Cato is then deputed to make further discoveries through an Italian Freemason, the Abbé Marotti, which he records triumphantly in his diary: Interview with the Abbé Marotti on the question of Masonry, when he explained to me the whole secret, which is founded on old religion and Church history, and imparted to me all the higher degrees up to the Scottish. Informed Spartacus of this.[519] Spartacus, however, unimpressed by this communication, replied drily: Whether you know the aim of Masonry I doubt. I have myself included an insight into this structure in my plan, but reserved it for later degrees.[520] Weishaupt then decides that all illuminated "Areopagites" shall take the first three degrees of Freemasonry[521]; but further: That we shall have a masonic lodge of our own. That we shall regard this as our nursery garden. That to some of these Masons we shall not at once reveal that we have something more than the Masons have. That at every opportunity we shall cover ourselves with this [Masonry].... All those who are not suited to the work shall remain in the masonic Lodge and advance in that without knowing anything of the further system.[522] We shall find this plan of an inner secret circle concealed within Freemasonry persisting up to our own day. Weishaupt, however, admits himself puzzled with regard to the past of Masonry, and urges "Porcius" to find out more on this question from the Abbé Marotti: See whether through him you can discover the real history, origin, and the first founders of Masonry, for on this alone I am still undecided.[523] But it is in "Philo," the Baron von Knigge, a Freemason and member of the Stride Observance, in which he was known as the Eques a Cygno, that Weishaupt finds his most efficient investigator. Thus "Philo" writes to "Spartacus": I have now found in Cassel the best man, on whom I cannot congratulate ourselves enough: he is Mauvillon, Grand Master of one of the Royal York Lodges. So with him we have the whole lodge in our hands. He has also got from there all their miserable degrees [_Er hat auch von dort aus alle ihre elenden Grade_].[524] No wonder that Weishaupt thereupon exclaims joyfully: "Philo does more than we all expected, and he is the man who alone will carry it all through."[525] Weishaupt then occupies himself in trying to get a "Constitution" from London, evidently without success, and also in wresting the Lodge Theodore in Munich from the control of Berlin in order to substitute his own domination, so that "the whole secret chapter will be subjected to our ⊙, leave everything to it, and await further degrees from it alone."[526]