it leads up,
notwithstanding, to the discovery of M. Ricoux. As to this gentleman
himself there are no particulars forthcoming; he has promised an account
of his adventures during four years as an emigrant in Chili; and he has
promised a patriotic epic in twelve cantos, but so far as my information
goes they remain in the womb of time. But he has a claim on our
consideration because it occurred to him that he would put in practice
the advice of Leo Taxil, which he did accordingly in the autumn of 1891,
and demonstrated to his own satisfaction that "Are there Women in
Freemasonry?" is a book of true disclosure, and a question that must be
answered in the affirmative. He performed thereupon a very creditable
action; he wrote a pamphlet entitled "The Existence of Lodges for Women:
Researches on this subject," &c., in which he stated the result of his
investigation, collected the controversy on the subject which had been
scattered through the press of the period, and defended Leo Taxil with
the warmth of an _alter Ego_. But he had not limited his researches to
the directions indicated in his author. Encouraged by the success which
had attended his initial efforts, he determined upon an independent
experiment in bribery, and after the same manner that Leo Taxil procured
the "Ritual of the New and Reformed Palladium," so he succeeded in
obtaining the "Collection of Secret Instructions to Supreme Councils,
Grand Lodges, and Grand Orients," printed at Charleston in the year
1891. "This collection," he tells us, "is certainly a document of the
first order; for it emanates from General Albert Pike, that is to say,
from the 'Pope of the Freemasons.'" On this document he bases the
following statements:--(a) Universal Freemasonry possesses a Supreme
Directory as the apex of its international organisation, and it is
located at Berlin. (b) Four subsidiary Central Directories exist at
Naples, Calcutta, Washington, and Monte Video. (c) Furthermore, a Chief
of Political Action resides at Rome, commissioned to watch over the
Vatican and to precipitate events against the Papacy. (d) A Grand
Depositary of Sacred Traditions, under the title of Sovereign Pontiff of
Universal Freemasonry, is located at Charleston, and at the time of the
discovery was Albert Pike.

Some of these statements, it will be observed, require rectification, in
the light of fuller disclosures made by Palladian initiates, from whom
the material of my second chapter has