fidelity [_Hundestreue_] of the German people, that is to
say, that attachment--innate and firmly impressed on their minds
without even the aid of reason--which that excellent people
everywhere bears towards its princes.

A traveller in Germany during the year 1795 admirably summed up the
matter in these words:

The Germans are in this respect [of democracy] the most curious
people in the world ... the cold and sober temperament of the
Germans and their tranquil imagination enable them to combine the
most daring opinions with the most servile conduct. That will
explain to you ... why so much combustible material accumulating
for so many years beneath the political edifice of Germany has not
yet damaged it. Most of the princes, accustomed to see their men of
letters so constantly free in their writings and so constantly
slavish in their hearts, have not thought it necessary to use
severity against this sheeplike herd of modern Gracchi and
Brutuses. Some of them [the princes] have even without difficulty
adopted part of their opinions, and Illuminism having doubtless
been presented to them as perfection, the complement of philosophy,
they were easily persuaded to be initiated into it. But great care
was taken not to let them know more than the interests of the sect
demanded.[651]

It was thus that Illuminism, unable to provoke a blaze in the home of
its birth, spread, as before the French Revolution, to a more
inflammable Latin race--this time the Italians. Six years after his
interrogatory at Beyreuth, Witt Doehring published his book on the
secret societies of France and Italy, in which he now realized he had
played the part of dupe, and incidentally confirms the statement I have
previously quoted, that the Alta Vendita was a further development of
the Illuminati.

This infamous association, with which I have dealt at length
elsewhere,[652] constituted the Supreme Directory of the Carbonari and
was led by a group of Italian noblemen, amongst whom a prince, "the
profoundest of initiates, was charged as Inspector-General of the Order"
to propagate its principles throughout the North of Europe. "He had
received from the hands of Kingge [i.e. Knigge, the ally of Weishaupt?]
the cahiers of the last three degrees." But these were of course unknown
to the great majority of Carbonari, who entered the association in all
good fait