his fist and make grimaces at him, and would then touch a piece of iron
when the priest's back was turned, forgetting that the latter action
showed a belief after all, the belief in the evil eye. Now, when beliefs
are unreasonable, one should have all or none at all. I myself am a
Freethinker; I revolt at all dogmas, but feel no anger toward places of
worship, be they Catholic, Apostolic, Roman, Protestant, Greek, Russian,
Buddhist, Jewish, or Mohammedan.

My uncle was a Freemason, and I used to declare that they are stupider
than old women devotees. That is my opinion, and I maintain it; if we
must have any religion at all, the old one is good enough for me.

What is their object? Mutual help to be obtained by tickling the palms of
each other's hands. I see no harm in it, for they put into practice the
Christian precept: "Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you."
The only difference consists in the tickling, but it does not seem worth
while to make such a fuss about lending a poor devil half a crown.

To all my arguments my uncle's reply used to be:

"We are raising up a religion against a religion; Free Thought will kill
clericalism. Freemasonry is the stronghold, of those who are demolishing
all deities."

"Very well, my dear uncle," I would reply--in my heart I felt
inclined to say, "You old idiot! it is just that which I am blaming you
for. Instead of destroying, you are organizing competition; it is only a
case of lowering prices. And then, if you admitted only Freethinkers
among you, I could understand it, but you admit anybody. You have a
number of Catholics among you, even the leaders of the party. Pius IX is
said to have been one of you before he became pope. If you call a society
with such an organization a bulwark against clericalism, I think it is an
extremely weak one."

"My dear boy," my uncle would reply, with a wink, "we are most to be
dreaded in politics; slowly and surely we are everywhere undermining the
monarchical spirit."

Then I broke out: "Yes, you are very clever! If you tell me that
Freemasonry is an election machine, I will grant it. I will never deny
that it is used as a machine to control candidates of all shades; if you
say that it is only used to hoodwink people, to drill them to go to the
polls as soldiers are sent under fire, I agree with you; if you declare
that it is indispensable to all political ambitions because it changes
all its members into electoral agents,