone was trying to get what they believed to be priceless secrets from him, and they were prepared to spend a great deal for them. But because they did not want to be open about it, they used his business of lawyer as a pretext, paying his exorbitant bills without batting an eyelid and, indeed, not only paying excessively for trivial legal services but doing so without receiving any information. They simply thought they had paid their bribe and were waiting patiently for some news.

The Narrator feels that Simonini was ahead of his time: in reality, with the spread of a free press and new ways of communication, with telegraph and radio now imminent, confidential information was becoming increasingly rare, and this could have led to difficulties for the secret agent. Better not to have any secrets, but to make people believe you have. It was like living on a private income or enjoying earnings from patent rights – you enjoy a life of leisure while others boast about having received amazing revelations from you, your fame increases, and the money rolls in without your lifting a finger.

It was time to distract attention from the last dregs of a story that was now stale, and Hébuterne asked Simonini to organize a riot – big enough to fill the front pages of the newspapers.

Simonini said organizing a riot would not be easy, and Hébuterne suggested that those most inclined to cause a disturbance were students. The best approach was to get the students to start something and then call in a specialist in public disorder.