ion, to
energize to the present day, and which will cause it to advance
until its final conflict with Christianity must determine whether
Christ or Satan shall reign on this earth to the end.[646]

If to the word Masonry we add Grand Orient--that is to say, the Masonry
not of Great Britain, but of the Continent--we shall be still nearer to
the truth.

In the early part of the nineteenth century Illuminism was thus as much
alive as ever. Joseph de Maistre, writing at this period, constantly
refers to the danger it presents to Europe. Is it not also to Illuminism
that a mysterious passage in a recent work of M. Lenotre refers? In the
course of conversation with the friends of the false Dauphin Hervagault.
Monsignor de Savine is said to have "made allusions in prudent and
almost terrified terms to some international sect ... a power superior
to all others ... which has arms and eyes everywhere and which governs
Europe to-day."[647]

When in _World Revolution_ I asserted that during the period that
Napoleon held the reins of power the devastating fire of Illuminism was
temporarily extinguished, I wrote without knowledge of some important
documents which prove that Illuminism continued without break from the
date of its foundation all through the period of the Empire. So far,
then, from overstating the case by saying that Illuminism did not cease
in 1786, I understated it by suggesting that it ceased even for this
brief interval. The documents in which this evidence is to be found are
referred to by Lombard de Langres, who, writing in 1820, observes that
the Jacobins were invisible from the 18th Brumaire until 1813, and goes
on to say:

Here the sect disappears; we find to guide us during this period
only uncertain notions, scattered fragments; the plots of
Illuminism lie buried in the boxes of the Imperial police.

But the contents of these boxes no longer lie buried; transported to the
Archives Nationales, the documents in which the intrigues of Illuminism
are laid bare have at last been given to the public. Here there can be
no question of imaginative abbes, Scotch professors, or American divines
conjuring up a bogey to alarm the world; these dry official reports
prepared for the vigilant eye of the Emperor, never intended and never
used for publication, relate calmly and dispassionately what the writers
have themselves heard and observed concerning the danger that Illuminism
presents t