But perhaps the police also found him an embarrassment, as he was once prosecuted for advertising what were described as Bonbons du Serrail, which were in effect aphrodisiac pills. In 1873, again in Marseilles, he sent letters to local newspapers, all with the false signatures of fishermen, warning that the coastal waters were infested with sharks, and creating considerable alarm. Later, when convicted for writing articles offending religion, he escaped to Geneva.
There he circulated stories about the existence of a ruined Roman city submerged beneath Lake Geneva, attracting hordes of tourists. He was expelled from Switzerland for spreading false and misleading information and moved first to Montpellier and then to Paris, where he opened a Librairie Anticléricale in rue des Écoles. He had recently joined a Masonic lodge but was expelled soon after for unworthy conduct. It appeared that his anticlerical activity was no longer as profitable as it had been, and he was heavily in debt.
Simonini now remembered all about Taxil. He had produced a series of books that, as well as being anticlerical, were distinctly antireligious, such as a Life of Jesus told through highly irreverent illustrations (for example, depicting relations between Mary and the dove of the Holy Spirit). He had written a scurrilous novel, The Jesuit Son, which proved that the author was a charlatan.
It carried a dedication on the front page to Giuseppe Garibaldi («whom I love like a father»). So far so good. But the title page promised an «Introduction» by Giuseppe Garibaldi. The title of the introduction was «Anticlerical Thoughts,» which took the form of a furious tirade («when I see a priest before me, and especially a Jesuit, the quintessential priest, I am struck by the whole baseness of his nature to the point that it makes me shudder and feel sick»), but there was no mention of the work it apparently introduced—and it was clear that Taxil had taken this text by Garibaldi from somewhere else and presented it as if it had been written for his book.
He had produced a Life of Jesus told through highly irreverent illustrations (for example, depicting relations between Mary and the dove of the Holy Spirit).
Simonini did not wish to take any risks with someone like this. He decided to present himself as a notary by the name of Fournier, and dressed himself in a well-groomed wig of indeterminate color, tending toward auburn, with a part on one side. He added side whiskers of the same color to lengthen his face, which he lightened with a suitable cream. In the mirror, he tried to fix a slightly vacant smile, which would reveal two gold incisors, thanks to a minor masterpiece of dentistry that enabled him to cover his natural teeth. This small denture also distorted his speech and thus altered his voice.
He sent a petit bleu by pneumatic post to his man in rue des Écoles, inviting him to the Café Riche the following day. This was a good way of introducing himself, since many illustrious people had passed through that restaurant, and a parvenu inclined to bragging could hardly have resisted the delights of sole or woodcock à la Riche.
Léo Taxil had a chubby, oily face ornamented with a fine mustache. He had a broad forehead and balding pate from which he was continually wiping sweat, an overly accentuated elegance, and he spoke loudly, with an insufferable Marseillais accent.
He didn’t know the exact reasons why this notary wished to talk to him, but gradually began to flatter himself that Maître Fournier was an acute observer of human nature, like many of those whom novelists of the time described as «philosophers,» and was interested in his anticlerical arguments and his singular experiences. And he therefore entertained his host with stories about his juvenile pranks, talking while he ate: «When I spread the story about the sharks around Marseilles, all the resorts from Plage des Catalans as far as Prado were empty for weeks. The mayor said the sharks had definitely come from Corsica, following a ship that had been throwing the rotten remains of smoked meat into the sea. The municipal commission asked for a company of chassepots to be sent out on a tugboat expedition, and a hundred of them actually arrived at General Espivent’s headquarters! And the story about Lake Geneva?
Journalists arrived from every part of Europe! Word got around that the underwater city had been built during the time of Caesar’s De bello gallico, when the lake was so narrow that the River Rhone could cross it without their waters merging. The local boatmen did good business carrying tourists to the middle of the lake, and used to pour oil on the water so they could see better…A famous Polish archaeologist sent an article back home in which he described having seen a crossroads with an equestrian statue on the bed of the lake! Man’s principal trait is a readiness to believe anything. Otherwise, how could the Church have survived for almost two thousand years in the absence of universal gullibility?»
Simonini asked for information about Le Temple des Amis de l’Honneur Français.
«Is it difficult to join a lodge?»
«All you need is to be well off and ready to pay the annual dues, which are steep. And to show you’re willing to comply with the rules on mutual care between brothers. And as for morality, they talk a great deal about it, but even last year the speaker of the Grand College of Rites was the owner of a brothel in the Chaussée d’Antin, and one of the thirty-three most influential brethren in Paris is a spy, or rather the head of the secret service, which is the same thing—one Hébuterne.»
«But what do you have to do to be admitted?»
«There are a number of rites—if only you knew! I have no idea whether they really believe in the Great Architect of the Universe they’re always talking about, but they certainly take their ceremonies seriously. You’d never guess what I had to do to become an apprentice!»
And here Taxil began to tell some hair-raising stories.
Simonini wondered whether Taxil, a compulsive liar, might not have been inventing it all. Wasn’t he revealing things that an adept should have jealously guarded? Hadn’t he perhaps described the whole ritual in a rather ludicrous fashion? Taxil replied casually: «Ah, you know, I’m no longer bound by any duty. Those imbeciles have expelled me.»
He seemed to have had a hand in a new newspaper in Montpellier, Le Midi Républicain, which in its first issue had published letters of encouragement and solidarity from various important people, including Victor Hugo and Louis Blanc. Then, suddenly, all those supposed signatories had sent letters to other newspapers with Masonic leanings denying ever having given such support and complaining bitterly about the way their names had been used. This was followed by several Masonic trials, during which Taxil’s defense consisted, first, in presenting the originals of those letters, and second, in attributing Hugo’s behavior to the illustrious old man’s senile decay—thus harming his first argument with an intolerable insult to a figure revered by both the nation and Freemasonry.
Simonini now remembered the moment when, as Simonini, he had forged the two letters from Hugo and Blanc. Taxil had obviously forgotten the episode. He was so accustomed to lying, even to himself, that he was able to describe the letters with an apparent glint of honesty in his eyes, as if they had been genuine. And though he might have vaguely recalled a notary called Simonini, he wouldn’t have connected him with Maître Fournier.
What mattered was that Taxil professed a deep hatred of those who had once been fellow members of his lodge.
Simonini immediately realized that, by encouraging Taxil’s storytelling skills, he would be able to gather some toothsome material for Osman Bey. But another idea was forming in his fertile imagination, first as a mere impression, the seed of an intuition, and then as a plan that was complete in almost every detail.
After the first meeting, when Taxil had tucked into his food with such great enthusiasm, the fake Maître Fournier invited him to Père Lathuile, a popular little restaurant at the Barrière de Clichy, where you could eat a renowned poulet sauté and an even better-known tripes à la mode de Caen—to say nothing of its cellar—and between one smack of the lips and another, he asked whether, for a respectable payment, Taxil might be prepared to write his memoirs as an ex-Mason for some publisher or other. At the mention of payment, Taxil indicated he was most interested in the idea. Simonini arranged a further appointment and went straight off to see Father Bergamaschi.
«Bear in mind, Father,» he said, «we are dealing here with a die-hard enemy of the Church, whose anticlerical books are no longer bringing him the income they once did. He’s also well acquainted with the Masonic world against which he holds a deep grudge. All that’s needed is for Taxil to convert to Catholicism, to recant all his antireligious works and expose all the secrets of Freemasonry, and you Jesuits would have a tireless propagandist at your service.»
«But a person doesn’t convert just because you tell him to.»
«With
