to the past of Masonry, and urges "Porcius" to find out more on this question from the Abbé Marotti:
See whether through him you can discover the real history, origin, and the first founders of Masonry, for on this alone I am still undecided.<sup></sup>
But it is in "Philo," the Baron von Knigge, a Freemason and member of the Stride Observance, in which he was known as the Eques a Cygno, that Weishaupt finds his most efficient investigator. Thus "Philo" writes to "Spartacus":
I have now found in Cassel the best man, on whom I cannot congratulate ourselves enough: he is Mauvillon, Grand Master of one of the Royal York Lodges. So with him we have the whole lodge in our hands. He has also got from there all their miserable degrees [*Er hat auch von dort aus alle ihre elenden Grade*].<sup></sup>
No wonder that Weishaupt thereupon exclaims joyfully: "Philo does more than we all expected, and he is the man who alone will carry it all through." Weishaupt then occupies himself in trying to get a "Constitution" from London, evidently without success, and also in wresting the Lodge Theodore in Munich from the control of Berlin in order to substitute his own domination, so that "the whole secret chapter will