Page:Devil-Worship in France 1896.djvu/258

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
246
DEVIL-WORSHIP IN FRANCE

Masonry. Down, unclean dog, and back, scavenger, to your offal! The scullion in the Queen's kitchen would, I think, disdain to whip you.

Setting aside these scandalous slanders, and returning to the subject in hand, it is clear that when a writer who comes forward with a budget of surprising revelations is shown to have invented his materials in certain signal instances, it becomes superfluous to subject his entire testimony to a laborious sifting, and there is really no excuse to delay much longer over the memoirs of Dr Bataille. It will be needless to state that my researches have failed to discover any such dismantled temple as that described at Pondicherry, and affirmed to be on the English soil adjacent to the French town. It is equally unnecessary to say that the story of the caves of Gibraltar is a gross and absurd imposture, for, in fact, it betrays itself. Parisian literature of the by-ways has its own methods, and its purveyors are shrewd enough to know what will be tolerated and what enjoyed by their peculiar class of patrons; transcendental toxicology and