rvance ceased temporarily to exist and Illuminism was left
in possession of the field.

On February 15, 1785, a further congress took place in Paris, convened
this time by the Philalethes, at which the Illuminati Bode (alias
Amelius) and the Baron de Busche (alias Bayard) were present, also--it
has been stated--the "magician" Cagliostro, the magnetiser Mesmer, the
Cabalist Duchanteau, and of course the leaders of the Philalethes,
Savalette de Langes, who was elected President, the Marquis de
Chefdebien, and a number of German members of the same Order. This
congress led to no very practical results, and a further and more secret
one was convened in the following year at Frankfurt, where a Grand Lodge
had been established in 1783. It was here that the deaths of Louis XVI
and Gustavus III of Sweden are said to have been decreed.

But already in this same year of 1785 the first act of the revolutionary
drama had been played out. The famous "Affair of the Necklace" can never
be understood in the pages of official history; only an examination of
the mechanism provided by the secret societies can explain that
extraordinary episode, which, in the opinion of Napoleon, contributed
more than any other cause to the explosion of 1789. In its double attack
on Church and Monarchy the Affair of the Necklace fulfilled the purpose
of both Frederick the Great and of the Illuminati. Cagliostro, we know,
received both money and instructions from the Order for carrying out the
plot, and after it had ended in his own and the Cardinal de Rohan's
exoneration and exile, we find him embarking on fresh secret-society
work in London, where he arrived in November of the same year.
Announcing himself as the Count Sutkowski, member of a society at
Avignon, he "visited the Swedenborgians at their Theosophical Society
meeting in rooms in the Middle Temple and displayed minute acquaintance
with their doctrines, whilst claiming a superior knowledge."[606]
According to a generally received opinion, Cagliostro was the author of
a mysterious proclamation which appeared at this moment in the _Morning
Herald_ in the cypher of the Rose-Croix.[607]

But in the year before these events an extraordinary thing had happened.
An evangelist preacher and Illuminatus named Lanze had been sent in July
1785 as an emissary of the Illuminati to Silesia, but on his journey he
was struck down by lightning. The instructions of the Order were found
on him, and as a result it