It is unnecessary to multiply quotations, but here is one more: "The author of this book is a Christian like you; his faith is that of a Catholic deeply and strongly convinced; therefore his mission is not to deny dogmas, but to combat impiety under one of its most dangerous forms, that of erroneous belief and superstition.... Away with the idol which hides our Saviour! Down with the tyrant of falsehood! Down with the black god of the Manichaeans! Down with the Ahriman of the old idolaters! Live God alone and His incarnate Logos, Jesus the Christ, Saviour of the world, who beheld Satan precipitated from heaven!" Go to, M. le Docteur Bataille! _A bas_, Signor Margiotta! Phi, diabolus and Leo Taxil! Seeing then that Eliphas Levi has been calumniously represented, and that he was not a Satanist, he could not have founded a Satanic society, nor could a Manichaean order have been developed out of his doctrines. Hence if a Palladian Society do exist at Charleston, it either owes nothing to Levi, or its cultus has been falsely described. In other words, from whatever point we approach the witnesses of Lucifer, they are subjected to a rough unveiling. In the words of the motto on my title, the first in this plot was Lucifer--_videlicet_, the Father of Lies! CHAPTER XV CONCLUSION It remains for us now to appreciate the exact position in which the existence of the Palladian Order is left after all suspicious information has been subtracted. We have examined in succession the testimony of every witness to the discovery of Leo Taxil and M. Adolphe Ricoux, and it has been made entirely evident that they are of a most unsatisfactory kind. I make no pretence to pass a precise judgment upon Leo Taxil, for I am not in a position to prove that the Palladian rituals which appear in "Are there Women in Freemasonry?" can be characterised as invented matter. Granting his personal good faith, there are still many obvious questions, one of which is the connection between the Palladians and Masonry. As regards the so-called Paris triangle, from which the information was obtained, as regards the ritual itself, there is obviously no such connection, except the fantastic and arbitrary rule that initiation is imparted exclusively to persons possessed of Masonic degrees. It is patent that such an institution is not Masonic, though it possesses some secrets of Masonry. The Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, as we have seen, is an association based upon precisely the same regulation, but it has no official position. Should a circle of Catholic priests conspire for the formation of a society dedicated to black magic and the celebration of the Satanic mass, that would not be the Church diabolising. No institution, and no society, is responsible for the unauthorised acts of individual members. At the same time, if it should be advanced by hostile criticism that the invention of rituals is easy, and that the literary antecedents of Leo