A really accomplished impostor is the most wretched of geniuses; he is a Napoleon on a desert island.

A man might surely, therefore, when he was certain that his credit was gone, take a certain pleasure in revealing the tricks of his unique trade, and gaining not indeed credit, but at least a kind of glory.

And in the course of this self-revelation he would come at last upon that part of himself which exists in every man--that part which does believe in, and value, and worship something.

This he would fling in his hearer's face with even greater pride, and take a delight in giving a kind of testimony to his religion which no man had ever given before--the testimony of a martyr who could not hope to be a saint.
But surely all this sudden tempest of candour in the man would not mean that he would burst into tears and become an exemplary ratepayer, like a villain in the worst parts of Dickens.

The moment the danger was withdrawn, the sense of having given himself away, of having betrayed the secret of his infamous freemasonry, would add an indescribable violence and foulness to his reaction of rage.