Page:Devil-Worship in France 1896.djvu/280

268 R.C." appeared in 1652, not 1659, as the "family history" affirms; Aula Lucis, 1652 (not 1651); and "Euphrates," 1655. What is obvious everywhere in these priceless little books is the devotion of a true mystic to Jesus Christ, and to gift them with the sordid interpretation of a French-born cultus of Lucifer is about as possible as to attribute a Christian intention to the calumnies of Miss Vaughan's documents.

In the year 1665, at the house of the rector of Albury, a chemical experiment with mercury cost the Welsh alchemist his life, and he was buried in the churchyard of that village in Oxfordshire.

It is clear, therefore, that the wonderful archives in the possession of Miss Vaughan give a bogus history of Eugenius Philalethes, but they are also untrue of Eirenæus. It is untrue that this mysterious adept, whose identity has never been disclosed, was born in 1612; he was born some ten years later.

The source of both dates is "The Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King";