by the Cabalist on a he-goat are too loathsome to transcribe. The whole story, indeed, appears a farrago of nonsense and would not be worth quoting but for the fact that it appears to be taken seriously by Dr. Adler as a description of the great Ba'al Shem.
The death of Falk took place on April 17, 1782, and the epitaph on his grave in the cemetery at Globe Road, Mile End, "bears witness to his excellencies and orthodoxy": "Here is interred ... the aged and honourable man, a great personage who came from the East, an accomplished sage, an adept in Cabbalah.... His name was known to the ends of the earth and distant isles," etc.
This then is surely the portrait of a most remarkable personage, a man known for his powers in England, France, and Germany, visited by a royal prince in search of the philosopher's stone, and acclaimed by one of his own race as standing alone in his generation by reason of his knowledge, yet whilst Saint-Germain and Cagliostro figure in every account of eighteenth-century magicians, it is only in exclusively Judaic or masonic works, not intended for the general public, that we shall find any reference to Falk. Have we not here striking evidence of the truth of M. André Baron's dictum: "Remember that the constant rule of the secret societies is that the real authors never show themselves"?
It will now be asked: what proof is there that Falk is connected with any masonic or secret societies? True, in the accounts