modestly
retired.

Such were the adventures of our witness in the assembly of Holy
Avengers. He enumerates at great length the evidence against
hallucination as a result of his excess in opium, but I suggest to
observing readers that there is a more obvious line of criticism.

Sec. 8. _The Great City of Lucifer._

It was in March of the year 1881 that Doctor Bataille proceeded for the
first time to Charleston, to make acquaintance at head-quarters with the
universal Masonry of Lucifer and its Pontiff Albert Pike. Charleston is
the Venice of America, the Rome of Satan, and the great City of Lucifer.
Always enormously prolix, and adoring the details which swell the flimsy
issues of cheap periodical narratives, our witness describes at great
length the city and its Masonic temple, with the temple which is within
the temple and is consecrated to the good God. My second chapter has
already provided the reader with sufficient information upon the persons
alleged to be concerned in the foundation of Universal Freemasonry and
in the elaboration of its cultus. Nor need I dwell at any length upon
the personal communication which passed between Doctor Bataille, Albert
Pike, Gallatin Mackey, Sophia Walder, Chambers, Webber, and the rest of
the Charleston luminaries. Miss Walder explained to him the great hope
of the Order concerning the speedy advent of anti-Christ, the abolition
of the papacy, and the destruction of the Christian religion. She also
related many of her private experiences with the infernal monarchy,
being acquainted with the exact number of demons in the descending
hierarchy, and with all their classes and legions. She confidently
expected to be the great grandmother of anti-Christ, and in the meantime
possessed the transcendental faculty of becoming fluidic at will. Mr
Gallatin Mackey exhibited his _Arcula Mystica_, one of seven similar
instruments existing at Charleston, Rome, Berlin, Washington, Monte
Video, Naples, and Calcutta. To all appearance it resembled a
liqueur-stand, but it was really a diabolical telephone worked like the
Urimm and Thummimm, and enabling those who possessed it to communicate
with each other, whatever the intervening distance. The Doctor, in his
quality of initiate, was, of course, taken over the entire premises; he
examined the head of the great templar Molay, deciding by his
anthropological knowledge that the relic was not genuine, and that it
was not the skull of a European. A