A few meetings with Father Bergamaschi had convinced me that even if the Roman Jesuits of Civiltà Cattolica had decided to continue supporting Diana’s cause, the French Jesuits (as apparent from the article by Father Portalié that you referred to) were already determined to drop the whole story. Another brief conversation with Hébuterne had persuaded me that the Masons couldn’t wait for the farce to end. The Catholics wanted to end it quietly, so as not to bring further discredit to the hierarchy, but the Masons demanded a dramatic recantation, so that all the years of Taxil’s anti-Masonic propaganda would be branded as sheer villainy.
Thus one day I received two messages at the same time. One, from Father Bergamaschi, said: «I authorize you to offer Taxil fifty thousand francs to close the whole business. Fraternally in Xt, Bergamaschi.» The other, from Hébuterne, stated: «So let’s bring an end to it. Offer Taxil a hundred thousand francs if he publicly admits having invented everything.»
I was covered on both sides. All I had to do was proceed—after, of course, cashing the sums promised by my paymasters.
Hacks’s defection made my task easier. All I had to do was urge Taxil to convert or perhaps reconvert. Once again I had a hundred and fifty thousand francs, as at the start of this business, and seventy-five thousand was enough for Taxil, since I had arguments more persuasive than money.
«Taxil,» I said, «we’ve lost Hacks, and it will be difficult to expose Diana to public examination. I’ll think about how to get rid of her, but I’m worried about you. From what I’ve heard it seems the Masons have decided to end it all with you, and you yourself have written how bloody their revenge can be. First you defended Catholic public opinion, but now you can see that even the Jesuits are creeping away. That’s why they’re offering you an extraordinary opportunity: a lodge—don’t ask me which, as it’s highly confidential—is offering you seventy-five thousand francs if you publicly declare that you duped everyone.
You understand the advantage it would bring to the Freemasons: they would be cleansed of the mud you’ve been slinging at them and the Catholics will be covered by it instead; they’ll come across as incredibly naive. And so far as you’re concerned, with all the publicity from this turn of events, your next works will sell better than your last ones, which were selling fewer and fewer copies to the Catholics. You’d win back the anticlerical and the Masonic public. It’s worth your while.»
He didn’t need much persuasion. Taxil’s a buffoon, and the idea of performing in a new piece of buffoonery brought a sparkle to his eyes.
«Listen, my dear Abbé, I’ll rent a room and tell the press that on a certain day Diana Vaughan will appear and present to the public a photograph of the demon Asmodeus, which she took with the permission of Lucifer himself! On a handbill, let’s say that I’ll promise a raffle among those present for a typewriter worth four hundred francs. We won’t need to go ahead with the raffle because I’ll appear to say that Diana doesn’t exist—and if she doesn’t exist, of course the typewriter doesn’t exist either. I can see it already: I’ll end up on the front page of all the papers. Magnificent. Give me time to organize the event properly, and if you don’t mind, ask for an advance on that seventy-five thousand francs, for expenses.»
The next day, Taxil found a hall at the Société de Géographie, but it would be free only on Easter Monday. I remember saying: «That’s almost a month away. It’s better that you’re not seen around during this time, so as to avoid stirring up any more gossip. Meanwhile, I’ll think about what to do with Diana.»
Taxil hesitated for a moment. His lip trembled, and with it his mustache. «You don’t want to…eliminate Diana?» he asked.
«Of course not,» I replied. «I’m a clergyman, don’t forget. I’ll return her to the place whence I took her.»
He seemed bereft at the thought of losing Diana, but his fear of Masonic revenge was stronger than his attraction for Diana had ever been. Besides being a scoundrel, he’s a coward. How would he have reacted if I had said, «Yes, I intend to eliminate Diana»? Perhaps, for fear of the Masons, he would have accepted the idea—so long as he didn’t have to do the deed.
Easter Monday would be the 19th of April. So if I spoke of a one-month wait on leaving Taxil, this must have taken place around the 19th or 20th of March. Today is the 17th of April. Therefore, in gradually piecing together the events of the past ten years, I have arrived at just under a month ago. And if this diary were to help me, and you, to find out what caused my current loss of memory, nothing at all has happened. Or perhaps the crucial event took place during these past four weeks.
Now it’s as if I feel a certain dread about remembering any more.
18th April at dawn
While Taxil was roaming furiously around the house and having fits of agitation, Diana was entirely unaware of what was going on. In the alternation between her two conditions, she followed our private discussions in a daze, and seemed to revive only when the mention of a person or a place produced a faint flicker in her mind.
She was gradually deteriorating into a vegetative state, with one single animal trait, an increasingly frenzied sensuality, which she directed freely toward Taxil, Bataille when he was still with us, Boullan, of course, and—though I tried not to offer her any pretext—also toward me.
Diana had been barely twenty when she entered our company and was now over thirty-five. Taxil, with an increasingly lubricious smile, said she was becoming ever more attractive as she matured, as if a woman over thirty were still desirable. Perhaps her almost arboreal vitality gave an enigmatic beauty to her stare.
But these are perversions about which I am not an expert. My God, why do I dwell upon the fleshly form of that woman, who for us was meant to be nothing more than a wretched instrument?
I have said that Diana was unaware of what was going on. Perhaps I am wrong. In March she became frenzied, perhaps because she was no longer seeing Taxil or Bataille. She was in the grips of hysteria, the devil (she said) was cruelly tormenting her, wounding her, biting her, twisting her legs, slapping her face—and she showed me some bluish marks around her eyes. Marks of wounds similar to stigmata began to appear on her palms. She asked why the infernal powers should act so harshly toward someone who was a Palladian devotee of Lucifer, and she grabbed my cassock as if to ask for help.
I thought of Boullan, who knew more about devilry than I did. In fact, as soon as I called for him, Diana grasped him by the arms and began to shake. He placed his hands around the nape of her neck and calmed her, speaking to her gently, then spat into her mouth.
«And who tells you, my daughter,» he said, «that the one who subjects you to these tortures is your lord Lucifer? Do you not think, in contempt and punishment for your Palladian faith, your enemy is the Enemy par excellence, that aeon whom the Christians call Jesus Christ, or one of his supposed saints?»
«But Father,» said Diana, confused, «if I am Palladian, it is because I do not recognize any power in Christ the Tyrant, to such an extent that one day I refused to stab the host because I thought it mad to recognize a real presence in what was only a lump of flour.»
«There you are wrong, my child. See what Christians do, who recognize the sovereignty of their Christ, yet despite this they do not deny the existence of the devil; indeed, they fear his enticements, his enmity, his seductions. And we must do likewise. If we believe in the power of our lord Lucifer, it is because we believe that his enemy Adonai has a spiritual existence, even in the guise of Christ, and manifests himself through his iniquity. And therefore you must stoop to trample upon the image of your enemy in the only way that a faithful Luciferian is permitted to do.»
«Which is?»
«The black mass. You will not obtain the benevolence of Lucifer our lord except by celebrating your rejection of the Christian God through the black mass.»
Diana seemed to be convinced, and Boullan asked my permission to take her to a gathering of Satanist devotees, in his attempt to persuade her that Satanism and Luciferianism and Palladism had the same purposes and the same purifying function.
I did not like to allow Diana out of the house, but I had to give her some space to breathe.
I find Abbé Boullan in intimate conversation with Diana, saying, «You enjoyed yesterday?»
What happened yesterday?
The abbé continues: «Well, tomorrow evening I have to celebrate another solemn Mass
