Then again, perhaps I ought to begin reexamining my past by contemplating my navel, as Burot (or Bourru?) described; and on a full stomach, since I’m now as heavy as my age demands, I’d have to start off by looking at myself in the mirror.
Instead, I began yesterday, seated at this desk, writing without a pause, without distraction, confining myself to nibbling something every now and then, and drinking—yes, drinking without restraint. What’s best about this house is its fine cellar.
4. In My Grandfather’s Day
26th March 1897
My childhood. Turin…A hillside on the other bank of the Po, me on a balcony with my mother. Then she was gone, and my father was crying, sitting on the balcony overlooking the hills at dusk. My grandfather said it was God’s will.
With my mother I spoke French, like every well-bred Piedmontese (when I speak it here in Paris, it sounds as if I’ve learned it in Grenoble, where the purest French is spoken, not like the Parisian babil). Since I was a boy I’ve felt more French than Italian, as everyone in Piedmont does. That’s why I find the French unbearable.
Childhood for me was my grandfather, more than my father and mother. I hated my mother who had gone without telling me, I hated my father who had done nothing to stop her, I hated God because he had willed such a thing to happen, and I hated my grandfather because he thought it normal for God to will such things. My father was always somewhere else—»making Italy,» he used to say. Then Italy unmade him.
My grandfather. Giovanni Battista Simonini, former officer in the Savoy army—I think he left it at the time of the Napoleonic invasion, enlisting under the Bourbons in Florence and then, when Tuscany had also come under the control of a Bonaparte, he returned to Turin, a retired captain, nursing his disappointments.
A warty nose—when he held me close, all I could see was his nose. And I used to feel his saliva spluttering my face. He was what the French called ci-devant, one who looked back nostalgically on the ancien régime, who had not forgiven the crimes of the Revolution. He hadn’t stopped wearing culottes—he still had fine calves—fastened with a gold buckle beneath the knee, and the buckles on his patent-leather shoes were of gold. His waistcoat, jacket and black cravat gave him a priestly air. The rules of a bygone style also suggested the wearing of a powdered wig, but he refused to do so because, he said, ogres like Robespierre had dressed themselves up in powdered wigs.
I never knew whether he was rich, but he didn’t stint when it came to good food. Of my grandfather and my childhood I remember above all the bagna caöda: a terracotta pot of boiling oil, flavored with anchovies, garlic and butter, is kept hot on a charcoal burner, and into it are dipped cardoons (which have been left to soak in cold water and lemon juice—or some said milk, but not my grandfather), raw or grilled peppers, white leaves of Savoy cabbage, Jerusalem artichokes and tender cauliflower—or boiled vegetables: onions, beetroot, potatoes or carrots (but as my grandfather used to say, this was stuff for paupers).
I liked eating, and my grandfather enjoyed seeing me fatten up like a little piglet (as he used to say affectionately).
Spraying me with saliva, my grandfather would instruct me on his principles: «The Revolution, my boy, has made us the slaves of a godless state, more unequal than before and fraternal enemies, each a Cain to the other. It’s no good being too free, nor is it good to have all we need. Our fathers were poorer and happier because they remained in touch with nature. The modern world has given us steam, which poisons the countryside, and mechanical looms, which have taken work from so many wretched souls and don’t produce fabrics as they once did. Man, left to himself, is too wicked to be free. What little freedom we need must be guaranteed by a sovereign.»
His favorite theme was Abbé Barruel. Thinking back to my childhood, I can almost see Abbé Barruel, who seemed to inhabit our house, though he must have been dead for quite some time.
I can almost see Abbé Barruel, who seemed to inhabit our house, though he must have been dead for quite some time.
«You see, my boy,» I can hear my grandfather saying, «once the madness of the Revolution had shaken every European nation, word began to spread that the Revolution was none other than the last or latest chapter in a universal conspiracy led by the Templars against the throne and the altar. In other words, against kings—in particular the kings of France—and our most holy Mother Church…This was the opinion of Abbé Barruel, who, toward the end of the last century, had written his Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du Jacobinisme.»
«But Grandpapa,» I then asked, «what had the Templars to do with it?» I already knew the story by heart but wanted to allow my grandfather to return to his favorite subject.
«The Templars, my boy, were an extremely powerful order of knights whom the king of France destroyed so as to seize their property, sending most of them to the stake. But the survivors set up a secret order to take revenge on the kings of France. And, sure enough, when King Louis was beheaded on the guillotine, a stranger climbed onto the block and held up that poor head, shouting, ‘Jacques de Molay, you are avenged!’ Molay had been the Grand Master of the Templars whom the king had had burnt at the stake on the farthest point of the Île de la Cité in Paris.»
«When was this Molay burned?»
«In 1314.»
«Let me work it out, Grandpapa…That was almost five hundred years before the Revolution. How did the Templars manage to stay hidden for five hundred years?»
«They infiltrated the guilds of the ancient cathedral builders, and from those guilds English Freemasonry was born, called by that name because its members considered themselves free masons.»
«And why did the Masons have to start the Revolution?»
«Barruel had understood that the original Templars and the Freemasons had been taken over and corrupted by the Illuminati of Bavaria! This was a dreadful sect, founded by a certain Weishaupt, and every member knew only his immediate superior and nothing about those higher up and their plans; its purpose was not only to destroy the throne and the altar, but also to create a society without laws and without morality, where personal belongings and even women were to be held in common—God forgive me if I say such things to a child, but Satan’s designs must be exposed.
And in league with the Bavarian Illuminati were those deniers of every faith who had brought the infamous Encyclopédie into being, by which I mean Voltaire, d’Alembert, Diderot and all that evil breed, who, copying the Illuminati, spoke in France of the Siècle des Lumières and in Germany of Aufklärung, or Enlightenment, and who, meeting secretly to plot the downfall of the monarchy, set up the club known as the Jacobins, named after Jacques de Molay himself. These are the very people who plotted the French Revolution!»
«Barruel had understood everything.»
«He hadn’t understood how a group of Christian knights could grow into a sect hostile to Christ. It is like yeast in dough—without flour and water it doesn’t grow, the dough doesn’t rise, and you cannot make bread. And what was the yeast that someone, or fate, or the devil introduced into the still healthy body of the secret societies of the Templars and Freemasons to make them the most diabolical sect of all time?»
Here my grandfather stopped, placed his hands together as if to focus his mind, gave a wily smile and revealed with calculated and triumphant modesty: «The person who had the courage first to say it, my dear boy, was your grandfather. As soon as I was able to read Barruel’s book, I wrote to him. Go down there, my boy, and fetch that casket.»
I followed his instructions. My grandfather opened the small casket with a gold key that hung from his neck and took out a sheet of paper, which had yellowed after forty years. «This is the original letter from which I made a fair copy to send to Barruel.»
I can still see my grandfather reading it, with dramatic pauses.
«Please accept, sir, the most sincere congratulations of a soldier, ignorant though I am, on your book, which may rightly be described as the supreme work of the last century. Ah! How well you have unmasked those abominable sects preparing the way for the Antichrist, and who are the implacable foes, not only of the Christian religion but of every faith, of every society, of every idea of order. One of them, however, you have mentioned only in passing. Perhaps you have done so intentionally, as it is the best known and consequently the least to be feared. But, in my view, it is the most formidable power today if we consider its great wealth and the protection it enjoys in almost every European state.
You understand, sir, that I am referring to the Hebrew sect. It seems entirely separate from and hostile to the other sects, but in truth it is not. Any of these sects need only
