Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum by eco foucault (ebook smartphone .txt) 📕

there,it's not Chinese. Look at Aglie, who knows a thing or two: Did hetake Cagliostro as his model? Or Willermoz? No. Saint-Germain isthe quintessence of Homo Hermeticus."

Pierre IvanovitchRachkovsky: jovial, sly, feline, intelligent, and astute, acounterfeiter of genius. First a petty bureaucrat, later in contactwith revolutionary groups, in 1879 he is arrested by the secretpolice and charged with having given refuge to terrorist companionsafter their attempted assassination of General Drentel. He becomesa police informer and (here we go!) joins the ranks of the BlackHundreds. In 1890 he discovers in Paris an organization that makesbombs for demonstrations in Russia; he arranges the arrest, backhome, of seventy-three terrorists. Ten years later, it isdiscovered that the bombs were made by his own men.

In 1887 he circulates aletter by a certain Ivanov, a repentant revolutionary, who declaresthat the majority of the terrorists are Jews; in 1890, a"confession par un veillard ancien revolution-naire," in which theexiled revolutionaries in London are accused of being Britishagents; and in 1892, a bogus text of Plekhanov, which accuses theleaders of the Narodnaya Volya party of having had that confessionpublished.

In 1902 he forms aFranco-Russian anti-Semitic league. To ensure its success he uses atechnique similar to that of the Ro-sicrucians: he declares thatthe league exists, so that people will then create it. But he usesanother tactic, too: he cleverly mixes truth with falsehood, thetruth apparently damaging to him, so that nobody will doubt thefalsehood. He circulates in Paris a mysterious appeal to supportthe Russian Patriotic League, headquarters in Kharkov. In theappeal he attacks himself as the man who wants to make the leaguefail, and he expresses the hope that he, Rachkovsky, will changehis mind. He accuses himself of relying on discredited characterslike Nilus, and this is true.

Why can the Protocols beattributed to Rachkovsky?

Rachkovsky's sponsor isCount Sergei Witte, a minister who desires to turn Russia into amodern country. Why the progressive Witte makes use of thereactionary Rachkovsky, God only knows; but at this point the threeof us would have been surprised by nothing. Witte has a politicalopponent, Elie de Cyon, who has already attacked him publicly,making assertions that recall certain passages in the Protocols,except that in Cyon's writings there are no references to the Jews,since he is of Jewish origin himself. In 1897, at Witte's orders,Rachkovsky has Cyon's villa at Territat searched, and he finds apamphlet by Cyon drawn from Joly's book (or Sue's), in which theideas of Machiavelli-Napoleon III are attributed to Witte. With hisgenius for falsification, Rachkovsky substitutes the Jews for Witteand has the text circulated. The name Cyon is perfect, suggestingZion, and now everybody sees that an eminent Jewish figure isdenouncing a Jewish plot. This is how the Protocols are born. Thetext falls into the hands of Juliana or Justine Glinka, who inParis frequents Madame Blavatsky's Parisian circle, and in her freetime she spies on and denounces Russian revolutionaries in exile.This Glinka woman is undoubtedly an agent of the Paulicians, whoare allied to the agrarians and therefore want to convince the tsarthat Witte's programs are part of the international Jewish plot.Glinka sends the document to General Orgeievsky, and he, throughthe commander of the imperial guard, sees that it reaches the tsar.Witte is in trouble.

So Rachkovsky, driven byhis anti-Semitism, contributes to the downfall of his sponsor. Andprobably to his own. Because from that moment on we lose all traceof him. But Saint-Germain perhaps donned new disguises, moved on tonew reincarnations. Nevertheless, our story was plausible,rational, because it was backed by facts, it was true¡Xas Belbosaid, true as the Bible.

Which reminded me ofwhat De Angelis had told me about the synarchy. The fine thingabout the whole story¡Xour story, and perhaps also History itself,as Belbo hinted, with feverish eyes, as he handed me his filecards¡Xwas that groups locked in mortal combat were slaughteringone another, each in turn using the other's weapons. "The firstduty of a good spy," I remarked, "is to denounce as spies thosewhom he has infiltrated."

Belbo said: "I rememberan incident in ***. At sunset, along a shady avenue, I always raninto this guy named Remo¡Xor something like that¡Xin a little blackBalilla. Black mustache, curly black hair, black shirt, and blackteeth, horribly rotten. And he would be kissing a girl. I wasrevolted by those black teeth kissing that beautiful blonde. Idon't even remember what her face was like, but for me she wasvirgin and prostitute, the eternal feminine. And great was myrevulsion." Instinctively he adopted a lofty tone to show irony,aware that he had allowed himself to be carried away by theinnocent tenderness of the memory. "I asked myself why this Remo,who belonged to the Black Brigades, dared allow himself to be seenaround like that, even in the periods when *** was not occupied bythe Fascists. Someone whispered to me that he was a Fascist spy.However it was, one evening I saw him in the same black Balilla,with the same black teeth, kissing the same blonde, but now with ared kerchief around his neck and a khaki shirt. He had shifted tothe Garibaldi Brigades. Everybody made a fuss over him, and heactually gave himself a nom de guerre: X9, like the Alex Raymondcharacter whom I had read about in the Awenturoso comics. Bravo,X9, they said to him...And I hated him more than ever, because hepossessed the girl by popular consent. Those who said he was aFascist spy among the partisans were probably men who wanted thegirl themselves, so they cast suspicion on X9..."

"And then whathappened?"

"See here, Casaubon, whyare you so interested in my life?"

"Because you make itsound like a folktale, and folktales are part of the collectiveimagination."

"Good point. Onemorning, X9 was driving along, out of his territory; maybe he had adate to meet the girl in the fields, to go beyond their kissing andpawing and show her that his prick was not as rotten as histeeth¡XI'm sorry, I still can't make myself love him. Anyway, theFascists set a trap for him, captured him, took him into town, andat five o'clock the next morning, they shot him."

A pause. Belbo looked athis hands, which he had clasped, as if in prayer. Then he held