UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY Read Free Page A

during the days of the Commune there weren't enough, and they could be gunned down without much trouble. But after hearing that Austrian doctor talk about the advantages of the Colombian drug, I would say religion is also the cocaine of the people, because religion has always led to wars and the massacre of infidels, and this is true of Christians, Muslims and other idolaters. And while the Negroes of Africa confined themselves to massacring each other, the missionaries converted them and made them into colonial troops, ideally suited to dying on the front line and raping white women when they reached a city. People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction.
     
    Worst of all, without a doubt, are the Jesuits. I have the feeling I have played a few tricks on them, or perhaps it's they who have done me wrong, I'm not sure which. Or perhaps it was their blood brothers, the Masons. They're like the Jesuits, only more confused. The Jesuits at least have their theology and know how to use it, but the Masons have too much of it and lose their heads. My grandfather told me about the Masons. Along with the Jews, they had cut off the king's head. And they created the Carbonari, who are more stupid than the Masons — once they got themselves shot, and later on they had their heads cut off for making a mistake in producing a bomb, or they became socialists, communists and Communards. All up against the wall. Well done, Thiers!
    Masons and Jesuits. Jesuits are Masons dressed up as women.
    I hate women, from what little I know of them. For years I was obsessed by those
brasseries à femmes,
the haunts of delinquents of every kind. They are worse than brothels, which are hard to set up because the neighbors object. Brasseries, on the other hand, can be opened anywhere because, as they say, they are just places for drinking. But you drink downstairs and the prostitution goes on upstairs. Each brasserie has a theme, and the girls are dressed accordingly: in one place you have German barmaids; the waitresses opposite the law courts wear lawyers' gowns. Elsewhere the names are enough, like the Brasserie du Tire-cul, the Brasserie des Belles Marocaines or the Brasserie des Quatorze Fesses, not far from the Sorbonne. They're nearly always run by Germans — here's a way of undermining French morality. There are at least sixty of them between the fifth and sixth arrondissements, and almost two hundred throughout Paris, and all are open even to the young. Youths go there first of all out of curiosity, then out of habit, and finally they get the clap, if not worse. When the brasserie is near a school, the pupils go there after classes to spy on the girls through the door. I go there to drink . . . and to spy from inside, through the door, at the pupils who are spying from outside. And not just at the pupils — you learn a great deal about the customs and habits of adults, and that can always be useful.
    What I most enjoy is spotting the various kinds of pimps hanging around the tables; some are husbands living off the charms of their wives: they hang about, well dressed, smoking and playing cards, and the landlord or the girls refer to them as the cuckolds' table. But in the Latin Quarter many are failed ex-students, always worried that someone is going to make off with their source of income, and they often draw knives. Calmest of them all are the thieves and cutthroats, who come and go because they need to keep a low profile and know the girls won't betray them — otherwise they'd end up next day floating in the Bièvre.

 
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    Jesuits are Masons dressed up as women.
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There are also the inverts, busy looking for perverts of either sex for the most lurid services. They pick up clients at the Palais-Royal or the Champs-Élysées and attract them using a coded sign language. They often get their accomplices to turn up at their room dressed as policemen, threatening to arrest the