On

which she sat it was impossible for the Doctor to distinguish her features, but her form was stately, and her long white hair hung down in profusion on both sides of her face. A few feet in front of this woman, and likewise on the platform, knelt another female figure, which he recognised immediately as his wife. Her arms were tied behind her back by cords, and her legs bound together in the same manner. either side of her stood a woman, robed as the person in the chair, and bearing a naked sword in her hand. In the body of the building were, disposed in a semi-circle, some twenty persons, all women, dressed in white, and with a crimson sash traversing their left shoulder. The light which revealed this extraordinary scene came from a huge chandelier, suspended from the oaken roof, composed of numerous bars of iron, in which were rudely stuck rows of tallow-candles. Behind the president's chair there hung a vast black curtain, covered with symbols, amongst others, a lion, and various cabalistic letters, and serving, by its contrast, to throw into still greater relief the white dresses of the assistants at the mysterious rite.

The lady in the chair spoke, addressing the kneeling figure before her. "The condition in which you are now placed, daughter, and from which you are about to be delivered, is symbolical of your position in the world. Your sex has reduced you, like all of us, to a state of passive subjection to a husband, and to the laws and enactments framed by men. The line of conduct which they have dictated to you-useful, and highly necessary, as far as it goes-has yet been laid down with such jealousy, as entirely to preclude you from that one great privilege of united action, without which no great social improvement has ever been, or ever can be accomplished in the world."

At a sign from the speaker, the two guardians severed with their swords the cords which bound the kneeling woman; then, leading her off the platform, they united her, by a silken thread, to one end of the semi-circle of votaries, whom the Doctor now perceived, for the first time, to be all tied together in the same manner.

"Your present situation," pursued the president, "is indicative of what may be done, among women as among men, by combination, and mutual support. The thin silken thread which binds you to your sisters, symbolizes the gentle and unirksome character of the tie which you have contracted. The ropes still hanging about you, but no longer cramping your movements, show that you are not to renounce obedience to your husband, or the performance of your domestic duties; but not to suffer them to cramp you in such a way as to render you a mere machine, useless for the higher purposes of the general good. Approach now, and receive the accolade of a past apprentice."

The novice the thread which united her to her companions being untied by the two guardians-was then led up to the president, who, rising from her chair, saluted her with a kiss. She was next conducted along the line of sisters, each of whom kissed her on the forehead, in token of her reception. Having been tied again at the extreme end of the semi-circle, she was next called upon by the president for the three signs of a past apprentice. Doctor Longjumeau could not exactly distinguish the movements made by his wife, in obedience to this summons, but he

conjectured that they formed a rude imitation of those peculiar to Freemasonry.

"The meaning of the first sign?" asked the president.

"The grip-pressing with the thumb upon the third finger of the left hand-to recognise a true sister."

"Of the second?"

"The sign of the lion, and the hieroglyphic motto. To indicate to a sister the presence of one bearing our sacred symbols, and under the secret protection of the society."

"Of the third? "

"That I would suffer my tongue to be torn from its roots, rather than reveal the secrets of the lodge."

While this interrogatory had been going on, something in the voice of the questioner particularly attracted the Doctor's attention. In that voice, subdued, but not changed, by the course of years, he thought that he recognised the tones which had been ringing in his ears ever since the night of that strange adventure, the clue to which seemed now faintly dawning upon his mind. But her face being still turned in an opposite direction, he could not make sure that this idea was anything more than a mere suspicion, engendered of his fancy.

"Sister

There was a silence of a few moments throughout the building; after which, the president proceeded to deliver a kind of address. Léonie," she said, "you have been instructed in the laws and constitution of our society; it remains for me briefly to recapitulate, by way of impressing them the more strongly upon you, the points most necessary to be borne in mind.

"We are an association of Freemasons; the name, as well as the idea, which presides over our formation, being taken from those societies in which so many of our husbands, brothers, and fathers, are enrolled. But between their aims and objects and our own, there are, as you are aware, certain essential points of difference.

"With regard to our origin, we do not, like them, mendaciously refer it back to the mysteries of Eleusis, or the building of the temple of Solomon. We can scarcely date it as far as 1786, the epoch at which Lorenza, the wife of Cagliostro, founded, in the Faubourg St. Honoré, a lodge composed of thirty-six female adepts.*

"These ladies, drawn from the highest ranks of society, were attracted

*Truth, as we learn from a high authority, and have pretty often heard repeated, "being stranger than fiction," it will happen that precisely those incidents in a story which are not invented by the writer, will be those to which a charge of extravagance will be liable to attach. Foreseeing this result in the case of this fourth chapter of his tale, the author begs leave to state, that not only is the existence of such a society of female Freemasons as that mentioned in the text, historical, but that the ceremonies and the language used have been related with strict fidelity. It is not necessary for the reader to send to the British Museum, to convince himself of the fact. 'La vie de Cagliostro par Jules de Saint Felix. Paris, 1857," will at once prove the truth of what is here asserted. For the continuance of these societies, under a different form, to a much later period, and for an account of some of the " proofs" to which novices were submitted, consult "Memoires Secrètes pour servir à l'histoire de la Franc Maconnerie. Paris, N.D." The author must repeat that the scene related in the text above, forms the only part of this humble tale which is not chargeable to his own invention.

rather by idle curiosity and superstition, than by any laudable object. On the fall of Cagliostro, their meetings ceased, and the sisterhood was dispersed. It was then that some among them imagined-bearing especially in view the general overturning which, even at that time, threatened France-that a secret society, composed of our sex, and united for the furtherance of definite aims, might play an important, although an underground part, in the march of events which were preparing. That, in fine, the separate influences exercised by each individual on her immediate surroundings would, when concentrated in a common focus, be productive of immense results, provided they were limited to our proper sphere of action. This included, not selfaggrandizement, or conquest, or glory, but the relief of the unfortunate, the protection of the innocent from the popular fury, the promotion of true merit wherever we could find it, and last, not least, the support of the cause of our ancient kings. With these ideas, the first lodge was organised, and soon our ramifications extended over the whole of France.

"Our members were drawn, as now, from all classes of society who met here-Duchess and workwoman-de Rohan and Lefevre on terms of perfect equality. Each member is bound to work individually for the object agreed on by the majority, so that the abuse of personal favoritism cannot creep in. The strictest precautions have always been taken before the admission of a sister, and only once, to our knowledge, has our secret been betrayed. To give the faintest notion of what we have been able to accomplish by this method of association, would be impossible. Thus, only to refer to a few events of a more marked character: At the instigation of one of our sisterhood, Charlotte Corday armed herself with the knife which delivered this France of ours from

the ravages of a wild beast. Catherine Théot, the supposed lunatic, who first brought ridicule upon the name of Robespierre, by celebrating mystic rites in his honour, and thus paved the way to his downfall, was in reality a member of our society. Madame de Fontenay, the mistress of Tallien, saved, as is well known, the lives of many at Bordeaux, by the influence which she exercised over her lover. But we alone can conjecture how many other innocents she was enabled to rescue by the powers placed at her disposal through the mere fact of her forming one of ourselves—one of a society which had its enrolled members everywhere, by the side of the president who signed the condemnation, of the jailor who turned the key, of the serjeant who directed the fire! Accordingly the same good fortune attended efforts of a similar kind in other parts of France. The lodge of Strasburgh has since informed us that one of their members, a young and lovely girl, with whose name we are unfortunately unacquainted, by allying herself to one of the underlings of St. Just and Lebas, succeeded in accomplishing much in this way. Veiling her plans under the pretence of a bitter hatred of royalists (as we were all compelled to do, at that sad period) she was perpetually spying out the means of assisting here and there, a victim of the popular fury. Only a few days before her own death, she was able, with the assistance of some of the sisters, to aid the escape of a relative of her own-a father, or a brother-from the fate that

awaited him. Then, sinking under the weight of an existence no longer bearable, she perished by her own hand. On the banks of the Rhine, near this same Strasburgh, we are informed that there lived another of our members, a common gipsy or fortune-teller. It was impossible for this woman, in the situation in which she was placed, to assist any others than those bearing some special mark of being under our protection but of these she procured the passage of no less than twenty across the river!"

All this time, the listener, leaning against the wooden pillar, in whose shadow he stood concealed, had scarcely seemed to draw breath, such was his eagerness not to lose a syllable which fell from the speaker's lips. The mysteries which had clouded his vision during a quarter of a century-the mysteries which had obscured to him the story of his own life, and rise, and successes, were gradually clearing away before her words. But there were other points upon which he longed for information-so earnestly, that a pause of only a few seconds which the speaker made at this place, grew insupportable to him from its very length. It seemed to him, that his respiration had, in some sense, come to be dependant upon the tones of her voice, and that, those ceasing, a faintness stole over him, so that unless she proceeded, he should reveal his presence by falling helpless on the floor."

At last, she continued: "These are merely given to you as instances of what, in other times, we have been able to effect. Our annals are full of such. And I need not tell you how many isolated cases there must necessarily have been, the records of which have never been preserved. Those gloomy days have happily passed away. It no longer forms part of our duty to rescue the innocent from the blind fury of mobs, or legal tribunals. But other and equally important duties re main to be performed. By combined action to assert the privileges of our sex-to taste the sweets of a power all the more influential because its springs are unseen, and its sources unsuspected-to promote the objects of our favour-very often to upset the most cunningly devised schemes of men, our masters-with these and a variety of other objects you will become more particularly acquainted after your full initiation. We have, as you know, members in the palace, members in the houses of great statesmen, great lawyers, great doctors, as well as in the workshop and the hovel. Our hands may be traced in treaties which are supposed to be the happy creations of diplomatists alone; in provisions of laws which are believed to have sprung from the brains of their proposer in the Chambers. How many a man now on a high pinnacle would be surprised to learn that his elevation is due to us, and us alone! Sister Léonie, take the case of your own husband.

"Sixteen years ago, he landed in France, poor, almost penniless; no one knew then, nor does anyone know at this moment, what was his origin. But he bore on his person that which entitled him to, nay, which rendered obligatory, the assistance of every member of our society, with whom he might happen to come in contact. This, a ring, or other jewel, engraved with our mystic symbols, can never be conferred except upon rare occasions, and by the unanimous vote of a lodge, upon an individual who, of course unknowingly, has rendered some great and not-to

be-forgotten service to the sisterhood. It is generlly conveyed to him in such a way-as, for example, in the form of a present from a client, or patient, or other person indebted to him-that he never suspects it to differ in any respect from another bauble. But, from that moment, thanks to us, his success in life is certain, so long as he continues to wear it. By calling to mind, sister Léonie, the manner in which we

have pushed your husband, Doctor Longjumeau, you will form some idea of the power and resources of our association.

"On all these and many other points, you will, however, receive fuller information at a future time. It now remains for me to remind you that you have but one more enforced attendance here-that of next Saturday, when you will be made acquainted with the cipher by which a greater part of our deliberations are carried on. This will not absolve you from a weekly attendance here, whenever it is in your