already been pointed out, the authenticity is admitted by eminent British Freemasons--a letter is reproduced from Pyron, representative in Paris of the Grand Orient of Italy, to the Marquis de Chefdebien, dated September 9, 1808, in which it is stated that "a member of the sect of Bav." has asked for information on a certain point of ritual.
On December 29, 1808, Pyron writes again: "By the words 'sect of B....' I meant W...."; and on December 3, 1809, puts the matter quite plainly: "The other word remaining at the end of my pen refers enigmatically to Weis=pt."
So, as M. Fabre points out:
There is no longer any doubt that it is a question here of Weishaupt, and yet one observes that his name is not yet written in all its letters. It must be admitted here that Pyron took great precautions when it was a matter of Weishaupt! And one is led to ask what could be the extraordinary importance of the rôle played at this moment in the Freemasonry of the First Empire by this Weishaupt, who was supposed to have been outside the masonic movement since Illuminism was brought to trial in 1786!<sup></sup>
But the Marquis de Chefdebien entertained no illusions about Weishaupt, whose intrigues he had always opposed, and in a letter dated May 12,