the Grand Master and his companions were hurried into the flames, where they retained that contempt for death which they had exhibited on former occasions. This mournful scene extorted tears from the lowest of the vulgar.[26] Four valiant Knights, whose charity and valour had procured them the gratitude and applause of mankind, suffering, without fear, the most cruel and ignominious death, was, indeed, a spectacle well calculated to excite emotions of pity in the hardest hearts. Humanity shudders at the recital of the horrid deed; and if the voice of impartial posterity has not, with one accord, pronounced the unqualified acquittal of the Templars, it has branded with the mark of eternal infamy the conduct of their accusers and judges. [Illustration] [Illustration: CONTINUATION OF THE ORDER.] [Illustration] CHAP. IV. The Continuation of the Order. But the persecution of the Templars in the fourteenth century does not close the history of the Order; for, though the Knights were spoliated, the Order was not annihilated. In truth, the cavaliers were not guilty,--the brother hood was not suppressed,--and, startling as is the assertion, there has been a succession of Knights Templars from the twelfth century down even to these days; the chain of transmission is perfect in all its links. Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master at the time of the persecution, anticipating his own martyrdom, appointed as his successor, in power and dignity, Johannes Marcus Larmenius of Jerusalem, and from that time to the present there has been a regular and uninterrupted line of Grand Masters. The charter[27] by which the supreme authority has been transmitted, is judicial and conclusive evidence of the Order's continued existence. The charter of transmission, with the signatures of the various chiefs of the Temple, is still preserved at Paris, with the ancient statutes of the Order, the rituals, the records, the seals, the standards, and other memorials of the early Templars.