58o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



desire? " ^' Holy Father, to die this moment at thy feet were for 

 me the highest bliss," replied the kneeling penitent. " iSTot so," 

 was the benignant response of the successor of St. Peter; " thy life 

 is still very useful in combats for the faith." His Holiness then 

 pointed to Taxil's writings on the shelves of his library, declaring 

 that he had read them all through with extreme satisfaction, and 

 encouraged him to continue his exposures of these satellites of 

 Satan and their abominations. Taxil left the Vatican with the 

 papal benediction and with the firm conviction that he could de- 

 vise no better means of currjnng favor with the Apostolic See than 

 by inventing tales about the homage paid by the Freemasons to 

 the devil, and determined to work this rich vein to its utmost ca- 

 pacity. He also came to the conclusion that he could imagine noth- 

 ing so absurd that it would not be received in Catholic circles as 

 authentic and indorsed by infallible authority. 



His work had an immense pecuniary success, and thus at- 

 tained the chief object which he had in view. More than one 

 hundred thousand copies of the original French edition were 

 sold, and it was translated into English, German, Italian, and 

 Spanish. This result is not so surprising, if we remember that 

 nearly all the bishops and other clergy of the Catholic Church 

 acted as voluntary and extremely zealous agents for the diffu- 

 sion of these Kevelations, which they seemed to regard as a 

 new apocalypse designed to unveil the mysteries of Babylon 

 and disclose the present doings of Satan and dominion of anti- 

 christ. Of the utterly apocryphal character of the Revelations 

 they do not appear to have entertained the slightest suspicion, al- 

 though the hoax was clearly perceptible to every unprejudiced 

 mind. The German translation by the Jesuit Father Gruber, 

 which appeared at Freiburg, in Switzerland, and at Paderborn, in 

 Westphalia, omitted the volume entitled The Masonic Sisters, on 

 account of the indecency of its contents, although accepted as true 

 and deemed especially damaging to the Masonic fraternity. How- 

 ever desirable it might be to tear away the mask of philanthropy 

 from the face of Freemasonry and let the world see its devilish 

 features, it was thought best not to outrage the moral sense of the 

 community by uncovering " the filthiness of the hellish crew." 



In 1892 Taxil's coadjutor. Dr. Bataille (a pseudonym of Dr. 

 Karl Hacks, a German from the Phineland), began to issue a serial 

 publication, entitled The Devil in the Nineteenth Century, pur- 

 porting to embody the results of his observations as ship's surgeon 

 during his travels in various countries, and especially in the Orient, 

 where he had opportunities of studying Satanism in its diverse 

 manifestations. He begins by referring to the encyclical letter 



