ten years afterward I saw the gentleman on the street in Edinburgh, conversing with a foreigner. As I passed by him, I saluted him softly in the Russian language; but without stopping, or looking him directly in the face. He coloured, but made no return. I endeavoured, in vain, to meet with him, wishing to make a proper return for much civility and kindness which I had received from him in his own country.
I now considered the box as accessible to myself, and opened it. I found it to contain all the degrees of the Parfait Maçon Ecossois, with the Rituals, Catechisms, and Instructions, and also four other degrees of Free Masonry, as cultivated in the Parisian Lodges. I have kept them with all care, and mean to give them to some respectable Lodge. But as I am bound by no engagement of any kind, I hold myself at liberty to make such use of them as may be serviceable to the public, without enabling any uninitiated person to enter the Lodges of these degrees.
This acquisition might have roused my former relish for masonry, had it been merely dormant; but, after so long separation from the Lodge de la Fidelité, the masonic spirit had evaporated. Some curiosity however remained, and some wish to trace this plastic mystery to the pit from which the clay had been dug, which has been moulded into so many different shapes, "some to honour, and some to dishonour." But my opportunities were now gone. I have given away (when in Russia) my volumes of discourses, and some far-fetched and gratuitous histories, and nothing remained but the pitiful work of Anderson, and the Maçonnerie Adonhiramique devoilêe, which are in every one's hands.
My curiosity was strongly roused by the accounts given in the Religions Begebenheiten. There I saw quotations without number, systems and schisms of which I had never heard; but what particularly struck me was a zeal and a fanaticism about what I thought trifles, which astonished me. Men of rank and fortune, and engaged in serious and honourable