vatsky—also a modern of the moderns—may with modifications be applied to Taxil; that he “has achieved a title to permanent remembrance as one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting impostors in history.” Only Taxil’s accomplishments were of a rather gross order; his boldness surpassed his ingenuity; and the interest is centered in his deeds rather than in his personality. Like most disciples of Cagliostro, his career was a checkered one. In 1885, at the age of thirty-one, he was engaged upon his magnum opus, having already appeared as a violent radical in politics—he is a product of France—a rabid anti-clerical, and the author of a libelous pamphlet on the Secret amours of Pius IX. The suggestion for his chef d’oeuvre was the encyclical of Leo XIII. (1884) directed against the Freemasons, who with others were placed under the ban as subjects of the realms of Satan. After a full confession of the errors of his former ways, Taxil was received back with rejoicing into the bosom of the Church, and thereupon published four volumes of wholly imaginary revelations, revealing the sacrilegious orgies and devil-worship of the Masonic mysteries. For this he received in person the solemn benediction of the Vatican, as well as the material rewards of the sale of one hundred thousand copies of his work and the honor of its translation into English, German, Italian, and Spanish. If it be stated that the German version omitted the volume on the “Masonic sisters,” for the reason that it was not thought proper to outrage the moral sense of the community by recounting “the filthiness of the hellish crew,” the character of the work may be surmised. Taxil extended the sphere of influence of his imaginary demonolaters to all parts of the world—even from Singapore to Charleston, at which latter point the Masonic Grand Master figures as a Satanic Pope, who has at his disposal a telephone, invented and operated by devils, whereby he puts a girdle round about the earth in forty seconds, and a magic bracelet by which he summons
