like Prometheus, Ixion, Adonis, Pan, and others, who have entered into the religious beliefs of all countries and all ages, prove to the world that the hopes we now embody were born with the human races.  Chaldea, India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, the Moors, have transmitted from one to another Magic, the highest of all the occult sciences, which holds within it, as a precious deposit the fruits of the studies of each generation.  In it lay the tie that bound the grand and majestic institution of the Templars.  Sire, when one of your predecessors burned the Templars, he burned men only,—­their Secret lived.  The reconstruction of the Temple is a vow of an unknown nation, a race of daring seekers, whose faces are turned to the Orient of life,—­all brothers, all inseparable, all united by one idea, and stamped with the mark of toil.  I am the sovereign leader of that people, sovereign by election, not by birth.  I guide them onward to a knowledge of the essence of life.  Grand-master, Red-Cross-bearers, companions, adepts, we forever follow the imperceptible molecule which still escapes our eyes.  But soon we shall make ourselves eyes more powerful than those which Nature has given us; we shall attain to a sight of the primitive atom, the corpuscular element so persistently sought by the wise and learned of all ages who have preceded us in the glorious search.  Sire, when a man is astride of that abyss, when he commands bold divers like my disciples, all other human interests are as nothing.  Therefore we are not dangerous.  Religious disputes and political struggles are far away from us; we have passed beyond and above them.  No man takes others by the throat when his whole strength is given to a struggle with Nature.  Besides, in our science results are perceivable; we can measure effects and predict them; whereas all things are uncertain and vacillating in the struggles of men and their selfish interests.  We decompose the diamond in our crucibles, and we shall make diamonds, we shall make gold!  We shall impel vessels (as they have at Barcelona) with fire and a little water!  We test the wind, and we shall make wind; we shall make light; we shall renew the face of empires with new industries!  But we shall never debase ourselves to mount a throne to be crucified by the peoples!”

In spite of his strong determination not to be taken in by Italian wiles, the king, together with his gentle mistress, was already caught and snared by the ambiguous phrases and doublings of this pompous and humbugging loquacity.  The eyes of the two lovers showed how their minds were dazzled by the mysterious riches of power thus displayed; they saw, as it were, a series of subterranean caverns filled with gnomes at their toil.  The impatience of their curiosity put to flight all suspicion.

“But,” cried the king, “if this be so, you are great statesmen who can enlighten us.”

“No, sire,” said Lorenzo, naively.

“Why not?” asked the king.