non-reigning--had taken under their protection a confederation from which they stood to lose everything and had become so imbued by its principles that they were inaccessible to reason. Intoxicated by the flattery lavished on them by the priests of Illuminism, they adopted a religion of which they understood nothing. Weishaupt, of course, had taken care that none of these royal dupes should be initiated into the real aims of the Order, and at first adhered to the original plan of excluding them altogether; but the value of their co-operation soon became apparent and by a supreme irony it was with a Grand Duke that he himself took refuge.
But if the great majority of princes and nobles were stricken with blindness at this crisis, a few far-seeing spirits recognized