Philipson had often heard that the
seat of a Free Count, or chief of the Secret Tribunal, was secretly
instituted even on the left bank of the Rhine, and that it maintained
itself in Alsace, with the usual tenacity of those secret societies,
though Duke Charles of Burgundy had expressed a desire to discover and
to discourage its influence so far as was possible, without exposing
himself to danger from the thousands of poniards which that mysterious
tribunal could put in activity against his own life;--an awful means
of defence, which for a long time rendered it extremely hazardous for
the sovereigns of Germany, and even the emperors themselves, to put
down by authority those singular associations.
* * * * *
He lay devising the best means of obviating the present danger, while
the persons whom he beheld glimmered before him, less like distinct
and individual forms, than like the phantoms of a fever, or the
phantasmagoria with which a disease of the optic nerves has been known
to people a sick man's chamber. At length they assembled in the centre
of the apartment where they had first appeared, and seemed to arrange
themselves into form and order. A great number of black torches were
successively lighted, and the scene became distinctly visible. In the
centre of the hall, Philipson could now perceive one of the altars
which are sometimes to be found in ancient subterranean chapels.
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