freemason, and here all the
public functionaries go in fear of the order. They own the newspaper,
control profitable contracts of all sorts, and can make or mar the
career of public servants, through their occult relations with people at
headquarters in Paris.'

I suggested that in England and Germany and the United States the
'freemasons' are not only regarded as friends of order and of law, but
number among their dignitaries men of the highest official and personal
rank.

'That is quite true, no doubt,' he said. 'But this order in France has,
I believe, no official relations now with the order in either of these
countries. Its affiliations are with the "freemasons" of Italy, of
Belgium, and of Spain, so far as it has any affiliations. There have
been "freemasons," as you must know, among the Radical leaders in
Belgium who have not hesitated, while holding high public positions, to
denounce Christianity in open meetings as a "corpse blocking the way of
modern progress"; and what the freemasonry of Italy and of Spain is I am
sure you must know.'

I told him that in Spanish America and in Brazil I had met priests who
were members of the order; and I particularly cited the case of an
ecclesiastic of considerable importance, who in Costa Rica, some ten or
twelve years ago, was at the head of the Order of Freemasons in that
country.

'That may be,' he replied, 'but officers of our expedition into Mexico
under Maximilian have told me that the freemasons in Mexico were active
allies of the Liberals and of Juarez in their war against the Church.'

This I could not contradict, for while I never heard that President
Juarez was himself a 'freemason,' I know, from my conversations with him
after the fall of the Empire, in 1871, that, though educated by the
priests in Oajaca, as Robespierre was by the priests in Arras, he was an
unbeliever of the type of the advanced Encyclopaedists of the last
century, and though not such a fanatic as Condorcet, strongly disposed,
not only to deprive the Mexican clergy of their 'fueros' under the old
Spanish system, but to make an end of Catholicism in Mexico if possible.
Nor was he much more friendly to the Protestants, who were then trying,
under Bishop Riley, to found a Protestant propaganda in Mexico.

'In France, at all events under the Third Republic,' he went on, 'the
"freemasons" are the implacable enemies of religion. It was in full
accord with them, and as a battle-cry in their in