And his ‘comrade’ Meunier, an Anarchist convicted by the courts
of Maine-et-Loire, did he too not possess the same mysticism? He too began in
the monastery and ended up in Anarchy, passing through all the same petty
crimes. He had first been an oblate, then a brother before ending up in court
for swindling, the same court that he would later end up in for Anarchist
crimes. He was a mystic and a common bandit.
And Caserio Santo, the wretch whose crime has weighed so
heavily upon our nation? He is certainly a religious man, a proud mystic, like
Henry believing in the importance of his apostles’ work, the fruitful harvest
of his martyrdom. He too was a proud mystic, this ignorant little Italian
peasant whose only guide was his immense vanity.
He too was brought up amidst the smoke of incense, brought
up with the childish festivals of the noisy religion of the south. This is what
his brother had to say about him.
‘Santo, when he was a child, was as pretty as an angel and
so he was chosen to represent St. John in the processions, and on that saint’s
day he had to walk half-naked, covered only by a goat skin. Later he would hang
around the sacristy and serve at mass; he was a very gentle character.’
He commited his crime after writing a letter to his mother ,
where, like all apostles, he showed absolute disdain for his family, for what
the religious fanatics call ‘human weakness’. Those people’s cold reasoning
disdains the most noble sentiments of the soul.
‘No, no,’ he wrote, ‘it is not necessary to think of a
mother’s tears; it is necessary to think of one’s own duty and to struggle
against present society, to destroy these harmful insects who are the
exploiters. As for me I will always cry ‘War! War against the exploiters!’
Caserio Santo, a mystic like the rest, like them immensely
proud and immensely vain. To understand the immensity of his pride and his
vanity it is only necessary to read this portrait of him written by a Lyon
journalist who attended his trial.
‘Caserio seemed younger than his age. One would think him no
more than eighteen. But although his face was boyish his body was fully
developed. His arms, like those of most criminals, are longer than usual and
his hands are large. As for his mental state, Caserio seems to be some sort of
visionary who, in so far as he his conscious of having committed a crime, gives
it a special interpretation and importance. In his mind the man he killed was
the incarnation of the highest idea of the bourgeoisie and he glories in his
deed. His most salient characteristic is his enormous vanity. He is eager to
pose for the gallery. It is with undisguised pride that he tells the court in
his Franco-Italian gibberish of the preparations for his crime and its
accomplishment. He does not boast.
Although he is sometimes seen to smile he is not a man to sneer at the
magistrates and the jury. No, he poses as the hero of an idea. If he has killed
a President of the Republic it is to become famous, to put himself on a
pedestal and offer himself up as a show for the gawkers.
‘I always saw the pride in him, and it is this that led him
to his crime,’ the priest of Motta - Visconti rightly said.
The word ‘pride’ admirably sums up the state of his spirit
that led him to commit his crime.
Finally we come to Boathède, the last in this sad series,
coming long after the others, like a forgotten fuse that ignites after the
firework has gone out. He too is a mystic. He too, like Henry, is a failure: he
has secondary education, but he has failed in everything in life: it is his
pride, his rage at his inability to succeed that has spurred him on like all
the others. He is from a religious family with relatives in the priesthood.
Like Cyvoct he was an ardent mystic, being very pious before he turned to
Anarchy.
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