cullion in
the Queen's kitchen would, I think, disdain to whip you.

Setting aside these scandalous slanders, and returning to the subject in
hand, it is clear that when a writer who comes forward with a budget of
surprising revelations is shown to have invented his materials in
certain signal instances, it becomes superfluous to subject his entire
testimony to a laborious sifting, and there is really no excuse to delay
much longer over the memoirs of Dr Bataille. It will be needless to
state that my researches have failed to discover any such dismantled
temple as that described at Pondicherry, and affirmed to be on the
English soil adjacent to the French town. It is equally unnecessary to
say that the story of the caves of Gibraltar is a gross and absurd
imposture, for, in fact, it betrays itself. Parisian literature of the
by-ways has its own methods, and its purveyors are shrewd enough to know
what will be tolerated and what enjoyed by their peculiar class of
patrons; transcendental toxicology and an industry in idols worked by
criminals intercommunicating by means of Volapuk may be left to them.

Nor is it needful to do more than touch lightly upon a pleasant process
in piracy by which Dr Bataille lightens the toils of authorship. He has
done better than any other among the witnesses of Lucifer in his
gleanings from Eliphas Levi. On p. 32 of his first volume there is a
brazen theft concerning the chemistry of black magic, and there is
another, little less daring, on p. 67, being a description of a
Baphometic idol. It goes without saying that the Conjuration of the Four
is imported, as others have imported it, from the _Rituel de la Haute
Magie_. The vesture of the master of ceremonies who officiated in the
Sanctuary of the Phoenix, one of the mythical temples of Dhappa, is a
property derived from the same quarter. So in like manner is part of a
magical adjuration in the account of a Sabbath in Sheol. Finally, a
method of divination described in a later place (vol. i., pp. 343, 344)
will be found in Christian's _Histoire de la Magie_.

The artist who has illustrated the memoirs has acted after the same
manner. The two Baphometic figures (vol. i., pp. 9 and 89), are
reproductions from Levi's plates. The Sabbatic figure (_Ib._, p. 153) is
a modification from Christian. The original idea of the shadow-demon on
p. 201 will be found in Levi's sacerdotal hand making the sign of
esotericism. The four figures of the Pallad