of Bav." has asked for information on a
certain point of ritual.

On December 29, 1808, Pyron writes again: "By the words 'sect of B....'
I meant W...."; and on December 3, 1809, puts the matter quite plainly:
"The other word remaining at the end of my pen refers enigmatically to
Weis=pt."

So, as M. Fabre points out:

There is no longer any doubt that it is a question here of
Weishaupt, and yet one observes that his name is not yet written in
all its letters. It must be admitted here that Pyron took great
precautions when it was a matter of Weishaupt! And one is led to
ask what could be the extraordinary importance of the role played
at this moment in the Freemasonry of the First Empire by this
Weishaupt, who was supposed to have been outside the masonic
movement since Illuminism was brought to trial in 1786![644]

But the Marquis de Chefdebien entertained no illusions about Weishaupt,
whose intrigues he had always opposed, and in a letter dated May 12,
1806, to the Freemason Roettiers, who had referred to the danger of
isolated masonic lodges, he asks:

In good faith, very reverend brother, is it in isolated lodges that
the atrocious conspiracy of Philippe [the Duc d'Orleans] and
Robespierre was formed? Is it from isolated lodges that those
prominent men came forth, who, assembled at the Hotel de Ville,
stirred up revolt, devastation, assassination? And is it not in the
lodges bound together, co-and sub-ordinated, that the monster
Weishaupt established his tests and had his horrible principles
prepared?[645]

If, then, as M. Gustave Bord asserts, the Marquis de Chefdebien had
himself belonged to the Illuminati before the Revolution, here is indeed
Illuminist evidence in support of Barruel! Yet disillusioned as the
"Eques a Capite Galeato" appears to have been with regard to Illuminism,
he still retained his allegiance to Freemasonry. This would tend to
prove that, however subversive the doctrines of the Grand Orient may
have been--and indeed undoubtedly were--it was not Freemasonry itself
but Illuminism which organized the movement of which the French
Revolution was the first manifestation. As Monsignor Dillon has
expressed it:

Had Weishaupt not lived, Masonry might have ceased to be a power
after the reaction consequent on the French Revolution. He gave it
a form and character which caused it to outlive that react