One such priest, Father Bergamaschi (a fictionalized portrait of the Italian Jesuit novelist Antonio Bresciani), teaches him the evils of secret societies, that, according to him, are no more than a cover for communism.

In the works of French writers such as Eugène Sue and Alexandre Dumas he enjoys reading of intrigues and conspiracies, and aspires to emulate these fictions in his own life.

The Kingdom of Piedmont cautiously supports the unification of Italy but is worried that Garibaldi's fame might eclipse that of their king, Vittorio Emanuele, or worse still, that he might proclaim a republic.

However, Simonini's secret service employers are far from pleased - he has gone too far and greatly exceeded his brief, and the affair arouses suspicion and makes the government of the new United Italy look bad.

Over the next 35 years he lays traps for revolutionaries fighting against Napoleon III, provides intelligence during the days of the Paris Commune and forges the bordereau (slip) that would trigger the Dreyfus affair.

Simonini's idea is first inspired by an account of a Masonic gathering in Alexandre Dumas's novel Joseph Balsamo, and he gradually embroiders it using other sources, each inspired by the other — Osman Bey (Frederick van Millingen)'s The Conquest of the World by the Jews, Hippolytus Lutostansky's The Talmud and the Jews, Eugène Sue's Les Mystères du Peuple, Maurice Joly's The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu and a novel called Biarritz by a Prussian secret agent called Hermann Goedsche who used Sir John Retcliffe as a nom de plume.

A few years earlier, at his regular eating place, Chez Magny, he had met a young doctor studying at the Salpêtrière Hospital whose name, he seems to recall, was "Froïde" ("or something like that").

Dalla Piccola has his own story to tell involving Palladism, Freemasonry, devil worship and the Catholic Church, and introduces further historical characters, including Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Yuliana Glinka, Pyotr Rachkovsky, Diana Vaughan and one of the greatest hoaxers of the 19th century, Léo Taxil.

After this document is handed over to representatives of the Czar's Secret Police, they pressure Simonini to place a bomb in the newly dug tunnel of the Paris Metro, which could be blamed on "the Jews" and flesh out the assertions of The Protocols.

Simonini obtains from an old Italian expatriate revolutionary living in Paris a powerful time bomb and instructions on how to use it - whereupon his diary is abruptly cut off.

Except the main character, they all lived in reality, including his grandfather,[3] author of the mysterious message to abbot Barruel which gave rise to all modern anti-Semitism".

Eco goes on to say: The nineteenth century was full of monstrous and mysterious events: the mysterious death of Ippolito Nievo, the forgery of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that inspired Hitler's extermination of the Jews, the Dreyfus affair and endless intrigue spun by the secret police of different countries, the Masons, Jesuit plots, and other events whose accuracy can't ever be authenticated, but that serve as fodder for feuilletons 150 years later.

After completing The Protocols of The Elders of Zion, Simonini speaks with certainty of the fact that this book would eventually lead to the extermination of the Jews - though it would happen after his lifetime and he would not have to do it himself.