secret societies passed from mouth to mouth instruction, warning,
encouragement. Germany has always been the home of the secret
society. Northern Europe gave birth to those countless associations
which have proved stronger than kings and surer than a throne. The
Hanseatic League, the first of the commercial unions which were
destined to build up the greatest empire of the world, lived longest
in Dantzig.

The Tugendbund, men whispered, was not dead but sleeping. Napoleon,
who had crushed it once, was watching for its revival; had a whole
army of his matchless secret police ready for it. And the
Tugendbund had had its centre in Dantzig.

Perhaps, in the Rathskeller itself--one of the largest wine stores
in the world, where tables and chairs are set beneath the arches of
the Exchange, a vast cave under the streets--perhaps here the
Tugendbund still encouraged men to be virtuous and self-denying for
no other or higher purpose than the overthrow of the Scourge of
Europe. Here the richer citizens have met from time immemorial to
drink with solemnity and a decent leisure the wines sent hither in
their own ships from the Rhine, from Greece and the Crimea, from
Bordeaux and Burgundy, from the Champagne and Tokay. This is not
only the Rathskeller, but the real Rathhaus, where the Dantzigers
have taken counsel over their afternoon wine from generation to
generation, whence have been issued to all the world those decrees
of probity and a commercial uprightness between buyer and seller,
debtor and creditor, master and man, which reached to every corner
of the commercial world. And now it was whispered that the latter-
day Dantzigers--the sons of those who formed the Hanseatic League:
mostly fat men with large faces and shrewd, calculating eyes; high