night a great faro
bank. The banker at the gaming table was a certain Don Joseph Marratti,
the same man whom I had known in the Spanish army under the name of Don
Pepe il Cadetto, and a few years afterwards assumed the name of Afflisio,
and came to such a bad end. That faro bank won in a few days three
hundred thousand francs. In a capital that would not have been considered
a large sum, but in a commercial and industrial city like Lyons it raised
the alarm amongst the merchants, and the Ultramontanes thought of taking
their leave.

It was in Lyons that a respectable individual, whose acquaintance I made
at the house of M. de Rochebaron, obtained for me the favour of being
initiated in the sublime trifles of Freemasonry. I arrived in Paris a
simple apprentice; a few months after my arrival I became companion and
master; the last is certainly the highest degree in Freemasonry, for all
the other degrees which I took afterwards are only pleasing inventions,
which, although symbolical, add nothing to the dignity of master.

No one in this world can obtain a knowledge of everything, but every man
who feels himself endowed with faculties, and can realize the extent of
his moral strength, should endeavour to obtain the greatest possible
amount of knowledge. A well-born young man who wishes to travel and know
not only the world, but also what is called good society, who does not
want to find himself, under certain circumstances, inferior to his
equals, and excluded from participating in all their pleasures, must get
himself initiated in what is called Freemasonry, even if it is only to
know superficially what Freemasonry is. It is a charitable institution,
which, at certain times and in certain places, may have been a pretext
for criminal underplots got up for the overthrow of public order, but is
there anything under heaven that has not been abused? Have we not seen
the Jesuits, under the cloak of our holy religion, thrust into the
parricidal hand of blind enthusiasts the dagger with which kings were to
be assassinated! All men of importance, I mean those whose social
existence is marked by intelligence and merit, by learning or by wealth,
can be (and many of them are) Freemasons: is it possible to suppose that
such meetings, in which the initiated, making it a law never to speak,
'intra muros', either of politics, or of religions, or of governments,
converse only concerning emblems which are either moral or trifling; is
it