which Gambetta used to declaim so confidently only a few
years ago, and I quite agreed with my philosophic friend near Chauny in
thinking that no slight significance must attach to such a verdict upon
them, pronounced in 1889 by an 'advanced Republican' like M.
Allain-Targe, who only four years ago, in 1885, was the most active
minister of a Government called into existence to carry out the ideas of
Gambetta, and to found a stable republic upon these 'new social strata.'

Put into plain English, this letter of M. Allain-Targe, who had more
than any of his colleagues to do directly and in the way of business
both with the electors and with the elected of France four years ago,
and who now declines to have anything more to do with them all--simply
means that the electors sell their votes to the highest bidder, and that
the man who will make the most unscrupulous bid is likeliest to get the
votes. It is hard to see much difference between such a verdict and the
outspoken declaration of M. Paul de Cassagnac that law, order, property,
and liberty in France are threatened to-day, not by a 'democracy,' but
by a 'voyoucratie' or 'blackguardocracy.'

The 'anti-clerical' agitation here, as elsewhere in France, I am
assured, is plainly under the control of the 'freemasons.' Not that the
'freemasons' are avowedly very numerous here. But they are influential
because they act together, in silence, and on lines common to the
agitation all over France. 'Three or four energetic members of the
order,' said one very intelligent man to me here at Chauny, 'can easily
manage the whole official machinery of a large political district. To
understand their methods and their organisation you must go back to the
worship of Baphomet in the Middle Ages. In some of their lodges they
reproduce with a goat one at least of the abominations which Von Hammer
tells us were charged upon the Knights Templars as Baphometic. They are
a sect--a persecuting sect, and a sect bent on absolutely destroying the
Christian religion. To this end they parody the Christian symbols and
the Christian scheme of charity and of good works. They do not, most of
them, hold office, it being much more to the purpose for them to awe the
officials, and that is their favourite way of working. There are,
however, exceptions to this. If you go to Marmande in the South you will
find a sub-prefect there who is a most energetic and mischievous
"freemason." In the Aisne the Prefect is a