virtue. Is that not so?” said the Rhetor, after a moment’s pause.
“Yes, yes,” assented Pierre.
The Rhetor cleared his throat, crossed his gloved hands on his breast, and began to speak.
“Now I must disclose to you the chief aim of our Order,” he said, “and if this aim coincides with yours, you may enter our Brotherhood with profit. The first and chief object of our Order, the foundation on which it rests and which no human power can destroy, is the preservation and handing on to posterity of a certain important mystery … which has come down to us from the remotest ages, even from the first man—a mystery on which perhaps the fate of mankind depends. But since this mystery is of such a nature that nobody can know or use it unless he be prepared by long and diligent