I was enthralled by the sight of so many people of all classes walking beside me.
These were the prostitutes, though not of the vulgar sort I was later to encounter in the brasseries à femmes. They were strictly for wealthy gentlemen, as was apparent from the devilish techniques they used to seduce their victims. An informant of mine explained that at one time only grisettes were seen on the boulevards. These were young women of no particular intelligence, of easy virtue but undemanding, who asked their lovers for neither clothes nor jewelry, knowing the lovers were even poorer than they were. Then, as a breed, they vanished just like the pug. Later, the lorette, or biche or cocotte, appeared. These were no more amusing or cultured than the grisette but were eager for cashmere and frills. By the time I arrived in Paris, the lorette had been replaced by the courtesan—rich lovers, diamonds, carriages. It was rare by then for a courtesan to walk the boulevards. These dames aux camélias had decided as a matter of principle to reveal neither heart nor tenderness nor gratitude, and to exploit the impotent souls who paid just to display them in their box at the Opéra. What a repulsive sex.
Meanwhile, I went to meet Clément Fabre de Lagrange. My former contacts in Turin had directed me to an office in an apparently derelict building, in a street that professional discretion prevents me from naming, even on a sheet of paper that no one is ever going to read. I believe that Lagrange was involved with the Political Division of the Direction Générale de la Sûreté Publique, but I never knew whether he was at the top or the bottom of the pyramid. He didn’t seem answerable to anyone else, and I would be unable, even under torture, to say anything about that political intelligence machine. I wasn’t sure, in fact, whether Lagrange really had an office in the building. I wrote to that address informing him that I had a letter of introduction from Cavalier Bianco, and two days later received a card arranging a meeting in place Notre Dame. I would recognize him by a red carnation in his buttonhole. Lagrange thereafter always met me in the most unlikely places—a cabaret, a church, a public garden, and never in the same place twice.
Lagrange needed a particular document at the time, and I produced it for him. He was immediately impressed, and from that day I worked for him as an indicateur, as it is commonly described around here, receiving 300 francs a month plus 130 for expenses, with a few occasional bonuses and money on top for producing documents. The empire spends a great deal on its informers, certainly more than the Kingdom of Piedmont, and I’ve heard it said that out of a police budget of 7 million francs a year, 2 million are set aside for political intelligence. But others say the total budget is 14 million, which includes the cost of crowds to applaud as the emperor passes, of groups sent out to keep watch on Mazzini’s supporters, as well as agitators and actual spies.
I used to make at least 5,000 francs a year with Lagrange, and through him I was introduced to private clients, so I was soon able to set up my present office (under the cover of dealing in brocantage). With forged wills and the sale of consecrated hosts, my business brought me another 5,000 francs, and with 10,000 francs a year I was what could be described in Paris as a comfortably-off bourgeois. These earnings were obviously never secure, and my dream was to make 10,000 francs, not as earned but as unearned income. Given a 3 percent return on state bonds (the safest), I would have to accumulate 300,000 francs in capital. Such a sum might have been possible for a courtesan, but not for an unknown notary.
While awaiting some stroke of fortune, I could nevertheless transform myself from spectator to active participant in the pleasures of Paris. I have never been interested in the theater, in those horrible tragedies declaimed in alexandrines, and museum rooms depress me. But Paris offered me something much better—restaurants.
The first place I wanted to indulge myself was Le Grand Véfour, in the arcades of the Palais-Royal. Though it was extremely expensive, I had heard it praised even in Turin, and Victor Hugo apparently used to go there to eat breast of mutton with haricot beans. The other place that had immediately seduced me was the Café Anglais, on the corner of rue de Gramont and boulevard des Italiens. It had once been a restaurant for coachmen and servants and now served le tout Paris at its tables. There I discovered pommes Anna, écrevisses bordelaises, mousses de volaille, mauviettes en cerises, petites timbales à la Pompadour, cimier de chevreuil, fonds d’artichauts à la jardinière and champagne sorbets. The mere mention of these names makes me feel that life is worth living.
Apart from the restaurants, I was fascinated by the passages. I adored passage Jouffroy, perhaps because it held three of Paris’s best restaurants: the Dîner de Paris, the Dîner du Rocher and the Dîner Jouffroy. It seems, even today, that the whole of Paris gathers there, especially on Saturdays, in the glass-covered arcade where you are continually jostled by world-weary gentlemen and ladies who are too heavily scented for my taste.
Perhaps I was more intrigued by passage des Panoramas. The crowd you saw there was more working class, bourgeois and provincial, people who looked longingly at antiques they could never afford and young girls who had just come out of the factories. If you really must ogle petticoats, the women in passage Jouffroy are better dressed (if that’s what you like), but here, wandering up and down watching the factory girls, are the suiveurs, middle-aged men who conceal their gaze behind green-tinted glasses. I doubt that all the girls really are factory workers; that they are simply dressed, in tulle bonnets and pinafores, means nothing. Look carefully at their fingertips. Girls without cuts, scratches or small burns lead a more leisurely life, thanks to the suiveurs whom they manage to enchant.
It is not the factory girls I gaze at in the arcade, but the suiveurs. (Who said that a philosopher is someone who watches the audience and not the stage at the café chantant?) They may one day become my clients, or useful in another way. I follow some of them home, to see them being greeted, say, by a fat wife and half a dozen brats. I make a note of their addresses. You never know. I could easily ruin them with an anonymous letter. One day, perhaps, if the need arises.
It is not the factory girls I gaze at in the arcade, but the suiveurs.
I remember almost nothing about the various assignments Lagrange gave me in the early years. All I can remember is a name, Abbé Boullan, but that must have been much later, perhaps just before or after the war (it had something to do with a war, I believe, with Paris in chaos).
The absinthe is doing its job, and if I were to blow on a candle, a great flame would spurt from the wick.
10. Dalla Piccola Perplexed
3rd April 1897
Dear Captain Simonini,
This morning I woke with a heavy head and a strange taste in my mouth. God forgive me…it was the taste of absinthe! I assure you that I hadn’t yet read your account of last night. How could I know what you had been drinking unless I’d drunk it myself? And how could a priest recognize the taste of something forbidden and therefore unfamiliar? Or perhaps my head is confused. Perhaps I’m writing about the taste I felt in my mouth when I woke up, but am writing after reading your diary, and what you wrote has influenced me. I have never tasted absinthe, so how could I know that the taste in my mouth is absinthe? It is the taste of something else, which your diary has induced me to think is absinthe.
Oh, good Lord, the fact remains that I woke in my own bed, and everything seemed normal, as if I had done nothing else all last month. Except that I knew I had to go to your apartment. Having reached there, or rather here, I read those pages of your diary, which I hadn’t yet seen. I saw your mention of Boullan and some vague, confused picture came to mind.
I repeated that name aloud several times, and it produced a sudden flash in my mind, as if your Doctors Bourru and Burot had touched a piece of magnetized metal to some part of my body, or a Doctor Charcot had waved—I don’t know what—a finger, a key, a hand before my eyes and had sent me into a state of lucid somnambulism.
I saw the image of a priest spitting into the mouth of a woman possessed.
11. Joly
From the diary for 3rd April 1897, late
