rand Lodge of Hamburg for the occasion. It is evident that something of
an unusual kind must have occurred to necessitate these speedy and
makeshift arrangements. Carlyle, in his account of the episode,
endeavours to pass it off as a "very trifling circumstance"--a reason
the more for regarding it as of the highest importance since we know now
from facts that have recently come to light how carefully Carlyle was
spoon-fed by Potsdam whilst writing his book on Frederick the
Great.[398]

But let us follow Frederick's masonic career. In June 1740, after his
accession to the throne, his interest in Masonry had clearly not waned,
for we find him presiding over a lodge at Charlottenburg, where he
received into the Order two of his brothers, his brother-in-law, and
Duke Frederick William of Holstein-Beck. At his desire the Baron de
Bielfeld and his privy councillor Jordan founded a lodge at Berlin, the
"Three Globes," which by 1746 had no less than fourteen lodges under its
jurisdiction.

In this same year of 1740 Voltaire, in response to urgent invitations,
paid his first visit to Frederick the Great in Germany. Voltaire is
usually said not to have yet become a Mason, and the date of his
initiation is supposed to have been 1778, when he was received into the
_Loge des Neuf Soeurs_ in Paris. But this by no means precludes the
possibility that he had belonged to another masonic Order at an earlier
date. At any rate, Voltaire's visit to Germany was followed by two
remarkable events in the masonic world of France. The first of these was
the institution of the additional degrees; the second--perhaps not
wholly unconnected with the first--was the arrival in Paris of a masonic
delegate from Germany named von Marschall, who brought with him
instructions for a new or rather a revived Order of Templarism, in which
he attempted to interest Prince Charles Edward and his followers.

Von Marschall was followed about two years later by Baron von Hunt, who
had been initiated in 1741 into the three degrees of Craft Masonry in
Germany and now came to consecrate a lodge in Paris. According to von
Hundt's own account, he was then received into the Order of the Temple
by an unknown Knight of the Red Plume, in the presence of Lord
Kilmarnock,[399] and was presented as a distinguished Brother to Prince
Charles Edward, whom he imagined to be Grand Master of the Order.[400]
But all this was afterwards shown to be a pure frabrication, for Prince
Ch