[485.] Benjamin Fabre, Eques a Capite Galeato, p. 84.
[486.] Benjamin Fabre, op cit., pp. 88, 90, 98, 110.
[487.] Clavel, Histoire pittoresque, pp. 188, 390; Robison's Proofs of a Conspiracy, p. 77.
[488.] The Royal Masonic Cyclopædia describes both Nathan der Weise and Ernst und Falk as prominent works on Masonry.
[489.] There is, however, the possibility that Lessing may have had in mind another Falk living at the same period; this was "John Frederick Falk, born at Hamburg of Jewish parents, reported to have been head of a Cabalistic College in London and to have died about 1824" (Tranactions of the Jewish Historical Society, VIII. 128). But in view of the part which the correspondence of Savalette de Langes shows the Ba'al Shem of London to have played in the background of Freemasonry, it seems more probable that he was the Falk in question. At any rate, both were Jews and Cabalists.
[490.] Who can this have been?
[491.] The Duchesse de Gontaut relates in her Mémoires that the Due d'Orléans was one day driving through the forest of Fontainebleau when a man, half clothed and with a demented air, sprang towards the carriage, grimacing horribly. The Duke's suite, taking him for a madman, would have kept him at bay, but the Duke, at that moment awaking from sleep, unbuttoned his shirt and showed his assailant an iron ring suspended round his neck. At this sight the man took to his heels and disappeared into the wood. The mystery of this incident was never elucidated, and the Duke, when questioned on the matter, would offer no explanation. Could this ring have been Falk's talisman?
[492.] Margoliouth, op. cit., II. 121-4. See also Life of Lord George Gordon by Robert Watson (1795), pp. 71, 72.
[493.] Friedrich Biilau, Geheime Geschichten und räthselhafte Menschen, I. 325 (1850). The Public Advertiser, Aug. 22, 24, 1786.
[494.] Barruel, Vol. III. p. xi., quoting Gaultier.