is alleged by some of her friends, an American
education. The proof is that she makes characteristic French blunders
over English names. Thus, we have _Cambden_ on each occasion for Camden,
_Wescott_ for Westcott; we have _baronnet_ for baronet, _Cantorbery_ for
Canterbury, _Kirkud-Bright_ for Kirkcudbright; we have hybrid
combinations like _Georges_ Dickson, impossibilities like _Tiers-Ordre
Luciferien d'Honoris Causa_, and numerous similar instances.

To behold "Diana unveiled" was equivalent in alchemical terminology to
attaining the _magnum opus_. The reputed author of the "New Light of
Alchemy" testifies that some persons had in his own day and to his
certain knowledge attained this supreme privilege. It is not of my own
seeking if in another sense I have made public the same spectacle, and
thus broken with the traditions of secret science. It would have been
preferable from one point of view to have discovered Lucifer behind the
mask of Masonry than to have found the conspiracy against it another
_Tableau des Inconstances des Demons_ in which the _infidelite et
mecreance_ connected with the old false witness, abound after a manner
undreamed of by Bodin and Wierus, for it is distinctly disconcerting to
think that a great church is so little honoured by her combatants and
converts.

It only remains to state, and I do so with extreme reluctance, that the
evidence of Signor Domenico Margiotta, which seems so strong in itself,
can only be accepted, as we have seen, in connection with the
credibility of Miss Vaughan, and as this has completely broken down, we
cannot do otherwise than regard that part of his evidence which is
concerned with Palladism as the narrative of a person who has been very
seriously misled. And I think he has otherwise shown us that he is not a
judicious critic of the materials which have come into his hands. He
should never, for example, have printed his list of Palladian Lotus
Lodges--so far as regards Great Britain, it is undeniably a false list.
Take that of Edinburgh as a typical instance. Mr Brown, who has every
opportunity of knowing, tells me there is absolutely no truth in the
statement that there is in Edinburgh a Mother, or any, Lodge of the
Palladian Order. "Neither is there a Triangular Province--whatever that
may mean--such as is described. All is absolutely false."

CHAPTER XIV

THE RADIX OF MODERN DIABOLISM

We have finished with the witnesses of Lucifer, and I think