Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 56.djvu/598

582 she is in fact absolutely infernal—an actual deviless." Hacks asserts that in a Presbyterian church at Singapore he discovered a secret tabernacle for the worship of Satan. The pastor opened the door, and there was a Baphomet, with all the Palladistic (Satanic) apparatus—goblet, host, and dagger—standing before his eyes.

Albert Pike, Grand Master of the Freemasons in Charleston, S. C, is called the "Satanic Pope," and is said to have a telephone invented and operated by devils, whereby instantaneous communication is possible between the seven principal directorates at Charleston, Rome, Berlin, Washington, Montevideo, Naples, and Calcutta. He has also a magic bracelet, by means of which he can summon Lucifer at any moment. "One day Satan took Pike gently in his arms and made a trip with him to Sirius, traversing the whole distance in a few minutes. After exploring the fixed star, he was brought back safe and sound to his room in Washington." Whether he found the star as hot and scorching as its name implies is not stated. Hacks discovered, under the cliffs of Gibraltar, mysterious caverns with laboratories in which devils prepared microbes for generating and diffusing epidemics. He was politely received by Tubal-Cain, the director of the establishment, who addressed him in pure Parisian French, from which we may infer that this is the language of the lower regions. On his departure Hacks was presented with a small vial, the contents of which would suffice to produce a fearful epidemic of cholera. No less an authority than Professor Bautz, of the Prussian Academy at Münster, tells us that the volcanoes are the flues of hell, and it was probably this contribution to the topography of Tartarus that led Hacks to look for the devil's workshop in the cavities of mountains, which, however, being used for infernal purposes, would hardly be what Milton calls "umbrageous grots and caves of cool recess."

The following may be cited as a specimen of the manner in which historical events were perverted by Hacks to subserve his purpose: Before the capture of Rome by the Italian troops in 1870, a secret meeting of Freemasons was held in Milan, at which Riboli, Cucchi, and General Cadorna were present, and the