ut if the great majority of princes and nobles were stricken with
blindness at this crisis, a few far-seeing spirits recognized the danger
and warned the world of the impending disaster. In 1787 Cardinal
Caprara, Apostolic Nuncio at Vienna, addressed a confidential memoir to
the Pope, in which he pointed out that the activities carried on in
Germany by the different sects of Illumines, of Perfectibilists, of
Freemasons, etc., were increasing.

The danger is approaching, for from all these senseless dreams of
Illuminism, of Swedenborgianism, or of Freemasonry a frightful
reality will emerge. Visionaries have their time; the revolution
they forebode will have its time also.[613]

A more amazing prophecy, however, was the _Essai sur la Secte des
Illumines_, by the Marquis de Luchet,[614] a Liberal noble who played
some part in the revolutionary movement, yet who nevertheless realized
the dangers of Illuminism. Thus, as early as 1789, before the Revolution
had really developed, de Luchet uttered these words of warning:

Deluded people ... learn that there exists a conspiracy in favour
of despotism against liberty, of incapacity against talent, of vice
against virtue, of ignorance against enlightenment.... This society
aims at governing the world.... Its object is universal domination.
This plan may seem extraordinary, incredible--yes, but not
chimerical ... no such calamity has ever yet afflicted the world.

De Luchet then goes on to foretell precisely the events that were to
take place three and four years later; he describes the position of a
king who has to recognize masters above himself and to authorize their
"abominable regime," to become the plaything of an ambitious and
fanatical horde which has taken possession of his will.

See him condemned to serve the passions of all that surround him
... to raise degraded men to power, to prostitute his judgement by
choices that dishonour his prudence....

All this was exactly fulfilled during the reign of the Girondin ministry
of 1792. The campaign of destruction carried out in the summer of 1793
is thus foretold:

We do not mean to say that the country where the Illumines reign
will cease to exist, but it will fall into such a degree of
humiliation that it will no longer count in politics, that the
population will diminish, that the inhabitants who resist the
inclination to pass