uals
were selected, the months and years of observation, of supervision, to
which they were subjected, so as to form a body of picked men inside
Freemasonry capable of directing its operations.

"You can imagine the power at the command of such an association?"

"An association thus selected would do anything it chose. It could
possess the world if it pleased."

Thereupon the higher adept, after asking for a further promise of
secrecy, declared:

"Well, in exchange for this promise, Brother Copin, I am authorized
to let you know that this association exists and that, further, I
am authorized to introduce you into it."[679]

It was then that Monsieur Copin Albancelli understood that the point to
which the conversation was leading up was not, as he had at first
supposed, an invitation to take the next step in Freemasonry--the
thirtieth degree of Knight Kadosch--but to enter through a side-door
into an association concealed within Freemasonry and for which the
visible organization of the latter served merely as a cover. A very
curious resemblance will here be noticed between the method of sounding
M. Copin Albancelli and that of the Illuminatus Cato in the matter of
Savioli, described in a passage already quoted:

Now that he is a Mason I have ... taken up the general plan of our
(*), and as this pleased him I said that such a thing really existed,
whereat he gave me his word that he would enter it.

M. Copin Albancelli, however, did not give his word that he would enter
it, but, on the contrary, checked further revelations by declaring that
he would leave Freemasonry.

This experience had afforded him a glimpse of "a world existing behind
the masonic world, more secret than it, unsuspected by it as by the
outside world."[680] Freemasonry, then, "can only be the half-lit
antechamber of the real secret society. That is the truth."[681] "There
exists then necessarily a permanent directing Power. We cannot see that
Power, therefore it is occult."[682]

For some time M. Copin Albancelli concluded this Power to be "the Jewish
power," and elaborated the idea in a further work[683]; but the war has
led him to develop his theories in yet another book, which will shortly
appear.

That the lodges of the Grand Orient are largely controlled by Jews is,
however, certain, and that they are centres of political propaganda is
equally undeniable. We have only to glance at the followi