Clara Bardés, granddaughter of a famous deceased painter, has been hired to restore a series of paintings, some dating from the Middle Ages, which are preserved in the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. During a solitary visit to the upper part of the building, when the tourists have already left, she notices the deformed silhouette of Ergaster, a perverse torturer whom she believed to be dead and of whom she could have been another victim, along with Professor Alba Longa, had it not been for the fact that, at the last moment, Commissioner Tynianov intervened. The cathedral closed behind her, and the criminal, who had apparently not seen her, remained inside. Once in her apartment, terrified, she called Alba Longa and he contacted Tynianov. Between the three of them, pulling the thread of the presence in the cathedral of this murderer, a specialist in the so-called “death of a thousand cuts,” they discover a terrible conspiracy, the disastrous consequences of which are expected for the next few days.
I
Second year of Macron’s reign. As we predicted in the previous book, France is under the sign of chaos and desolation. For the twentieth consecutive Saturday, the streets of Paris and the main cities of the country are the scene of a confrontation, violent and intransigent, between a people and a police that has unconditionally placed she herself at the orders of an elite; which, by an anti-democratic and corrupting procedure of an already defective political system, has illegitimately seized all the organs of power and is not willing to yield an inch to the massive protests of an entire social body, whose standard of living has been dangerously degraded by the various previous governments, in which it already dominated, although not with the arrogance, with the morgue, with the absolute and unfailing contempt that it is doing now, completely devoid of any humanitarian feeling towards those who have no choice but to live on salaried work.
A people’s trust in its institutions has been irreparably shattered and, at best, it will take decades, perhaps generations, to rebuild. The reality that only a few months ago the masses did not see, or did not want to see, now appears with such sharp and dazzling contours that they hurt the sight of the contemplator and only with an excessive and unbridled dose of hypocrisy and shamelessness, the media, also under the splint of this elite that finances and owns them, believe that they can mitigate the effects of such a impressive and powerful revelation; but with this, they only manage to lengthen and deepen the gap that separates the majority of the popular masses from the official sources of information, from any form of discourse that emanates from the established power, except that propagated, more or less freely, by the new instruments of communication, through the Internet and the latest technologies. For this reason, many journalists are violently expelled from the demonstrations.
Every Saturday, the heart of major French cities, including Paris, is shrouded in the veil of tear gas, smoke from cars and buildings burning; they resonate with the explosion of dispersal grenades, LBD shots, proclamations, slogans, insults, challenges, provocations; it is adorned with the various colors of the most diverse and opposite flags, scribbled banners and yellow vest that, formerly, these same elites, had the misfortune to impose, according to the letter of marque consisting in making an exhaustive catalog of good intentions, in order to exploit them industrially and make it a lucrative and exclusive trade. Today, everyone owns one of these yellow vests, out of obligation, – per opus, out of necessity. And they paint the cities with an acidic spring, lemon color or rapeseed yellow.
The riot police were ordered to target the faces of the demonstrators, with the obvious aim of spreading terror, putting an end to the demonstrations with the weapon of horror and terror. There are already about twenty one-eyed people, because of these rubber bullets, several feet and hands torn off, by the explosion of tear gas grenades. And police commanders will bear before history the immeasurable responsibility of having obeyed such orders from a tiny ruling minority which, in order to save their privileges, does not hesitate to dishonor the Nation before the world, to mutilate, to beat, to humiliate the very citizens it has the obligation to protect and govern. Countless shocking testimonies show police pointing their weapons, unnecessarily, upwards, at the faces of those who are there, in the street that belongs to all, to defend the bread and the future of their children.
Behind the riot police are concentrated the hordes of the BAC, ready for the surprise raid, the lightning assault that strikes with batons, with hands, that pushes and overturns with their armored bodies by all kinds of protections, that chooses a victim, whether man, woman or teenager, to throw him to the ground in any way whatsoever, by pushing, dragging, grabbing her by the hair, if she is a woman and offers a better grip, then they immobilize her on the ground, cover her, hide her from the eyes and objectives of the curious, hit her head against the pavement, hold her with their knee, with all the weight of their bodies. Finally, they surround the cores of demonstrators, surround them, and throw tear gas canisters in their midst.
But today, a dictatorship cannot last long, even if it takes on the solemn garb of a pseudo-democracy, a crude substitute for democracy, even if it is endowed with a formidable and all-powerful propaganda apparatus, because there is the Internet and mobile phones that film and broadcast, on the spot, the scenes they capture, to the city and to the world.
The oligarchy, which had believed in the end of history, which is why it has gradually dropped part of the mask, the pious and occasional veil that hid its moral ugliness, is now threatened in its heart, in its marrow, in the whole temple where the god of lies, propaganda, empty myth and selfishness, is venerated, so that, faced with the emergency, it is not afraid to drop the rest of the mask and make open and frank use of violence, as long as it retains control of force.
However, the blame for all this scorn, for all this superlative disorder, cannot be attributed to one man. Although this man, Macron, has contributed, with formidable efficiency, by means of absolutely delusional discursive formulas, formidable in their irresponsibility, by a gratuitously provocative attitude whose excessive arrogance can only be compared, according to a British newspaper, to his incompetence, to pour, not oil on the fire, but gasoline, kerosene, on an entire society in flames, on a nation burning on all four sides, on a people inflamed for a highly combustible reason, precisely because of the high degree of truth and justice in its demands.
No, it is not enough for one man to generate such a dimension in the chaos, in the generalized exasperation, in the confrontation of all the bodies and levels of society and even its institutions. He also had to be surrounded, as a great Latin American writer would say, by a cafila de mampolones (a kind of herd of incompetents) the most spectacular imaginable. Never in the life of the world has such a bunch of incompetents been seen completely monopolizing all the positions of responsibility of one of the great nations of the planet. Owing to the absence of a genuine political party with tradition in this Government, the absolute totality of the highest offices of the State, including ministries, was granted to schoolchildren who, during the last presidential elections, knocked on the doors of houses to make electoral propaganda for their candidate. Of this candidate who refused to participate in the primaries of a party in which he had never been active and in which he had never believed, but which was useful to him to prosper and to cling to power. All this platoon of inexperienced people, political beginners, children spoiled by a cradle of privileged, found themselves, overnight, without believing in it themselves, ministers with this or that portfolio, undersecretaries of this or that ministry, advisers of a cabinet of the afterlife. And together, they created, in a matter of months, the greatest crisis that erupted in the Western world after World War II.
Worse still, they are at the forefront of solving what a man of the makings of a De Gaulle or a Mitterrand might not have sufficed.
When this is over, how not to ask for responsibilities, not to this herd of schoolchildren, but to the highest levels of finance and the media that have made it possible by force of millions and propaganda?
At the same time, in the European Union, headwinds have never blown so furiously, and the elections scheduled for May 26 threaten to unleash an unprecedented storm. The British have not yet been able to leave. They find themselves with one foot in and one foot out, in an uncomfortable transitional situation that generates frustration whose contour goes beyond that of the islands and extends to the mainland. However, the worst thing would be if they managed to leave and absolutely nothing happened. Although, the real stab, the real catastrophe of disintegration, would be the fact that, not only is nothing happening, but, on the contrary, it is going very well. And let’s not talk about it if they manage to do better than before and better than us.
Eastern European countries no longer tolerate uncontrolled immigration. The middle classes of the South are tired of paying taxes, not seeing the benefits, and getting poorer in plain sight. Only Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, and countries that have become tax havens are doing well. But a man is a vote, and the melodies, litanies and other songs of political correctness are no longer as effective as they once were, before the 2018 revolution.
The situation is serious.
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