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A MODERN 
 PRIESTESS OF ISIS 
 
 ABRIDGED AND TRANSLATED ON BEHALF OF THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL 
 RESEARCH FROM THE RUSSIAN OF 
 
 VSEVOLOD SERGYEEVICH SOLOVYOFF 
 
 BY 
 
 WALTER LEAF, Litt.D. 
 
 WITH APPENDICES 
 
 LONDON 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST i6th STREET 
 1895 
 
2. \ 0~ 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 / AM authorised hy the Council of the Society for Psychical 
 Research to state formally on their hehafthat the present 
 translation of Mr. Solovyoff' s Modern Priestess of Isis 
 has been made and published with their approval^ and 
 to express their sense of the service which Mr, Lecif has 
 rendered to the Society by undertaking the labour of 
 translation. When the conten ts of Mr. Solovyoff's book 
 became knoivn to the Council^ it seemed clear that certain 
 portions of it — especially the accounts of the events at 
 Wiirzburg described in chaps, ooviii.-xx.^ the " Coi fession " 
 of Madame Blavatsky given in chap, xxii.^ and the 
 letters to Mr. Aksdkoff given in chaps, xxvi, to XXIX , 
 constituted an important supplement to the statement of 
 the results of the inquiry into " Theosophical phenomena'' 
 carried out by a Committee of the Society in 1884-5. 
 Our original idea zms to publish a translation of these 
 portions in the supplement to our Proceedings : but on 
 further consideration it seemed to us clearly desirable., f 
 possible^ that the greater part of Mr. Solovyoff's entertain- 
 ing narrative should be made accessible to Eiiglish readers. 
 For such English readers as were likely to be interested 
 in learning anything more about Madame Blavatsky 
 would not so much desire additional proof that she was a 
 charlatan — a question already judged and decided — but 
 rather some explanation of the remarkable success of her 
 
iv 
 
 Prefatory Note. 
 
 imposture ; and Mr. Solovyoff' s vivid description of the 
 mingled qualities of' the zivomans nature — her supple 
 craft and reckless audacity^ her intellectual vigour and 
 elastic vitality^ her genuine bonhomie, qffectionateness 
 and ( on occasion ) persuasive pathos — afforded an impor- 
 tant element of the required explanation^ such as probably 
 no one but a compatriot could have supplied. Whether 
 the Theosophical Society is likely to last much longer^ I 
 am not in a position to say ; but even if it were to expire 
 next year^ its tiventy years' existence would be a pheno- 
 meno7i of some interest for the historian of European 
 society in the nineteenth century ; and it is not likely 
 that any book zvill be written throicing more light on its 
 origin than A Modem Priestess of Isis. 
 
 HENRY SIDGWICK. 
 
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 Mr. Solovyoff's Modern Priestess of Isis 
 appeared in eight of the monthly numbers for 
 1892 of the Rztssky Vyestnik (Russian Messen- 
 ger), the leading literary magazine of Russia, 
 and once the organ of the well-known Mr. 
 Katkoff The articles have since been pub- 
 lished separately in book-form. The Council 
 of the Society for Psychical Research, having 
 had their attention called to the work, think that 
 it is of such interest and importance, in rela- 
 tion to the inquiry carried out by them into 
 
 Theosophical Phenomena" in 1884-5, 
 justify the publication of a translation. It 
 should be stated at the outset that the accuracy 
 of the translation is guaranteed by the fact of 
 its revision by Mr. Michael Petrovo-Solovovo 
 of St. Petersburg, an active member of the 
 Society, to whom the hearty thanks of the 
 Council and the translator are tendered for his 
 assistance and advice. 
 
 It has been thought desirable to make con- 
 siderable abbreviations from the original, falling 
 
VI 
 
 Translator s Preface. 
 
 generally underoneor other ofthefollowingheads : 
 (i) It was clearly unnecessary to reproduce Mr. 
 Solovyoff's long and excellent abridgment of 
 the Report of the Committee on Theosophical 
 Phenomena, and Mr. Hodgson's Report issued 
 with it ; those who will may find the original in 
 vol. iii. of the Proceedings. (2) Mr. Solovyoff 
 makes many references to previous articles 
 published by Madame Jelihovsky, Madame 
 Blavatsky's sister, in various Russian periodi- 
 cals. These are not essential to his argument, 
 and would be useless to readers to whom the 
 articles in question are not accessible. (3) Mr. 
 Solovyoff's pages are enlivened by many graphic 
 descriptions of persons whom h^ met in 
 connexion with Madame Blavatsky, especially 
 members of the Paris Theosophical Society. 
 But these again, however skilfully drawn, are yet 
 only secondary to the principal portrait, and it is 
 certainly better that what is merely personal should 
 be excluded. (4) A certain amount of matter 
 has been omitted as of insufficient interest for 
 English readers, or as involving doubtful ques- 
 tions to which it was for various reasons not 
 desirable to give further currency. But even 
 with these considerable deductions it will be 
 seen that the mass which remains not only 
 presents us with an admirably told narrative 
 and a psychological study of extreme interest, 
 
Translator's Preface. 
 
 vii 
 
 but adds materially to the evidence touching 
 the Theosophical Society and its foundress. 
 
 The appearance of the articles called of 
 necessity for a reply from Madame Jelihovsky. 
 This appeared in April, 1893, under the title of 
 H. P, Blavatsky and a Modern Priest of 
 Truth, in the form of a separate pamphlet. 
 This too is given in an abridged form in 
 Appendix A. I may say at once that the 
 preparation of this abridgment has been by far 
 the most difficult and anxious part of my task. 
 There could be no hesitation as to the propriety 
 of presenting the evidence offered on one side 
 as well as on the other. But an examination 
 of Madame Jelihovsky's pamphlet showed that 
 only a small portion of it could be considered 
 in the light of evidence at all. It consisted 
 largely of mere personal attacks on Mr. 
 Solovyoff, often in the form of innuendo and 
 insinuation, rather than of open assertion ; and 
 was, to a great extent, irrelevant to the question 
 of his trustworthiness as a witness. It covered 
 177 pages ; and that this bulk of matter should 
 be reprinted in full for the benefit of English 
 readers was not to be thought of I have 
 therefore had to undertake the somewhat diffi- 
 cult task of preparing an abridgment which 
 should contain all that could be considered 
 evidential. 
 
viii Translator's Preface, 
 
 Much, however, I was able to cut out at 
 once. All that dealt with passages omitted 
 from the original narrative could, of course, be 
 dropped without hesitation. This at once 
 accounted for a large portion of a pamphlet 
 where the strength of the attack was concen- 
 trated upon matters which did not directly 
 touch the real question at issue. But the 
 object of the rest was to produce disbelief in 
 Mr. Solovyoff's veracity, partly by the evidence 
 of letters written by himself, partly by comments 
 and assertions of the authoress. As regards 
 this I can only say that I have honestly and 
 conscientiously endeavoured to give everything 
 which is in any way to be regarded as of the 
 nature of relevant fact. Two or three letters of 
 Mr. Solovyoff's, and parts of some others, have 
 been omitted. This has been done after 
 careful consideration on the ground that they 
 in no way whatever bear on the question at 
 issue. They contain personal matters only, or 
 refer to questions which it was thought right to 
 omit from the principal narrative. The leading 
 members of the Society for Psychical Research 
 whom I have consulted with respect to these 
 omissions, and who share the responsibility for 
 them, are unanimous in holding that the letters 
 are in no sense evidential. 
 
 In republishing his articles from the Russky 
 
Translator's Preface. ix 
 
 Vyestmk, Mr. Solovyoff added to them an 
 Appendix containing a rejoinder to Madame 
 Jelihovsky's answer. Of this again an abridg- 
 ment is here given (Appendix B). The scale 
 of the abridgment is about the same as in the 
 case of the pamphlet with which it deals. 
 Here, too, large omissions have been possible, 
 as much of the rejoinder deals with matter 
 which I have left out of Madame Jelihovsky's 
 attack. With this Appendix the controversy 
 appears to have stopped. The following pages 
 will therefore give a fairly complete history of 
 it, and enable readers to draw their own con- 
 clusions. But a few words of comment will 
 perhaps not be out of place. 
 
 The evidence offered by Mr. Solovyoff falls 
 into two distinct classes, which require separate 
 consideration. There is, firstly, that which rests 
 upon his own narrative ; secondly, that which 
 consists of documentary evidence, chiefly in 
 the shape of letters written by Madame Blavat- 
 sky herself. 
 
 The authenticity of the letters has in no case 
 been impugned, and in the case of the Con- 
 fession " ^ has been explicitly admitted by 
 Madame Jelihovsky herself. The correspond- 
 ence with Mr. Aksakoff^ is further guaranteed 
 
 ^ See chap. xxii. 
 
 ^ See chaps, xxvi. to xxix. 
 
X 
 
 Translator's Preface, 
 
 by the name of the recipient, whose long life of 
 devotion to psychical studies forms the best 
 assurance that it would be as ridiculous as cruel 
 to suppose him guilty of complicity in an 
 attempt to palm off forged letters upon the 
 public. And, indeed, the letters m question 
 need little guarantee beyond the evidence of 
 style which they carry with them. It may, 
 therefore, be taken as certain that the letters 
 are what they purport to be, the work of 
 Madame Blavatsky's own hand. 
 
 The correspondence with Mr. Aksakoff 
 proves beyond the possibility of refutation, 
 (i) that at one time, in spite of her subsequent 
 vehement denials of the fact, Madame Blavat- 
 sky was a professed and thorough spiritualist in 
 the ordinary sense of the word. She therefore 
 adopted the theosophical " attitude of hostility 
 to spiritualism only after 1874, and had recourse 
 to deliberate falsehood to conceal the fact. (2) 
 At this period she is entirely silent as to the 
 Mahatmas who cruided her action; her cjuardian 
 and teacher is the ''pure spirit" John King, 
 well known at the stances of Williams and other 
 professional mediums in both hemispheres ; 
 he is her ''only friend" and thus occupies the 
 place later taken by Morya and Koot Hoomi. 
 With these two facts the whole legend, accord- 
 ing to which she had, before her stay in 
 
Translator's Preface. 
 
 XI 
 
 America in 1874, received initiation and in- 
 struction from her Mahatmas in Thibet, and 
 ever since stood in continuous relations with 
 them, is shown to be a later fabrication. The 
 foundation of her whole theosophical teaching 
 is a mere lie. The steps by which John King 
 is developed into Morya are moreover clearly 
 indicated. This correspondence alone forms a 
 complete refutation of Madame Blavatsky's 
 later doctrine. 
 
 When we come to Mr. Solovyoff's own nar- 
 rative, the documentary evidence, important 
 though it is, takes a secondary place ; though 
 it may either confirm or contradict the nar- 
 rative, it is not such as to form by itself a proof 
 positive of Madame Blavatsky's fraudulence.^ 
 The vital question is, does Mr. Solovyoff tell 
 the truth in his account of the Wiirzburg 
 conversations?^ If he does, then, of course, 
 there is an end of theosophy as a system of 
 doctrine based upon communication from hidden 
 Masters, of whom Madame Blavatsky was the 
 prophet. The defenders of Madame Blavatsky 
 are therefore bound to contend that Mr. Solo- 
 vyoff is a man of so debased a character that 
 
 ^ Though indeed phrases such as those on pp. 181, 
 184, 185, are enough to carry conviction to any impartial 
 reader. 
 
 ^ See chaps, xix. and xx. 
 
xii 
 
 Translator's Preface, 
 
 he would not hesitate to invent a false accusa- 
 tion, in order morally to destroy a woman for 
 whom he all the time professes a real sym- 
 pathy and pity. 
 
 So far as the attack on him rests on the mere 
 assertions of the assailant, it may, I think, be 
 disregarded ; for whatever may be the outcome 
 of the controversy as affecting Mr. Solovyoff's 
 character for veracity, it can hardly fail to 
 prevent a careful reader from placing any 
 reliance on the unsupported statements of 
 Madame Jelihovsky's accusation. As to this, 
 Mr. Solovyoff's reply, with M. Baissac's letter 
 (p. 351), and that in which Colonel Brusiloff, 
 Madame Jelihovsky's own witness, entirely 
 contradicts her positive statements, is decisive. 
 And another striking piece of evidence seems 
 not to have been known to Mr. Solovyoff On 
 p. 292, Madame Jelihovsky triumphantly con- 
 tradicts a statement of Mr. Solovyoff's, by a 
 supposed quotation from a document which she 
 states that she has in her possession. I have 
 pointed out how a translation of this very 
 document, issued under theosophical authority, 
 confirms Mr. Solovyoff on this point and refutes 
 Madame Jelihovsky. After this we may be 
 excused if we pay no attention to her statements 
 unless supported by positive proofs. 
 
 But I must turn aside for a moment to deal 
 
Translator's Preface, 
 
 xiii 
 
 with an accusation which, though it is not con- 
 tained in the pamphlet, has been pubhshed, on 
 the authority of Madame Jehhovsky or of one 
 of her daughters, in a speech made by Mrs. 
 Besant at a meeting of the Society for Psychical 
 Research. Into the details of this accusation 
 it is not necessary to go ; for it is one which 
 solely affects Mr. Solovyoff's private life, and 
 has nothing to do with his character for veracity. 
 But it is clearly the accusation to which Madame 
 Jelihovsky alludes in her pamphlet, and which 
 she says she will not publish, because she has 
 no clear proofs " ; and whatever the nature of 
 Mr. Solovyoff's offence, it was not, in Madame 
 Jelihovsky's eyes, such as to prevent her from 
 continuing on terms of intimate friendship with 
 Mr. Solovyoff, and allowing him to be on an 
 equally familiar footing with her unmarried 
 daughters : he even married his second w^ife 
 from her house. 
 
 Madame Jelihovsky is, moreover, a danger- 
 ous witness for her own side ; for not only did 
 she herself first warn Mr. Solovyoff against the 
 moral danger of any dealings with her sister, 
 but it is admittedly she who supplied him with 
 information such as should render it impossible 
 to represent Madame Blavatsky as a lady of 
 exalted moral character. 
 
 So far then as Madame Jelihovsky's own 
 
xiv 
 
 Translator s Preface. 
 
 testimony goes, we shall not allow it to weigh 
 against Mr. Solovyoff's high position in Russian 
 society and literature. The only question for 
 us is whether any of his letters, quoted by 
 Madame Jelihovsky, are so inconsistent with 
 his narrative as to lead us to refuse him cre- 
 dence. 
 
 It is clear that these letters and Mr. Solovy- 
 off's own narrative present two very different 
 pictures of his mental attitude during 1884 and 
 1885. The narrative represents Mr. Solovyoff, 
 with the exception of short phases when he was 
 carried away in spite of himself, as a cool- 
 headed critic engaged on a scientific inquiry. 
 The letters show that he was more than 
 coquetting with belief during the greater part 
 of this period. Readers have the materials for 
 a judgment before them, and must decide for 
 themselves as to the bearing of this on Mr. 
 Solovyoff's credibility. It will be only reason- 
 able that in so doing they should remember the 
 inevitable tendency which a man has after the 
 event, especially at an interval of several years, 
 to consider himself wiser from the first than he 
 was in reality ; and they will also remember 
 that Mr. Solovyoff is amply justified by his 
 letters in stating that from the first he never 
 professed an absolute belief m Madame Blavat- 
 sky and her doctrines ; and that she was 
 
Translator's Preface, 
 
 XV 
 
 throughout well aware of the fact. Nor should 
 it be forgotten that the letters are not entire ; 
 they are selected by a bitter personal enemy 
 with the purpose of damaging their writer, who 
 is entitled to the benefit of his assertion that, 
 if quoted in full, they would have strengthened 
 his case. 
 
 The letter which raises the most serious 
 question is, in my mind, the letter marked [B] 
 on p. 288. This does, so far as I can judge, 
 imply a real inconsistency with Mr. Solovyoff's 
 narrative ; it implies that he has not correctly 
 represented the mental attitude in which he 
 found himself after the Wnrzburg conversations. 
 I confess that I am not satisfied with his own 
 explanation that the whole letter is merely 
 bantering. In fact under the circumstances the 
 ''bantering tone" itself requires explanation. 
 It seems to me to be the letter of a man who is 
 " hedging " — no doubt in a more or less jocose 
 tone, but still with an undercurrent of serious 
 meaning ; and I cannot doubt that he was at this 
 time waiting in the hope that the ''master's" 
 prophecies might turn out to be true, and thus 
 after all enable him to believe in the Mahatmas. 
 Had the prophecies been justified by the event, 
 I believe that Mr. Solovyoff was prepared to 
 accept Madame Blavatsky's explanations, that 
 she had confessed under the influence of the 
 
XVI 
 
 Translator's Preface, 
 
 black magician," or in order to satisfy the 
 ''master" by a test. In consenting to wsii 
 the two months, Mr. Solovyoff had in fact 
 logically committed himself to take this position; 
 he must have taken it more thoroughly, and 
 been more deeply impressed by the prophecies, 
 than he is now willing to admit to himself. 
 
 On this supposition the letter becomes 
 intelligible. The inference which Madame 
 Jelihovsky wishes us to draw, however, is that 
 at this time Mr. Solovyoff, after his visit to 
 Wurzburg, was still a believer in Madame 
 Blavatsky and her powers ; but that shortly 
 afterwards, disgusted that she would not initiate 
 him into the higher occultism, he for the first 
 time invented the whole of the Wurzburg 
 conversations by way of revenge. If he did 
 so, he must have written his intentions to 
 Madame Blavatsky before she wrote the 
 ''Confession," which evidently refers to them. 
 How then are we to account for the fact that no 
 letter has been produced in which he even hints 
 at such a monstrous design? Madame Blavatsky 
 must have been aware that in the struggle 
 which was about to begin a letter even in- 
 directly hinting at such a sudden change of 
 attitude would have been an arm of inestimable 
 value in her hands. Nor is the tone of the 
 " Confession " that of a woman who has been 
 
Translator's Preface, 
 
 XVll 
 
 falsely accused. *'You are driving me to 
 desperation " is the burden of that remarkable 
 document; but not ''you are covering your- 
 self with shame by your vile and baseless 
 calumnies". It is far more natural that a man 
 wavering between two opposite hypotheses, one 
 of which he has reason to believe, the other 
 of which he wishes to believe, should have 
 written letter [B] than that a woman knowing 
 herself to be falsely accused should have 
 written the Confession 
 
 Thus though Mr. Solovyoff's letters give us 
 a decidedly different picture of his mental atti- 
 tude from that drawn by the narrative, I cannot 
 see that either they or Madame Jelihovsky's 
 statements can cast any material doubt on the 
 ^truth of the facts which he states. In matters 
 of verifiable fact, as distinct from mental atti- 
 tude, he remains unshaken. In one or two 
 small points indeed he has been convicted 
 of error ; but they are ludicrously irrelevant to 
 the question at issue, and the fact that nothing 
 more serious has been discovered in a narrative 
 written seven years after the events which it 
 describes, is to be regarded, considering the 
 ordeal through which it has had to pass, as a 
 strong testimony in favour of Mr. Solovyoff's 
 accuracy. 
 
 I have endeavoured to examine Mr. Solo- 
 
 b 
 
XVlll 
 
 Translator's Preface. 
 
 vyoffs evidence impartially on its own merits ; 
 but it must not be forgotten that it is only the 
 last stone on a cairn. Those who have studied 
 Mr. Hodgson's report will find in the Wiirzburg 
 conversations only what they had already been 
 taught to expect by overwhelming testimony 
 with which Mr. Solovyoff had nothing to do. 
 To the vast majority of sensible people, the 
 question of Madame Blavatsky's honesty has 
 been already so convincingly disposed of, as to 
 remove any a p7nori doubts concerning the 
 veracity of any person who declares her an 
 impostor. For them the simple assertion of a 
 gentleman in Mr. Solovyoffs position is suffi- 
 cient ; as he cannot add to the force of evidence 
 already unanswered and unanswerable, so there 
 can be no presumption against him when he 
 adds to its variety. His narrative is in fact, as 
 he himself calls it, a supplement to the damning 
 act of accusation drawn up by the Committee 
 on Theosophical Phenomena. 
 
 Finally I should like to express my sense 
 of the extreme literary ability with which Mr. 
 Solovyoff has drawn his picture. But for this 
 literary charm I should hardly have cared to 
 face the labour of translation ; I trust that it 
 may not have entirely perished in the rendering. 
 In my own case — and I believe that the same 
 will be felt by many others — Mr. Solovyoff has 
 
Translator's Preface, 
 
 xix 
 
 rather raised than lowered my opinion of 
 Madame Elavatsky. That she was an arch 
 impostor I knew before ; but my very sHght 
 acquaintance with her had not enabled me to 
 grasp the secret of the fascination which she 
 exercised over so many of those with whom 
 she came in contact. Still less could the 
 fabulous stories of her admirers explain the 
 riddle. In translating the Modern Priestess of 
 his I have for the first time felt that I could 
 see her as a human being, and to some extent 
 sympathise with her in the troubles — the self- 
 made troubles — of her unique career. Whether 
 his story be true or no, and I at least have no 
 doubt of its substantial truth, Mr. Solovyofif 
 has at all events given us a psychological 
 study of extraordinary interest. 
 
 Mr. W. Emmette Coleman has kindly offered 
 the Society for publication a summary of his 
 analysis of the sources of Madame Blavatsky's 
 theosophical writings. His conclusions so 
 entirely confirm and expand w^hat Mr. Solovyoff 
 has said on this head that no apology is needed 
 for the addition of his paper (Appendix C). 
 
 WALTER LEAF. 
 
 November^ 1894. 
 
A MODERN PRIESTESS OF ISIS. 
 
 I. 
 
 On May 8th (n.s.), 1891, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky 
 died in London. She was known in Russia as the 
 authoress of certain interesting and able stories, 
 From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan, and The 
 Enigmatical Tribes of the Blue Mountains, published 
 in the Russky Vyestnik under the pseudonym of 
 Radda Bay". 
 
 But about her writings of another sort, and about 
 her career in general, very little was known in 
 Russia. A correspondence from London in the 
 Novoye Vremya alluded to the exposure of the 
 supposed miraculous phenomena which she pro- 
 duced. Recently too, indeed, after her death there 
 was published in a professional journal, the Review 
 of Clinical and Forensic Psychiatry and Neuropathology, 
 a critical sketch by Dr. Rosenbach, entitled 
 "Modern Mysticism". This sketch was also issued 
 as a separate pamphlet. A whole chapter of it is 
 headed The Theosophical Cult," and is devoted to 
 the investigation by the London Society for Psychical 
 Research of the theosophical phenomena, and the 
 exposure of their fraudulence. 
 
 The correspondence of the Novoye Vremya had 
 been quite forgotten, and Dr. Rosenbach's essay was 
 
2 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Ists. 
 
 known to few, so that the Russian pubHc had a 
 very scanty acquaintance with the career of the late 
 Madame Blavatsky ; when suddenly there appeared, 
 first in a newspaper, the Novosti, and then in a 
 magazine, the Russkoe Obozrenie, lengthy articles by 
 Madame Jelihovsky. In these articles the writer, 
 Madame Blavatsky's own sister, amazed at the 
 silence of the Russian press about the creatress of 
 theosophy, undertakes to introduce to our public a 
 woman whom her followers in America, India and 
 Europe call ''a chosen torch," her enemies ''the 
 greatest impostor of the age " ; whom all who are 
 acquainted with her writings and her career for the 
 last fifteen or twenty years regard as " the sphinx 
 of the nineteenth century," and whose death was 
 recorded by the whole of the foreign press. 
 
 It was also in the Novosti, it seems, that there 
 was published some two years ago a long article by 
 another lady contributor to this newspaper. In this 
 .article there was an account of life in Paris, and 
 allusion was made to the Paris " Theosophical 
 Society," as well as to the fact that it w^as broken up 
 in consequence of revelations made by myself. 
 
 I do not deny the fact thus stated by the contribu- 
 tor to the Novosti, In fact, apart from Helena 
 Petrovna Blavatsky's own family, I am the only 
 Russian who knew her intimately and well in the 
 period from 1884 to 1886, the period, that is, which 
 followed her appearance in Europe from India and 
 during which there started up the European Theo- 
 sophical Societies," organised by her and by her 
 assistant, Henry Olcott, an American known by the 
 title of Colonel Olcott. It is a fact that, in 1886, 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 3 
 
 I assisted in the breaking up of the first French 
 Theosophical Society, which had been founded under 
 the title of the Societe Theosophique d'Orient et 
 d'Occident " by the Duchesse de Pomar, Lady 
 Caithness, and had been confirmed by Helena 
 Petrovna Blavatsky in Paris in 1884. 
 
 Since my return to Russia to this day, I have not 
 written a word about Madame Blavatsky and her 
 Theosophical Society. I have held it worse than 
 useless to allude to this anti-Christian movement, 
 so long as it remained a matter which was little 
 known in Russia. I kept to myself all I knew, and 
 the documentary evidence I possessed, against the 
 time when a panegyric of Madame Blavatsky might 
 appear in the Russian press, and with it, in one 
 form or another, the propaganda of her name and 
 her newest theosophy. One thing only I desired : 
 that such a time might never come, and that I 
 might be absolved from the moral duty of again 
 alluding to the question. 
 
 Hitherto it has been possible for me to keep 
 silence. But the lengthy articles of Madame 
 Jelihovsky, in which she proclaims her sister, not 
 without grounds, a universal celebrity, and speaks 
 of the ^^new religion" preached and created by her 
 as a ^' pure and lofty" doctrine, are in fact the 
 propaganda in Russia of this '^pure and lofty" 
 doctrine, and of the name of its apostle. 
 
 These articles on our famous countrywoman 
 (^whom we did not appreciate enough, and on the 
 world-wide importance and dissemination of her 
 doctrines, cannot but interest our public, credulous 
 as it is, and prone to every sort of ''new doctrine". 
 
4 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 "Churls are lords beyond the mountains," [^^ a beau 
 mentir qui vient de loin"] and as one reads 
 Madame Jelihovsky's articles, a most attractive 
 picture is in fact presented, a picture calculated to 
 fire the imagination thirsting for every novelty, 
 especially if it promises satisfaction to our highest 
 spiritual interest. 
 
 In these circumstances to keep silence and to 
 hide the truth, if one knows it, becomes a crime. I 
 therefore find myself compelled to break silence 
 about my intimate knowledge of Helena Petrovna 
 Blavatsky and her society. This is to me most 
 painful and repugnant, as it must be painful and 
 repugnant to any man who is obliged, even for the 
 holiest object, to break open a tomb and to bring forth 
 the corpse hidden in it. Moreover, in addition to pain 
 and reluctance, I cannot rid myself of the feeling of 
 pity which was always inspired in me by this woman, 
 who was in any case beyond the common, and 
 richly endow^ed by nature. 
 
 Because of this involuntary feeling of pity I 
 should be only too glad to forget all I know. Obli- 
 vion, complete oblivion, that is the one thing which 
 is now to be desired for Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. 
 But for her there is neither oblivion nor death, 
 though her body was destroyed by cremation in 
 London, and her ashes are preserved in three urns. 
 For her there is no death, so we are told in print 
 by her own sister, whose articles are at this moment 
 the only reason which forces upon me the mioral 
 necessity of turning to those painful and repugnant 
 reminiscences, and publishing the bundle of docu- 
 ments which I have preserved. 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 5 
 
 Unhappy Helena Petrovna ! I see her before me 
 as though she were alive ; but her picture is not 
 only a double one, it is treble. There were in her 
 - three perfectly different persons. There was indeed 
 a fourth person in her, but that is one which I never 
 knew personally, and only the last extremity will 
 force me to touch on it in what follows. There are 
 still alive many who knew her in her youth and her 
 mature years; and wonderful tales they tell about the 
 adventures of her stormy and wandering life. 
 
 I made her acquaintance at a time when, for her, 
 the wom.an's life " was over, and she had started on 
 a period of very different activity. The end of this 
 stormy '^woman's life" proved for her to be no end 
 such as it generally is with ordinary women, but 
 only the beginning of her real existence, and of the 
 manifestation of all the gifts which nature had 
 bestowed upon her. 
 
 As I know her, she is elderly and ill, but full of 
 fire and energy ; I cannot imagine her otherwise. 
 As I have said, there were in her three persons. 
 The first of these was ''Helena Petrovna" on her 
 quiet days, far away from the business of the Theo- 
 sophical Society, a cheerful, witty companion, with 
 an inexhaustible store of rough but real humour, of 
 narratives, interesting, though, alas ! by no means 
 always founded on strict truth, and of anecdotes ; 
 droll and sympathetic, with a sort of magnetic 
 attraction, and even capable of good impulses. 
 
 Her second character was that of " Radda Bay," 
 H. P. Blavatsky, or H. P. B. ; the author of the 
 Caves and Jungles of Hindostan, The Enigmatical Tribes, 
 Isis Unveiled, The Secret Doctrine, The Key to Theo- 
 
6 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 sophy ; the editor of the Theosophist, Lucifer, etc.; a 
 writer wonderful for her Hterary talent, her immense 
 memory, and her power of rapidly grasping the most 
 heterogeneous subjects and writing on them at will ; 
 writing interestingly and attractively, though often 
 disconnectedly and with digressions in every direc- 
 tion. 
 
 If the writings of Madame Blavatsky had been, as 
 Madame Jelihovsky says, the work of her mysterious 
 teacher, a mighty sage, half god, living in the dales 
 of Thibet and dictating to her, in complete indiffer- 
 ence to distance, when she was in America or 
 Europe, they would have done but little credit, in 
 view of their imperfections, to such a sage. To 
 her, who in her youth had but ill acquired the 
 rudiments of elementary education, and till she was 
 forty — I speak again on her sister's authority — had 
 learnt but little, they do the greatest credit ; they 
 prove her immense capabilities, and her ardent love 
 of work, thanks to which she was able to forget, as I 
 myself saw, the grievous sufferings of the various 
 diseases which for long tormented her. 
 
 In this respect her writings are really a miracle ; 
 but the explanation of this miracle we must seek in 
 the secrets of the human intellect and soul, not in 
 any invisible and problematical "Mahatma," dictat- 
 ing to her and guiding her hand from Thibet, nor 
 in the aerial transmission of the books which she 
 needed for reference. But to all this I shall return 
 in its proper place, as well as to the question of what 
 her doctrine is, whether it is hers at all, and how 
 she came to declare herself its apostle. 
 
 The third character of H. P. Blavatsky, behind 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 7 
 
 which, unfortunately, the two others have but too 
 often been hidden and vanished from sight, is that 
 of Madame," as all the theosophists, without dis- 
 tinction of nationality, used to call her, the foundress 
 of the Theosophical Society and its mistress, the 
 femme aux phenomenes. 
 
 When she comes to deal with the phenomena, 
 Madame Jelihovsky says in her articles that 
 Madame Blavatsky herself ''personally despised 
 these marvels"; but that her followers attest them, 
 orally and in print, with the greatest confidence. 
 " The best of those who surrounded her did not 
 value her for them, and she herself, especially in 
 the later years of her life, referred to them with 
 contempt, saying that they were the least important 
 work of forces known to every conjuring fakir. 
 Many of the ' Reminiscences/ published by those 
 who knew her best, show how often she stopped with 
 irritation the curiosity of her numerous outside 
 visitors." 
 
 Alas, it is not so. The whole question lies precisely 
 in the phenomena. It was with their help that H. 
 P. Blavatsky founded her Theosophical Society, they 
 were her panoply when she appeared in Europe to 
 disseminate her doctrine, by them she advertised 
 herself and gathered about her those who for one 
 purpose or another wished to see them. It was 
 these phenomena only which interested and brought 
 into her circle of acquaintance such men as Crookes, 
 Flammarion, Charles Richet and the English savants 
 who had established the London Society for 
 Psychical Research. 
 
 These phenomena were, unhappily, indissolubly 
 
8 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 bound up alike with her and with her Theosophical 
 Society, as will be shown later. In them might have 
 been her real strength, and in them was shown her 
 weakness. Through them she morally ruined her- 
 self and many others, for them she tortured and 
 enraged herself, deadened her own soul and heart, 
 grew into a fury, and was compelled to endure 
 everything about which Madame Jelihovsky is 
 silent. 
 
 When these phenomena were exposed, as will be 
 clearly proved hereafter, by many proofs, particu- 
 larly by the original proofs and documents of the 
 London Society for Psychical Research, Madame 
 Blavatsky thought herself lost. What was to be 
 expected by a woman who had taken for her motto, 
 " There is no religion higher than truth " — a motto 
 which was printed even on her note-paper and 
 envelopes — and had established the most important 
 positions of her doctrine by phenomena which 
 proved to be undoubtedly and incontestably the 
 coarsest and most shocking deceit and trickery ? 
 It seemed that she was right in considering herself 
 lost. 
 
 But the fact is that in human society there is 
 always a multitude of men for whom truth is truth 
 only when it agrees with their own wishes. Those 
 who in one way or another were interested in the 
 success of the Theosophical Society, and moreover felt 
 themselves compromised, began to cry out that the 
 famous ''emissary of the Thibetan Mahatmas " was 
 calumniated; and at the same time they did not 
 stick at any calumny, even the vilest, in order so 
 far as they could to blacken and crush her "enemies," 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 9 
 
 those, that is to say, who had not allowed themselves 
 to be duped by her. 
 
 Not a few of those who hunger and thirst after 
 fresh pastures made no attempt to inquire into 
 Madame Blavatsky's record, and joined her flock. 
 She thus found that she was not lost at all. She 
 defended herself, and set about continuing and even 
 widening her career, save only in respect to pheno- 
 mena, which she renounced ; they, it would seem, 
 were a vain expenditure of vital force," non- 
 sensical manifestations,'' and so on. 
 
 But now, when Madame Blavatsky is no more, 
 and it is consequently no longer possible to convince 
 oneself of her phenomena in person, Colonel" Olcott 
 marches out once more, at the head of a whole 
 regiment of persons of both sexes, who attest the 
 most astounding miracles as having been wrought 
 by "Madame". Even Madame Jelihovsky cannot 
 refrain from addressing the Russian public on the 
 subject of these miracles, and telling strange stories 
 about them. 
 
 In view of all this I too feel it to be my bounden 
 duty to publish for general information the '^as- 
 tounding phenomena" of which it has been my 
 fortune to be a witness. ''There is no religion 
 higher than truth;" so the unhappy Helena Petrovna 
 said, wrote, and printed on her letter-paper and her 
 envelopes. 
 
11. 
 
 In May, 1884, I was living in Paris, and planning 
 some works, bellettristic or otherwise, which should 
 touch on certain little-known subjects; on the rare, 
 but in my opinion real, manifestations of the im- 
 perfectly investigated spiritual powers of man. I 
 was occupied, among other things, with mystic and 
 so-called "occultist" literature. 
 
 As I was going through my notes from the 
 Bibliotheque Nationale, there came into my mind 
 the very interesting narratives of Radda Bay, in 
 other words of Madame Blavatsky, published in the 
 Russky Vyestnik under the title of From the Caves 
 and Jungles of Hindostan, which had been read 
 with so much interest in Russia. The subject of 
 my studies was closely connected with the essential 
 motive of these narratives. 
 
 Should I not make up my mind in earnest ? " I 
 thought. Should I not start for India, to see our 
 wonderful countrywoman, Madame Blavatsky, and 
 convince myself in person as to how^ far the marvels 
 of which she speaks are in accordance with fact ? " 
 
 Just at this time a friend showed me a copy of the 
 Matin, and there, among the news of the day, was 
 an announcement that the famous foundress of the 
 Theosophical Society, H. P. Blavatsky, was in 
 Europe ; that a day or two before she had arrived 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 II 
 
 in Paris from Nice; that she had settled in Rue 
 Notre Dame des Champs, and would there receive 
 any one who was interested in the theosophical 
 - movement which she had set on foot. It was but 
 a short note ; but two or three phrases sketched out 
 to me the surroundings of the newly-arrived celebrity, 
 to whose temple were flocking from all sides those 
 who were thirsting to become acquainted with 
 her and her marvels. 
 
 I immediately wrote to St. Petersburg to Mr. P., 
 who, as I knew, was in correspondence with Madame 
 Blavatsky. I begged him to acquaint her at once 
 with the fact that a certain resident in Paris would 
 like to make her acquaintance, but would not do so 
 till he had first received her assent. 
 
 A few days after, much sooner than I could have 
 expected, I received an answer from St. Petersburg, 
 informing me that H. P. Blavatsky expected me, 
 and would receive me whenever I liked. 
 
 It was not without some emotion that I went to 
 Rue Notre Dame des Champs, selecting an hour 
 which I thought would be the most suitable, not too 
 early and not very late. During the time when I 
 was awaiting my reply from St. Petersburg I had 
 quite electrified myself with the idea of the interesting 
 acquaintance which I was about to make. 
 
 Though I had not in my possession the Caves 
 and Jungles of Hindosian, I remembered it from 
 beginning to end, and felt all the fascination of this 
 skilful narrative, which combines realism with the 
 most wonderful mystery. 
 
 From the impression produced upon me by the 
 little notice in the Matin. I expected to see 
 
12 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 something which in many ways would be mag- 
 nificent, and had prepared myself for the solemn 
 audience which Madame Blavatsky would vouchsafe 
 me. I was convinced that I should find a row of 
 carriages at her door, and that I should present 
 myself in the midst of a great and varied company 
 of her visitors. 
 
 But I found myself in a long mean street on the 
 left bank of the Seine, de V autre cote de Veau as the 
 Parisians say. The coachman stopped at the 
 number I had told him. The house was unsightly 
 enough to look at, and at the door there was not a 
 single carriage. 
 
 " My dear sir, you have let her slip ; she has left 
 Paris," I said to myself with vexation. 
 
 In answer to my inquiry the concierge showed 
 me the way. I climbed a very, very dark staircase, 
 rang, and a slovenly figure in an Oriental turban 
 admitted me into a tiny dark lobby. 
 
 To my question, whether Madame Blavatsky 
 would receive me, the slovenly figure replied with 
 an " Entrez, monsieur," and vanished with my card, 
 while I was left to wait in a small low room, poorly 
 and insufficiently furnished. 
 
 I had not long to wait. The door opened, and 
 she was before me ; a rather tall woman, though she 
 produced the impression of being short, on account 
 of her unusual stoutness. Her great head seemed 
 all the greater from her thick and very bright hair, 
 touched with a scarcely perceptible grey, and very 
 slightly frizzed, by nature and not by art, as I 
 subsequently convinced myself. 
 
 At the first moment her plain, old, earthy- 
 
A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 13 
 
 coloured face struck me as repulsive ; but she fixed 
 on me the gaze of her great, rolling, pale blue eyes, 
 and in these wonderful eyes, with their hidden 
 - power, all the rest was forgotten. 
 
 I remarked, however, that she was very strangely 
 dressed, in a sort of black sacque, and that all the 
 fingers of her small, soft, and as it were boneless 
 hands, with their slender points and long nails, 
 were covered with great jewelled rings. 
 
 She received me so simply, affectionately and 
 kindly, it was so pleasant to me to hear her Russian 
 talk, that my disappointment passed off, and all 
 the unexpectedness of the surroundings ceased to 
 surprise me ; on the contrary, I was very pleased 
 to find something quite different from what I had 
 looked for. 
 
 At the end of a quarter of an hour I was talking 
 to Helena Petrovna as though she were an old 
 friend, and all her homely coarse appearance actu- 
 ally began to please me. And her eyes gazed at 
 me so graciously, and at the same time pierced me 
 so attentively. 
 
 I explained to her that it was not mere idle curi- 
 osity that had brought me to her ; that I was busied 
 with mystic and occult literature, and had come for 
 an answer to many questions of the greatest serious- 
 ness and importance to myself. 
 
 Whatever it was that brought you to me," she 
 said, I am excessively glad to make your acquaint- 
 ance — you see I am a Russian — and if you come 
 on serious business besides, you may be sure that I 
 shall be entirely at your service. Where I can, I 
 will help you with the greatest delight." 
 
14 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 As she spoke, she laughed with a good-humoured 
 kindly laugh. 
 
 " You will have to begin at the ABC, Helena 
 Petrovna. All I know about yourself, your work 
 and your society is what you have yourself published 
 in the Rtissky Vyestniky 
 
 ^^Well, my little father," she went on, " since that 
 day 'much water has flowed down'. \i that time 
 our society had hardly hatched out from its egg ; 
 but now ! " 
 
 Then she began eagerly to tell me of the successes 
 of the theosophical movement in America and 
 India, and, in the immediate past, in Europe as well. 
 Are you here for long ? " I asked. 
 
 " I do not know myself yet ; the master sent me." 
 
 " What master ? " 
 
 ''My master, the teacher, my Guru; you may 
 call him Gulab Lai Singh, from the Caves and 
 Jimgles of Hindostan,'' 
 
 I remembered this Gulab Lai Singh in every 
 detail ; the mysterious being of whom she had told 
 her Russian readers such incredible stories, a being 
 who had attained the highest degree of human 
 knowledge, and produced the most marvellous 
 phenomena. I felt at once that the ground was 
 shaking beneath my feet. I have no fear of any- 
 body's smile when I declare that I then admitted 
 2.nd still admit the possibility of the existence, wher- 
 ever it may be, in the caves and jungles of Hindostan 
 if you will, of such a man, whose knowledge far 
 surpasses all that is known to our modern science. 
 If I had known for certain that such a man cannot 
 exist, I could only, after her first words about the 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 15 
 
 ''master," have continued the conversation with the 
 aim of reveahng her falsehood and deception. But 
 at that time I was far from having any such aim. 
 
 Helena Petrovna spoke of this master of hers 
 wath entire simplicity, as though of a most ordinary 
 phenomenon. Still, in spite of all, I immediately 
 felt something, a sort of intangible falsehood ; it was 
 as though I had had a douche of cold water. 
 
 '' Helena Petrovna," I said, '' listen to me, and 
 if you have the power of gazing into a man and 
 seeing him as he really is, you may convince your- 
 self how far my words are serious. I come to you 
 in all honesty, without any mental reservations, 
 with a great spiritual problem ; I come to you to 
 obtain the fulfilment of what you promise, of the 
 allurements you hold out in your Caves and 
 Jungles of Hindostan. If you can answer this my 
 spiritual question seriously, promise me to do so ; 
 if you cannot or will not, it shall be all the same, 
 we will remain friends, as fellow-countrymen and 
 brothers of the pen, but let there be no more talk 
 between us of all your marvels or of your Theo- 
 sophical Society." 
 
 She did not answer me at once, but gazed into my 
 eyes enigmatically and long with her bright magnetic 
 gaze, and then solemnly said, ''I can," and stretched 
 me out her hand. 
 
 '' Excuse me," she said, getting up ; "I will be 
 back in a second, but I must tell Babula, my servant, 
 the Hindu who opened the door to you, to see 
 about my dinner — not that I am hungry." 
 
 She went out, and came back again in two or 
 three minutes. 
 
1 6 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 Now, my good fellow-countryman, my dear Mr. 
 Vsevolod Sergyeevich/' she began with a friendly 
 smile as she sat before me, sure enough you do 
 not believe me, but all the same when once I have 
 said, ' I can,' that means that I can and will. It 
 is true — believe it or not, as you like — that I knew 
 you before P. wrote to me, I knew that you were 
 being drawn towards me. Listen." 
 
 She made a sort of flourish with her hand, raised 
 it upwards, and suddenly, I heard distinctly, quite 
 distinctly, somewhere above our heads, near the 
 ceiling, a very melodious sound like a little silver 
 bell or an ^olian harp. 
 
 " What is the meaning of this ? " I asked. 
 
 ^^This means only that my master is here, 
 although you and I cannot see him. He tells me that 
 I may trust you, and am to do for you whatever I can. 
 Vous etes sous sa protection, henceforth and for ever." 
 
 She looked me straight in the eyes, and caressed 
 me with her glance and her kindly smile. 
 So there, sir." 
 
 I involuntarily liked her more and more. I was 
 attracted to her by a feeling of instantaneous 
 sympathy, and yet, if her "master" was really pre- 
 sent, and could penetrate the inmost nature of 
 things and of human thoughts, il ne m'aurait pas pris 
 sous sa protection, for I was asking myself all the time : 
 " Why was the sound of the silver bell not heard at 
 once, but only after she had left the room and come 
 back again ? " 
 
 Do you speak English ? " she asked me. 
 Unfortunately, no. I once took lessons in the 
 language, but now I have almost forgotten it." 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 17 
 
 ^' What a pity ! Well, we must get on with- 
 out it somehow, and you can set about learning 
 it." 
 
 Yes, certainly." 
 I here purposely indicate my ignorance of the 
 English language, which I to some extent exag- 
 gerated as I did not wish to embarrass anybody by 
 my imperfect pronunciation and my blunders. This 
 ignorance, as will appear in the course of my 
 narrative, far from being an impediment to me — 
 for all the time of my connexion with the Theo- 
 sophical Society I could get on perfectly with 
 Russian, French and German — actually rendered 
 me the greatest service, as it brought me into a 
 position of isolation, and besides, at certain im- 
 portant moments, enabled me to give myself up to 
 undisturbed observation. But I have no wish to 
 anticipate. 
 
 Stay, I will introduce you at once to Mohini, a 
 young Brahmin who has come here with me," said 
 Helena Petrovna. " He is a ' chela,' a disciple of 
 another Mahatma, Koot Hoomi by name, an ascetic 
 sage like my master, but much more communicative." 
 
 ''Mohini," she cried ; and in a moment the door 
 of the next room opened, and gave admission to a 
 rather strange young man. From his appearance 
 he seemed to be not more than from twenty-five to 
 twenty-seven years of age. His figure, which was 
 narrow-shouldered and not tall, was clad in a black 
 cashmere cassock ; his thick blue-black wavy hair 
 fell to his shoulders. The upper part of his bronze 
 face was strikingly handsome — a wise forehead, not 
 very high, straight eyebrows, not too thick, and most 
 
i8 ~ A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 magnificent velvety eyes with a deep and gentle 
 expression. Later on I saw a very different glance 
 from these eyes, but now they were deep and gentle. 
 It was only his nose, straight but too broad, and his 
 thick dark blue lips, projecting through a not over- 
 abundant growth of moustache and beard, which 
 prevented his being perfectly beautiful. In any case 
 his appearance might be considered very attractive, 
 and several female hearts in Asia and Europe could 
 tell tales of the beauty of this young apostle of the 
 newest theosophy. 
 
 Madame Blavatsky raised her hand, and Mohini 
 bowed himself to the earth and almost crawled as 
 though to receive her blessing. She laid her hand 
 upon his head, he raised himself and bowed to me 
 with the greatest courtesy. 
 
 I put out my hand to him, but he shrank from 
 me, and said, with a low bow: Excuse me, sir, I 
 may not 
 
 What does this mean ? Why cannot he take 
 my hand ? " I asked Helena Petrovna. 
 
 ''Why, there is no helping it," explained she; 
 ''you see, he is a chela, just the same as a monk, 
 an ascetic, you understand ; he has to keep off all 
 earthly influences ; do you know, he never so much 
 as looks at a woman ? " 
 
 "That doubt one can understand, but as for 
 refusing to take men's hands " 
 
 " He has acquired a very delicate organisation, he 
 feels too much the influence of human magnetism, 
 which can be transmitted by too close intercourse, 
 by the touch of a hand or a kiss ; so he refrains from 
 it, in order to keep himself perfectly free." 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 19 
 
 Mohini stood looking now at me, and now at 
 Helena Petrovna. 
 
 From the chelas of the Mahatmas she passed on 
 to her own Theosophical Society. 
 
 First of all you must know/' she said, '^that 
 the aim of our universal brotherhood is perfectly 
 devoid of any political character, and that the 
 society in no way interferes with the religious or 
 other convictions of its members. Our problems 
 are purely scientific, we bring back from darkness 
 and oblivion the mighty and ancient doctrines of 
 the East, which leave behind all which modern 
 European science knows, and of which it is so proud. 
 Our societ}^ undermines and destroys mean material- 
 istic science, and shows all its folly and inconsistency. 
 Only look ; all this ' civilised world ' is decaying 
 and perishing from want of faith. On one hand the 
 materialism of so-called science, on the other the 
 revolting conduct of the clergy, the Catholic clergy, 
 have led all into infidelity. We bring them, not to 
 believe, but to know, the immortality of the soul, 
 and what man can attain to, even on earth, by 
 the purification and education of the 'inner man'. 
 Look at me ; I am by no means a saint ; I am far 
 from being one, little father ! But still I know and 
 can do a good deal. You heard the silver bell ; you 
 shall hear and see still more, if you only -wish." 
 Of course I wish, Helena Petrovna." 
 
 " Why, that is right. Only, please, my good sir, 
 do not look at me in that suspicious way; you know 
 you have come to me in earnest, the master says so, 
 and he cannot err ; so you must just put your 
 suspiciousness in your pocket, and wait ; all will 
 
20 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 come in good time, and you will be ashamed of 
 this European suspiciousness of yours. How many 
 savants, unbelievers, materialists, yes, and thoroughly 
 convinced ones, have come to me, with just this 
 same bon ton suspicion of yours, and have gone 
 away quite mmivais ton, believing everything, 
 thanking me and calling me the saviour of their 
 souls ! What good is their gratitude to me ? 
 But if, out of a man defiled with all the abominations 
 of life, theosophy makes an all but sinless saint, 
 that, I fancy, is not so bad." 
 
 She continued to explain to me the meaning of her 
 society, and from her words it appeared to be a 
 really beneficent and intensely interesting institu- 
 tion. The inexhaustible treasure of ancient doc- 
 trines, hitherto jealously guarded in the mysterious 
 sanctuaries of India by the sage Raj -yogas, and com- 
 pletely unknown to the civilised world, was now, 
 thanks to her communications with the Mahatmas 
 and their confidence in her, being revealed to 
 Europeans. The world was to be renovated by the 
 true knowledge of the forces of nature. This 
 knowledge could not disturb the conscience of the 
 Christian, for even if it could not be explained by 
 the Christian creed, at least it did not contradict it. 
 
 ''And have you remained a Christian yourself?" 
 I asked. 
 
 " No, I never was one," replied Madame Blavatsky. 
 " Until my regeneration, till the time when I became 
 a wholly, wholly new creature, I never thought of 
 religion of any sort. So I was obliged solemnly to 
 embrace Buddhism, and entered into it with all its 
 rites. I do not attempt to conceal the fact, and do 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 2T 
 
 not attribute any importance to it ; that is all 
 external ; in the essence of the matter I am just 
 as much a Buddhist as I am a Christian or a 
 ' Mahometan. My religion is truth, for there is no 
 religion higher than truth." 
 
 Then would you advise me also, pray, to embrace 
 Buddhism, on the ground that there is no religion 
 higher than truth ? " I interrupted with a smile. 
 
 " There you are with your pin again," said she 
 also with a smile ; pray be so good as to go on 
 pricking. You see how fat I am, I don't feel it. 
 Don't make fun, you are such a mocker. The ques- 
 tion is not one of words, but once again, of truth." 
 Madam, I obey." 
 
 I had remained too long already, and so took 
 my leave. 
 
 Now you will come back again ? When ? " 
 When you command me." 
 
 ''Then I command you to come back every day 
 if you like. Make the most of me while I am here, 
 you will never be in my way ; if I want to work, I 
 will tell you so, I shall not stand upon ceremony. 
 Come and see me to-morrow." 
 
 " To-morrow is impossible, but I will come the 
 day after, with your permission." 
 
 '' Come rather earlier," she called out to me, when 
 I was already in the lobby and Babula was opening 
 the door on to the staircase. 
 
 I went home with a somewhat confused impression. 
 All this was certainly not what I had calculated on. 
 Yet what was it that did not satisfy me ? was it the 
 reclame in the Matin, Madame Blavatsky's poor 
 surroundings, and the complete absence of visitors ? 
 
22 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 I certainly could not approve this reclame, in- 
 serted, if not by herself, then, in all probability, by 
 the efforts of one of her nearest friends and as- 
 sociates, with the obvious intention of attracting the 
 absent visitors, and spreading her notoriety in Paris. 
 
 Still in any case the obscurity and solitude in 
 which she was living proved nothing in themselves, 
 and as for myself, it was much more agreeable and 
 satisfactory to be able to pay her numerous and 
 long visits without interruption. 
 
 What she said was interesting, but so far it was 
 only words. As for her silver bell, that looked like 
 a trick ; but so far I had no right to suspect Ijer of 
 such cold-blooded deceit, such shocking and cruel 
 mockery of the soul of man. 
 
 And herself? How came it that this old, ill- 
 favoured woman had such a power of attraction ? 
 How could this peculiar humorous good-nature and 
 simplicity be combined in her with the sort of 
 painful mystery hidden in her wonderful eyes ? 
 
 However that might be, though I was thoroughly 
 dissatisfied, I felt one thing : that I was drawn to 
 her, that I was interested in her, and that I should 
 look forward with impatience to the hour when I 
 should see her again. 
 
 The fact is that my Parisian solitude, however 
 good for sick nerves, was evidently overdone ; 
 Madame Blavatsky appeared as the one fresh and 
 living interest in this lonely life. 
 
III. 
 
 In two days I did in fact go to see Helena Petrovna, 
 and, at her request, a good deal earlier, that is to 
 say, between eleven and twelve. I again found her 
 alone, in the complete quiet of her little lodgings. 
 She was sitting in the same black sacque, her hands 
 sparkling with diamonds, emeralds and rubies, and 
 she was smoking and playing patience. 
 
 Welcome, welcome," — she rose a little to meet 
 me, and held out her hand ; " please take a chair 
 and come and sit here, a little nearer. I am 
 amusing myself with a little patience, it is my 
 favourite occupation." 
 
 I felt as though, from this Indian miracle-worker, 
 in this Rue Notre Dame des Champs, there came 
 a fragrant atmosphere of an old-fashioned Russian 
 country house. This American Buddhist, who had 
 been away from Russia God knows how many years, 
 who had dissipated her life in unknown parts, 
 among unknown people, was an incarnation of the 
 type of the old-time Russian country lady of 
 moderate means, grown stout in her farm-house. 
 Her every movement, her every gesture and word 
 were full of the true Russian spirit," which it would 
 seem all the Mahatmas in the world cannot drive 
 out where once it is firmly settled. I quite expected 
 the door to open, and some such housekeeper as 
 
24 
 
 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 Matrena Spiridonovna to come in for her mistress's 
 orders. The door did open ; but in came the 
 slovenly Babula with his turban and his ugly 
 roguish face. 
 
 He gave Helena Petrovna a letter in silence. 
 She asked me to excuse her, opened it and glanced 
 through it, and I could see by her face that she 
 was pleased. She even forgot her patience, and 
 carelessly mixed up the cards. She began to talk 
 about her universal brotherhood," and captivated 
 me by her account of the interesting materials 
 accessible to members of the ^'society" who wished 
 to acquaint themselves with the most ancient 
 literary monuments of the East, hitherto unseen 
 by European eyes. When she had sufficiently 
 aroused my curiosity and my desire for knowledge, 
 she exclaimed : My God, what wonderful, what 
 amazing subjects for a novelist or a poet ! It is an 
 inexhaustible spring ! If I were to show you ever 
 so little of this treasure, your eyes would start out 
 of your head, you would clutch at it." 
 
 And is it then impossible thus to clutch at it ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 For you it is impossible ; you are a European, 
 and the Hindus, even the most advanced, the wisest, 
 cannot make up their minds to trust the Europeans." 
 
 In that case, what becomes of the ' universal ' 
 brotherhood ? " 
 
 The brotherhood is founded precisely in order to 
 do away with this want of confidence ; the members 
 of the Theosophical Society cannot mistrust one 
 another ; they are all brothers, to whatever religion 
 and race they belong. Of course, all will be opened 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 25 
 
 to you, all our materials, if you become a theo- 
 sophist." 
 
 ''Whether I shall ever become a theosophist I 
 do not know; for in order to make up my mind to 
 it, it is essential that I should learn myself, in my 
 own person, just what it is that you mean by this 
 wide and lofty name ; but as your society is nothing 
 secret, and as it is neither religious in any sectarian 
 sense, nor political, but purely scientific and literary, 
 I do not see why I should not become a member, 
 when you have explained its constitution." 
 
 ''Ah, how kind you are, indeed," exclaimed 
 Madame Blavatsky, brightening up ; " I, as you 
 know, am never importunate, and if you had not 
 yourself expressed the desire, I should never have 
 proposed it. But now it is splendid. Now, my 
 dear friend, you have untied my hands, and without 
 arousing the surprise of the theosophists as well as 
 the indignation of my Hindus, such as Mohini, I 
 can initiate you into all our studies. But this is 
 all in the future, we have not yet got to studies. 
 The first thing is to ratify and properly organise the 
 ' Paris branch of the Theosophical Society'." 
 
 " Then is one already in existence ? " 
 
 " Yes, it has existed nominally for the last two 
 years ; a few people meet in the house of a certain 
 duchess plus lady, who likes to call herself ' Presi- 
 dente de la Societe Theosophique d'Orient et 
 d'Occident God bless her, let her call herself what 
 she likes, she is rich, and has a superb hotel of her 
 own here in Paris ; that is no objection ; she may be 
 useful. But we must have it all properly organised." 
 
 She took up a printed copy of the rules of the 
 
26 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 Theosophical Society lying on the table, and I went 
 through it with her from the first word to the last. 
 From these rules I could not but assure myself that 
 the society actually enjoined on its members not to 
 interfere with the consciences of others, to respect the 
 beliefs of their brethren, and not to touch on religion 
 or politics. Every member was bound to strive for 
 his own moral perfection, and all had to help one 
 another, both spiritually, and so far as possible 
 materially. As for the scientific work of the society, 
 there stood in the foreground the study of the Aryan 
 and other Oriental literatures, and the remains of 
 ancient knowledge and belief, and also the investi- 
 gation of the little-known laws of nature and the 
 spiritual powers of man. 
 
 Finding that there was nothing whatever in these 
 rules which could be considered in any way pre- 
 judicial, I repeated that I was ready to join the 
 society. 
 
 So then it is decided," said Helena Petrovna ; 
 
 we must not put off till to-morrow what can be 
 done to-day. Mohini ! Keightley ! " she cried. 
 
 Mohini and Keightley entered, and initiated me 
 into the society, teaching me the password. 
 
 The password consisted of certain movements of 
 the fingers and some perfectly disconnected words. 
 With great seriousness they made me repeat this 
 abracadabra several times over. I then paid my 
 member's subscription, handing over a pound 
 sterling, and obtaining a receipt. Mohini bowed 
 to me and smiled. Keightley shook my hand warmly, 
 and congratulated me on my entrance into the 
 society. They were so serious, and both of them, 
 
A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 27 
 
 especially Keightley, were so like children carried 
 away by a game, that my initiation " seemed to me 
 like a silly joke of my own, which left behind it a 
 - sort of feeling of shame and even of repugnance. 
 
 But there was worse to come. Mohini, now 
 acknowledging me as his brother, and evidently 
 wishing to interest me, began to tell me about his 
 ''guru," Mahatma Koot Hoomi, and how he had 
 that morning had the honour of receiving a letter 
 from him, containing replies to questions put by 
 himself alone. The letter had not come by post at 
 all, but had fallen right on Mohini's head. 
 
 The Hindu spoke of this phenomenon with the 
 greatest reverence ; but, far from believing it, I only 
 felt a longing to get out at once into a purer 
 atmosphere. 
 
IV. 
 
 Madame Jelihovsky, in an article in the Russkoe 
 Obozrenie for December, 1891, makes statements such 
 as these : — 
 
 ''Every day there were masses of visitors. Helena 
 Petrovna had time to work only in the early morning 
 from six o'clock to the midday dejeuner, and all the 
 day passed in receptions and bustle. She was be- 
 sieged by a motley society, but all from the intelli- 
 gent classes. A crowd of French legitimists and im- 
 perialists paid her court at that time, men of science, 
 doctors, professors, psychiatrists and magnetisers in 
 multitude, from, all parts of the world as well as on 
 the spot. Doctor Charcot was not then in Paris, but 
 Richet and Combre, his assistants, were devoted to her; 
 Flammarion used to come very often, and Leymarie, 
 the editor of the Revue Spirite ; the old magnetiser 
 Evette, the friend of Baron du Potet, constantly 
 rivalled Olcott in his cures of the sick. There was 
 a multitude of Russians, both men and women, and 
 all alike presented themselves in friendship and as 
 seekers after knowledge." 
 
 To this I reply that for about two months, up to 
 the very moment of her departure from Paris for 
 London, I used to see her almost every day, for long 
 periods and at different hours ; and I never saw^ 
 anything whatever which remotely resembled this 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 29 
 
 brilliant picture. The reclame in the Matin did 
 not seem to be worth what it had cost ; it en- 
 tirely failed, like many others of the same sort, 
 - to attract attention. At that time the " intelligent 
 classes" of Paris were satisfied with their official 
 governmental materialism, so to speak. Those 
 who openly or secretly still believed in the Catholic 
 Church could certainly not visit Madame Blavatsky, 
 for she had published with the coarseness and frank- 
 ness of expression peculiar to her writings the most 
 frightful truths and falsehoods about the doings 
 of the Catholic clergy. The spiritists shunned 
 her as a traitress, for, after having herself been a 
 spiritist and medium, she had not only abandoned 
 spiritism, but had outraged their most sacred beliefs. 
 The more or less interested '^occultists," such for in- 
 stance as St. Ives, stood entirely aloof, and would 
 not on any account have appeared to pay her their 
 respects. 
 
 These were the first days and the first steps of the 
 new Buddhism in Europe, and there were as yet no 
 signs that it would become a phenomenon with which, 
 perhaps, it will soon be necessary to reckon. There 
 was about Madame Blavatsky a group of persons 
 who endeavoured, and it must be said with very little 
 success, to bring their friends. Far from any one 
 
 paying court" or ''devoting himself," she was in 
 fact greatly disappointed by the extremely mediocre 
 success of the cause. 
 
 When I was once or twice cruel enough to touch 
 on this sore spot, she used to turn livid, and pre- 
 sented a terrible figure in her black sacque, a la 
 magicienne noire. " Fools ! " she used to say ; " they 
 
30 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 are all befouled with their materialism, and wallow 
 in it like hogs. Well, just wait ; in the long run my 
 theosophy will get hold of them all the same." 
 
 [Mr. Solovyoff goes on to give a complete list of 
 those who had anything to do with the Theosophical 
 Society and Madame Blavatsky at this period. The 
 list includes also very vivacious descriptions of the 
 various persons concerned ; but we think it necessary 
 to translate only those which deal with characters of 
 importance to the following narrative, or which will 
 have special interest for English readers.] 
 
 The secretary of the Paris Theosophical Society 
 was Madame Emilie de Morsier, a niece of the 
 well-known Swiss philosopher and theologian, 
 Ernest Naville. She was at that time a lady of 
 forty, tall and very stout, a blonde who had faded 
 early, though she still retained traces of great 
 beauty. At our first meetings we somehow felt a 
 mutual antipathy ; but subsequently, after Madame 
 Blavatsky's departure, we drew together gradually, 
 and to this day I count this noble, wise and gifted 
 woman, as well as her husband and family, among 
 my true friends. 
 
 Madame de Morsier is a good musician and a 
 first-rate singer. In her youth she dreamt of an 
 artistic career, and if her dream had been destined 
 to realisation, she would now have been a great 
 celebrity. But family prejudices, hard as the stones 
 of the Swiss mountains, forbade her the opportunity 
 of devoting herself to art. This was the great 
 sorrow of her life. Richly endowed by nature, she 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 31 
 
 could not reconcile herself to the dull part of lady of 
 the house to a ruined nobleman. She gave herself 
 up to literature, and above all to a life of bene- 
 ficence. Always occupied with her prisons, hospitals 
 and asylums, she read and wrote much at the same 
 time ; she was interested and attracted by many 
 things, and to all of them she brought energy, a 
 brilliant intellect, unusual knowledge, and the 
 genius of a real born orator. 
 
 Dissatisfied with the dryness of the Protestant 
 sectarianism in which she had been born and edu- 
 cated, shunning Papacy, and well acquainted with 
 the various abuses of militant Catholicism, she 
 fancied that she could find satisfaction for her 
 spiritual thirst in the doctrines of the ''Thibetan 
 Mahatmas " as preached by the mouths of Madame 
 Blavatsky and her collaborators, Olcott and Sinnett. 
 She sent to Helena Petrovna in India a letter the 
 passion and eloquence of which could not but in- 
 terest the apostle of the new Buddhism ; Helena 
 Petrovna instantly seized upon this richly gifted 
 woman, who was capable of rendering the ''cause" 
 no slight help in the future. 
 
 Madame de Morsier received from " Madame " a 
 friendly missive, and some dried rose petals — the 
 " occult " gift, and, so to speak, the benediction, of 
 Mahatma Koot Hoomi to his interesting proselyte. 
 When Madame Blavatsky came to Paris, Madame 
 de Morsier, with her talisman, the rose leaves, on her 
 heart, came of course to the front, and became the 
 most active and eager member of the Theosophical 
 Society. She proved herself in fact the real head and 
 soul of the society, in the character of its secretary. 
 
32 
 
 A Modem Priestess of Isis. 
 
 But the predominant characteristic of this lady 
 was her complete sincerity and her unshakable 
 truthfulness ; and so, when two years later she was 
 herself a witness, and obtained incontrovertible 
 proofs, of theosophical impostures" and of a great 
 deal besides, she did not for one moment hesitate to 
 admit that she had been led astray and duped. 
 She fell seriously ill with the shock ; but with a 
 firm hand she burnt her Koot Hoomi talismanic 
 rose, my complete disrespect to which had pre- 
 viously been the cause of some coldness between us. 
 
 Madame de Morsier and I were the most constant 
 visitors at the lodgings in the Rue Notre Dame des 
 Champs, and the most intimate with their mistress, 
 as can easily be shown by Madame Blavatsky's 
 autograph letters to us. 
 
 Madame Jelihovsky writes : Doctor Charcot was 
 not then in Paris ; but Richet and Combre, his 
 assistants, were very intimate with her ". Why she 
 should mention Charcot, who was not there, I do 
 not know ; but with regard to Richet she falls into 
 a great blunder. Charcot has indeed an assistant 
 at the Salpetriere, Dr. Paul Richer, who has written 
 a large and rather interesting work. Etudes Cliniques 
 siir I 'Hystero-epilepsie ou Grande Hysterie ; but he too, 
 probably, " was not in Paris at the time ". Madame 
 Jelihovsky does not mean him at all, but one of the 
 ablest French men of science of the day, Charles 
 Richet, whose works have attained great celebrity in 
 Russia also ; but Charles Richet is in no sense an 
 assistant of Charcot. He ''came," not "used to 
 come," to see Helena Petrovna, but as for being 
 ''devoted to her," he never even dreamed of it. 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 33 
 
 This is what he wrote to me at the end of December, 
 1885 : . . . Pour ma part j'avais des doutes 
 enormes. Avant d'admettre I'extraordinaire, il faut 
 se m^fier de I'ordinaire, qui est la fourberie : et 
 de toutes les garanties scientifiques, la certitude 
 morale et la confiance est la plus efficace. Mais 
 quelle dure ironie que cette Mad. B., qui fonde une 
 religion, comme Mahomet, avec les memes moyens 
 a peu prfes ! Peut-etre reussira-t-elle. En tout cas 
 ce ne sera ni votre faute ni la mienne. II faut je crois 
 en revenir a Topinion des vieux auteurs — observer et 
 experimenter — et ne pas ecouter les dames qui ont 
 passe sept ans au Thibet. ..." So it seems, 
 clearly enough. 
 
 As for Combre, when he was a student of medicine he 
 certainly heard Charcot's lectures, and heard them 
 attentively ; but he never was, and never could be, 
 his assistant, for life has attracted him in quite 
 another direction. All his scientific work consists in 
 a small and quite technical dissertation on The 
 Hypodermic Injection of Mercury. Though he is a 
 doctor of medicine, he has no official position, and 
 does not practise. 
 
 Jules Baissac, a highly respected old gentleman, 
 a learned linguist, and a master of the Russian 
 language among others, has the official position of 
 sworn interpreter to the Paris Court of Appeal. His 
 name enjoys the respect of French scholars. He 
 has published some learned and thorough investi- 
 gations into ancient faiths, and as a specialist was 
 interested in the Theosophical Society, to which he 
 was introduced by his old friend Madame de Morsier. 
 
 Camille Flammarion I saw once only at Madame 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 Blavatsky's; he did not attend the lectures. He 
 looked and listened, but Helena Petrovna could not 
 interest him ; her fancies and hypotheses did not rise 
 to the level of the daring hypotheses and fancies of 
 the talented author of Lumen and Uranie. 
 
 There was a middle-aged Russian lady, having the 
 title of " maid of honour," Miss A. This is not the 
 initial of her real name, but as she has carefully con- 
 cealed her faits et gestes, and as she is thus 
 spoken of in the Proceedings of the London Society 
 for Psychical Research,'^ I shall also call her A out 
 of respect for her wishes. Miss A was at that time 
 a friend of Madame de Morsier, and through her 
 took an interest in the Theosophical Society. She 
 was continually surrounded by phenomena" and 
 miracles of all sorts ; her marvellous stories of what 
 happened to her at every step were enough to make 
 one's head swim. She did not live in Russia, and 
 had lodgings in Paris ; but she was continually vanish- 
 ing, no one knew where, and was generally absorbed 
 in some very complicated and intricate affairs of 
 her own. I have now for a long time lost sight of 
 her. 
 
 The whole list of those whom I saw there amounts 
 to thirty-one persons ; we will say thirty-five in case 
 I may have omitted some few who were, whether 
 generally or at that time, mute or invisible characters. 
 
 Several of these persons only gleamed and vanished. 
 Others were attracted chiefly through Madame de 
 Morsier. Such is the real picture of the Paris Theo- 
 sophical Society as it appeared in the summer of 
 
 ^[In Mr. Solovyoff's communication, vol. iii., p. 393. She is 
 not to be confused with the " Miss A" of more recent papers.] 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 35 
 
 1884. It was a small circle of ladies, and nothing 
 more. 
 
 If there had been any one else whom I did not see 
 or know of, Helena Petrovna, when provoked by my 
 remarks on the slowness with which the cause 
 progressed, would infallibly have told me of the 
 people whom I did not know, and pointed them 
 out to me ; and besides, her efforts would infallibly 
 have brought them to the meetings, the very scanty 
 attendance at which greatly depressed the foundress 
 of the society. 
 
 Where are the '^crowds" which ''besieged" 
 Helena Petrovna, as Madame Jelihovsky assures us ? 
 Where is the multitude of French legitimists and 
 imperialists" who ''paid their court" to her? 
 Where are the " numerous men of science, doctors, 
 professors, psychiatrists, magnetisers, from all parts 
 of the world as well as on the spot " ? Where is 
 the "multitude of Russians, both men and women, 
 who urgently offered themselves in friendship, and 
 as followers of the doctrine " ? 
 
 Surely there should be some difference between 
 writing "stories for light reading," and writing a 
 "biographical sketch" of a woman who is called a 
 universal celebrity, who set on foot a movement 
 which is a "wonder of the world," and with whose 
 " pure and lofty doctrine " the Russian public is to 
 be seduced. 
 
 But this is only the first bud ; later on we shall 
 find plenty of big fruits of a different and quite 
 unexpected sort. 
 
V. 
 
 When I arrived two days later at the lodgings in 
 Rue Notre Dame des Champs, Helena Petrovna 
 came to meet me, and proclaimed : Olcott has 
 come. You shall see him at once." 
 
 And I saw the colonel," Madame Blavatsky's 
 trusty companion and fellow-labourer, the president 
 of the Theosophical Society. His appearance pro- 
 duced on me at once a very favourable impression. 
 He was a man of fully fifty years of age, of medium 
 height, robust and broad, but not fat ; from his 
 energy and vivacity of movement he looked anything 
 but an old man, and showed every sign of great 
 strength and sound health. His face was handsome 
 and pleasant, and suited his bald head, and was 
 framed in a full and perfectly silver beard. He 
 wore spectacles, somewhat concealing thereby the 
 one defect of his appearance, which none the less 
 was a real " spoonful of tar in a barrel of honey 
 The fact is that one of his eyes was extremely 
 disobedient, and from time to time used to turn in 
 all directions, sometimes with startling and most 
 disagreeable rapidity. As long as the disobedient 
 eye remained still, you had before you a handsome, 
 agreeable and kindly, but not particularly clever 
 man, who won you by his appearance and inspired 
 you with confidence. Then suddenly something 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 37 
 
 twitched, the eye got loose and began to stray 
 suspiciously and knavishly, and confidence vanished 
 in a moment. 
 
 It was evident that Olcott had already received 
 detailed instructions from "Madame " on my account, 
 and he accordingly from the first showed me the 
 greatest friendliness and attention. He spoke 
 French very tolerably, and when Helena Petrovna 
 went away to write letters, he took me into his room, 
 handed me one of the three chairs in it, sat down 
 himself on another, and began to talk about ''pheno- 
 mena " and Mahatmas. He narrated to me how 
 " Madame's" master, Mahatma Morya, had appeared 
 to him — he, like Madame Blavatsky and the chelas, 
 for some reason always avoided uttering this 
 Mahatma's name when they spoke of him, and 
 called him simply " the master," or by the initial 
 M — but this appearance was not in the material 
 body, but in the subtle " corps astral". 
 
 *' Why are you certain that it was really he, and 
 not your own subjective hallucination ? " I asked. 
 
 '' Because he left me an incontrovertible proof of 
 his presence ; before vanishing he took the turban 
 from his head, and here it is." 
 
 At these words the colonel unrolled before me a 
 silk handkerchief, took from it an Indian scarf of 
 some fine material, and handed it to me. 
 
 I looked and fingered it ; it was a scarf like 
 another, quite material and not visionary. 
 
 Olcott reverently wrapped it up again in the hand- 
 kerchief, and then showed me another marvel ; a 
 very strange and rather beautiful drawing, in water- 
 colour and gold paint. On this I received the 
 
38 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 explanation that Madame " had laid her hand on a 
 clean sheet of paper, had rubbed it a little, and 
 suddenly the drawing appeared of itself. 
 
 When Madame Blavatsky had finished her corre- 
 spondence, and we were talking together in the 
 reception room, she asked me very eagerly if the 
 colonel had shown me the scarf and the drawing. 
 Yes, he did." 
 
 And is it not interesting ? " 
 
 ''Not at all," I answered; ''it would be best 
 to advise Olcott not to show these objects here, 
 especially to men. For himself, the scarf which 
 he received from the hand of a being who was 
 vanishing before his eyes, and the drawing at the 
 ' abnormal ' production of which he was present, 
 have great importance. But for an indifferent per- 
 son, whether he believes or does not believe in 
 the possibility of such things, can they be called 
 ' proofs ' ? I look at them, and for me they are no 
 more than a scarf and a drawing. You will say 
 that Olcott does not deserve to be suspected ; but I 
 reply that in matters of this sort no man, be he who 
 he may, has any right to calculate on others' belief 
 in him or to take offence at their disbelief ; anything 
 else will be extreme simplicity on his part and will 
 do him the greatest damage." 
 
 Madame Blavatsky smiled. 
 
 " It is not every one who is as suspicious as you," 
 she said; "however I thank you for your advice, 
 and will take note of it. Yes, you are right, we are 
 in Europe, at Paris, and not in India. People there 
 do not meet an honourable and sincere man with 
 the thought, ' So you are a cheat, then, and are 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 39 
 
 duping me'. Ah, you are suspicious, suspicious! 
 Come now, tell me, if you yourself, with your own 
 eyes, saw anything of the sort, would you believe 
 then? " 
 
 I should certainly trust my own eyes, if they 
 were quite open." 
 
 Wait ; perhaps you will not have to wait long." 
 I only hope so." 
 And with that we parted. 
 
 I was sitting busy with some urgent work, when 
 a note from Madame Blavatsky came to tell me that 
 two of her relations had arrived and wished to make 
 my acquaintance as soon as possible, and begging 
 me to come at once. As soon as I had finished my 
 work I went. Helena Petrovna was in such a 
 bright, happy mood that it was delightful, and at 
 the same time sad, to see her. She was completely 
 transfigured; there was no trace left of ^'Madame" 
 or H. P. B."; she was now an affectionate woman, 
 worn out by long and far-off sufferings, by ad- 
 ventures of every sort, by work and troubles, who 
 after many years had met her nearest relatives, and 
 had plunged into the unforgotten and always loved 
 atmosphere of her family and domestic reminiscences. 
 
 While we were alone together, she talked to me 
 only about her dear guests, one of whom I shall call 
 Miss X, the other Madame Y.^ Helena Petrovna 
 was particularly attached to the elder of the two 
 ladies. Miss X, an old maid of nearly sixty, whom 
 she had raised to the position of honorary member 
 
 ' [This letter is retained in the translation, though Madame 
 Jelihovsky has herself announced that she is the Madame Y 
 in question.] 
 
40 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 of the Theosophical Society/' and who was then 
 ''president of the N. N. branch". 
 
 '' Here you have the very best proof, a Hving 
 proof," said Helena Petrovna, ''that there is not 
 and cannot be anything whatever in the work of 
 the Theosophical Society that can hurt the con- 
 science of a Christian. X is a most fiery and severe 
 Christian, prejudices and all, and she is our honorary 
 member, and president at N. N." 
 
 " Then is there a Theosophical Society at N. N. ? " 
 
 " Of course there is, just the same as here, only 
 in embryo ; but it is developing." 
 
 With Madame Y, a middle-aged widow, Helena 
 Petrovna, as I concluded from her first words, and 
 afterwards convinced myself, was on much less 
 friendly terms ; treating her rather patronisingly, 
 de haut en bas. Madame Y was not honoured with 
 an "honorary" diploma, but only with the diploma 
 of an ordinary member of the Theosophical Society. 
 Still Madame Blavatsky was greatly pleased at 
 her arrival. The two ladies brought black bread, 
 caviare, and so forth, and the poor "emissary of the 
 Mahatmas" enjoyed it all just like a child. 
 
 Madame Y came in. Her frankness of manner 
 immediately put us on an easy footing, and at the 
 time I liked her. She was soon followed by Miss X, 
 who at first seemed shy, but gradually began to talk, 
 and at last got quite excited. It appeared that 
 not long before she had lost a near relative who, 
 according to her own words, was warmly attached to 
 her. This death had struck her as a supreme in- 
 justice, it had shocked her and roused her indignation. 
 Although Madame Blavatsky had recommended her 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 41 
 
 to me as a convinced Christian, still, under the shock 
 of her relative's death, her faith had been staggered, 
 and had not been able to whisper her relief or con- 
 , solation. 
 
 I began to say to her all that one can say in such 
 circumstances, and certainly there was nothing par- 
 ticular in my words. It was only what she might 
 have heard from any one who was sincerely anxious 
 to sympathise in her sorrow and to take a Christian 
 view. What was my amazement when, after listen- 
 ing to me, she suddenly seized my hand and began to 
 press it warmly. 
 
 Thank you, thank you," she kept on repeating in 
 a peculiar tone of voice; no one has ever spoken 
 to me like that. You have convinced me, now I 
 understand it all. I am at peace. Thank you." 
 
 ^' Pardon me; but what I have said is only what 
 any orthodox priest to whom you applied might have 
 said to you." 
 
 But she stuck to her words, and from this moment 
 »all through the period of our personal relations, she 
 showed me the greatest affection, and now and again 
 overwhelmed me with extravagant compliments. 
 Why I am obliged to mention this will be made clear 
 in the sequel. 
 
 It is a matter of course that it was extremely in- 
 teresting to me, out of more than mere curiosity, to 
 make out the attitude of these two near relatives of 
 Madame Blavatsky with respect to her work, the 
 society, the Mahatmas and the phenomena. But in 
 spite of our frequent meetings and our long conver- 
 sations, I by no means succeeded in analysing this 
 attitude at once. From their wonderful stories I 
 
42 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Ists. 
 
 could only conclude that the life of their whole 
 family simply teems with mysteries of all sorts. 
 As for Helena Petrovna, various phenomena had 
 occurred with her from her youth. While relating 
 these phenomena Madame Y explained them by the 
 fact that Madame Blavatsky was a very powerful 
 medium. 
 
 If this was said in the presence of Madame 
 Blavatsky herself, our Madame " used to be terribly 
 indignant and exasperated, her eyes rolled, she grew 
 purple and declared that it was a falsehood, that all 
 her phenomena from her youth up were not produced 
 at all by the spiritist shells," as she used to call 
 the ''spirits" of mediumism ; but that they were 
 the work of her ''master" and other similar living 
 sages of Thibet, who had long preordained her to 
 be their emissary and had guided her life. On this 
 subject there were almost serious disputes between 
 the two honourable ladies. 
 
 I was particularly surprised with Miss X. She by 
 no means served me as a visible proof that there 
 was nothing in Madame Blavatsky's theosophy pre- 
 judicial to Christianity. At one of our first meetings 
 she assured me that all these phenomena, Mahatmas, 
 and so on, were all the manifestation of a power of 
 darkness, the work of the devil's hands. She herself 
 however had no fear whatever of this devil, but used 
 actually to catch at his tail by always inciting 
 Helena Petrovna in every way to produce "pheno- 
 mena". 
 
 Some days after the arrival of these ladies occurred 
 the " phenomenon of the letter". Helena Petrovna 
 had persuaded me to submit myself to a magnetic 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 43 
 
 seance by Olcott, and I was to come for the purpose 
 every two days before twelve o'clock. I came once, 
 and found several persons in the little drawing-room. 
 Madame Blavatsky was in a particularly excited 
 state. Miss X had not yet left her room. The bell 
 rang. I sat so that I could see Babula open the 
 door, take a letter, come into the room, and lay it on 
 the table. 
 
 Madame Blavatsky and Madame Y looked at the 
 postmark and address of the letter, and said that it 
 was for Miss X, and came from a common relation in 
 O. The letter was not only completely gummed in 
 a stout, opaque envelope, but the postage stamp was 
 affixed in the place of the seal. 
 
 Helena Petrovna, quite unexpectedly to us 
 all, proposed to read this letter in the sealed 
 envelope. 
 
 " No, that is nonsense. It is impossible. You 
 never will do that," exclaimed Madame Y. 
 
 Madame " turned her eyes on her, put the 
 letter against her forehead, and began to speak aloud 
 with a visible effort, at the same time writing down 
 her words upon a sheet of paper. When she had done, 
 Madame Y again expressed her doubts as to the 
 success of the experiment, and declared that 
 certain details which Helena Petrovna had 
 spoken and written down could hardly be in the 
 letter. 
 
 Madame Blavatsky was evidently irritated by this, 
 and with some sharpness declared that she would do 
 better. With a red pencil she drew on her paper, 
 at the end of the contents of the letter as she had 
 written them, a theosophical sign ; she then under- 
 
44 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 lined one word, and with a tense expression on her 
 face, and obviously with a great effort of will, she 
 announced: ''This sign must be at the end of 
 the letter, and this word must be underlined in 
 it". 
 
 The letter was then handed through the open door 
 to Miss X. She came out to us at once, in the act 
 of tearing open the envelope, took out the letter and 
 read it. The contents of it turned out to be identical 
 with what Helena Petrovna had written, though by- 
 no means word for word ; and at the end we found 
 Madame Blavatsky's sign exactly reproduced in red 
 pencil, while the word which she had underlined 
 occurred in the letter and was underlined in just the 
 same way. 
 
 The ladies, astounded, immediately drew up a 
 detailed account of this interesting phenomenon, and 
 all those who were present signed it. I, of course, 
 signed too. 
 
 Certainly I had no moral or legal right to tell 
 them then that Babula might have brought in a letter 
 already prepared an hour or two before, and fastened 
 up again ; or that Miss X very easily might, by 
 turning back for a moment behind the door, have 
 put a prepared letter into the envelope, and only 
 have pretended to be in the act of opening the 
 envelope before us. Moreover at the time no such 
 possibilities even occurred to me. Such is the 
 position to which a man may be brought, if he falls 
 into the hands of '' ladies who have passed seven 
 years in Thibet ". 
 
 When Madame Blavatsky asked me if I were 
 satisfied, and if the phenomenon had surprised me, I 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 45 
 
 said that, though I could not but believe, I was still 
 somehow dissatisfied. 
 
 ''Wait a bit, you shall see better than that," she 
 said with a smile. 
 
 I had not long to wait. 
 
VI. 
 
 I RECEIVED a note from Madame de Barrau to say 
 that there would be a meeting of theosophists and a 
 lecture by Olcott at her house in the evening. I 
 was anxious to see the colonel in the character of an 
 orator. 
 
 When I arrived the company was already assembled. 
 The colonel occupied the presidential seat at an oval 
 table in the dining-room ; on one side of him was 
 Mohini, on the other Madame de Morsier, writing 
 down all that was said. The meeting consisted of 
 ten or twelve persons. 
 
 Madame Y, seeing me, pointed to a seat by her, 
 and explained that Helena Petrovna was not well, 
 and had therefore stayed at home with Miss X. 
 
 And so she sent me here out of politeness. It is 
 pretty dull here, I can tell you, Olcott is talking 
 something or other about Buddhism ; we will sit 
 here a little, and then we will go home and have 
 some tea. Helena told me to bring you back without 
 fail." 
 
 Olcott was in fact talking something or other 
 about Buddhism, but he was interrupted every 
 moment. Indeed it was not a lecture at all, but 
 a mere conversation among people who did not agree 
 with each other, and well understood that what was 
 going on was not at all what they wanted. 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 47 
 
 Madame Y and I sat for about twenty minutes, 
 and then slipped quietly out of the room. In the 
 little drawing-room in Rue Notre Dame des Champs 
 the lamp was lit, and Helena Petrovna was settled 
 in her big arm-chair behind a round table, with a 
 pack of little patience cards, and Miss X by her 
 side. Both ladies scolded us for coming late, and 
 Miss X said amiably to me : " Well, now we are here, 
 and we will have a delightful evening. Helena was 
 afraid you perhaps would not come, and was actually 
 consulting the cards." 
 
 With these words Miss X went into her own 
 room, and came back with some baskets of Russian 
 sweets which she had brought with her. 
 
 Babula soon brought round the tea. There was 
 silence all around us, there was hardly a passenger 
 in the deserted street, and I again began to feel as 
 though I were in some Russian country house, 
 among some old-fashioned country ladies. And our 
 conversation was entirely Russian, far, far from 
 Paris, theosophy, India, and matters like these. 
 But the illusion was not fated to continue. Though 
 for the theosophists Madame Blavatsky had declared 
 herself ill, it was obvious that she was feeling well, 
 and was in the best of humours. She laid out 
 her patience with her slender and singularly, almost 
 excessively, pliant fingers, with their long nails, and 
 sparkling with the diamonds, rubies, and emeralds 
 of her rings. A happy and good-naturedly 
 subtle smile hovered from time to time on her 
 lips. 
 
 " Do tell me, Helena," suddenly said Miss X, 
 turning to her, did you bring with you the minia- 
 
48 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 ture painted by that Hindu chela, that you wrote 
 about to me ? " 
 
 ''No," repHed Madame Blavatsky, ''it was left at 
 Adyar, so far as I remember. But anyhow we can 
 find that out for certain at once. Babula ! " she 
 cried. 
 
 The Hindu's slovenly figure appeared at the 
 door. 
 
 " Please tell me," said Madame Blavatsky, turning 
 to him, "where is the little portrait of me that used 
 to be in the locket ? " 
 
 " It was left at Adyar in a drawer," declared the 
 Hindu, rather too glibly, with a saucy look at his 
 mistress. 
 
 "What a pity," exclaimed Miss X; "but why did 
 you not bring it with you ? it would have been 
 interesting to see the artistic work of this chela of 
 yours." 
 
 " You shall see his artistic work at once ; I have 
 on me just such another portrait of the 'master,' 
 drawn by the same chela. Look ! " 
 
 With these words Madame Blavatsky took from 
 her neck a great golden locket, opened it, and gave 
 it to Miss X. 
 
 The locket soon passed into my hands, and in it I 
 found a very mediocre representation, painted on 
 ivory, of an unusually handsome man in a white 
 turban. We all looked, and looked agam, and Helena 
 Petrovna once more put the locket on her neck. 
 
 "Yes, but I should have liked to see your portrait 
 in particular," said Miss X, sticking to her point. 
 " You say there is nothing impossible, not only for 
 your ' master,' but even for his chela. Now do get 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 49 
 
 them to bring this portrait here, before our eyes, from 
 the drawer in Adyar." 
 
 Oh, what a wish," remarked Madame Y. 
 
 Helena Petrovna smiled. ''Well, we will see; 
 perhaps it is possible," she^^d meaningl)^, and 
 raised her hand. In an insfHI there was heard 
 above our heads the sound of the silver bell with 
 which I was already acquainted. Madame Blavatsky 
 listened and then turned to Miss X. 
 
 Now, take the medallion off me, and open it ; 
 perhaps you will find something." 
 
 Miss X took the locket, and opened it ; and there 
 appeared to my wondering eyes, on the two inner 
 sides of it, two portraits : one, that which we already 
 knew, of the handsome man in the white turban ; 
 the other, a portrait of Helena Petrovna in a sort of 
 fur cap ; not a good likeness, and not at all well 
 painted, but unmistakably a portrait of her. 
 
 I took the locket in my hands, and examined it 
 very carefully ; both portraits were firmly set, so 
 firmly indeed that they had all the appearance of 
 having always been as they were, one opposite the 
 other. It was all so neatly managed that I positively 
 could not cavil at anything. 
 
 Miss X looked significantly at both of us in turn, 
 and said at last: ''Well, open the locket now; per- 
 haps your portrait will have disappeared 
 
 " Perhaps," said Helena Petrovna, and opened 
 the locket ; her portrait was not in it. 
 
 She again took the locket off her neck, and again 
 put it into my hands ; I examined it very attentively, 
 and convinced myself that there was only a por- 
 trait of a man in a turban, firmly set, and not the 
 
 4 
 
50 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 least trace of any other. Judging from the thickness 
 of the locket there was no room behind the portrait 
 of the master" for a second portrait painted on an 
 ivory plaque, and with a very fairly thick piece of 
 glass attached to the front of it. 
 
 ''A phenomenon, lyes, a phenomenon," I thought; 
 yet at the same time an internal instinct kept on re- 
 peating persistently : May it not be that this is one 
 of the commonest of conjuring tricks, that all has 
 been prepared beforehand, the whole conversation 
 about the portrait, down to the last word ? May it 
 not be that they invited me to tea, and arranged all 
 this quiet and delightful scene, just in order to 
 utterly astound me, and to secure me with this 
 ' phenomenon ' for ever and ever ? " 
 
 This single thought was quite enough to dismiss 
 from my mind the feeling of mingled pleasure and 
 fear which cannot but come over a man on seeing 
 half opened before him a door into the region of 
 Nature's secrets. 
 
 " Well, and what do you say to that, Mr. Sceptic ? " 
 asked Helena Petrovna of me. 
 
 ^' It is unusual, and in every respect most interest- 
 ing." 
 
 Are you convinced at last ? " 
 Not quite ; but now it will be very easy for you 
 to convince me. I ask your master, for whom space 
 does not exist, and who, you say, is invisibly present 
 here, in this room, either he or his chela, — in a word, 
 I ask the being or force by which these phenomena 
 are produced, to put the portrait of you which has 
 just disappeared, into my cigar-case." 
 
 I took my cigar-case out of my pocket, opened it, 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 51 
 
 ascertained that there was nothing but cigarettes in 
 it, shut it again, and held it tightly in my hand. 
 
 There," I said, " let your portrait find its way 
 into this cigar-case, which I am holding in my hand, 
 and then I shall be perfectly convinced, and be 
 ready to undergo any tortures for my conviction." 
 
 Helena Petrovna bent her head as though she 
 were listening to some one, and said : " You forget 
 that you are dealing with a man who, though he can 
 do things which seem extraordinary to you, still re- 
 mains a Hindu fanatic. In his view he cannot in 
 any way come into contact with a European." 
 
 I smiled, put my cigar-case back in my pocket, and 
 changed the subject. Helena Petrovna was evidently 
 irritated. In a few minutes I got up and said that 
 it was already late, and that I ought to go home 
 earlier. The ladies began to beg me to stay. 
 
 " Oh, please," said Madame Blavatsky, only 
 half an hour ; our people will be back from the lec- 
 ture in half an hour, and we will tell them of the 
 phenomenon. Please now, do ; don't be silly, do 
 stay, what does half an hour matter? " 
 
 She took my hat from my hand and put it on the 
 marble chimney-piece. I did not see anything in 
 particular, but an inner voice said to me : The por- 
 trait is in the hat I should much have liked to go 
 straight to the chimney-piece, and ascertain at once 
 if I was right or not, but I was patient enough to 
 return to my place and observe. 
 
 The ladies were greatly excited : Madame Y 
 declared that she saw a sort of grey shadow of a 
 man. 
 
 I see a shadow, too," said I laughingly; '^see, 
 
52 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 it is condensing near the fireplace, close to my 
 hat." 
 
 I expected that after these words of mine Madame 
 Blavatsky would go to the fireplace, and that I should 
 not find the portrait in my hat. She did, in fact, 
 begin to get up, but sank back into her arm-chair. 
 
 Presently the bell rang ; the theosophists had 
 come back from the lecture. The ladies began to 
 give Olcott, Mohini and Keightley a lively account 
 of the phenomenon which had just come to pass ; 
 they requested me to confirm them, and I, of course, 
 did confirm them, saying that everything had 
 happened just as they said. 
 
 May I go now? " I asked Helena Petrovna. 
 You may." 
 
 I went to the fireplace, and took my hat; and, 
 sure enough, a little oval portrait was inside, the 
 same which I had been shown in Madame Blavatsky's 
 locket, and which had afterwards disappeared. I 
 could not help laughing. 
 
 The Hindu fanatic has got over his repulsion for 
 a European," I said; Helena Petrovna, take back 
 your portrait." 
 
 ''It is no longer mine," she replied; ''keep it 
 yourself as a memento, if you like ; if not, throw it 
 away." 
 
 "I am much obliged to you; I will keep it as a 
 memento." 
 
 Next morning I had to return to Madame Blavat- 
 sky's lodgings, to submit myself to the colonel's 
 usual magnetic passes. I was curious to have a look 
 at Helena Petrovna in the light of day, after the 
 phenomenon of the day before. 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 53 
 
 I found all three ladies somewhat disturbed, but 
 none the less they immediately began, of course, to 
 talk about the phenomenon. 
 
 Is it not convincing?" asked Madame Blavat- 
 
 sky. 
 
 It is not convincing/' I said. 
 
 " But what is it you really want ? Do you 
 imagine that it was a conjuring trick of mine?'' 
 
 " I imagine nothing whatever, simply I am not 
 convinced ; and so little is wanted to convince me. 
 Even now it would be so easy to put everything 
 right. You said yourself that the author of the 
 phenomenon could not put the portrait in the cigar- 
 case because I was holding the cigar-case in my 
 hand ? " 
 
 ^^Yes." 
 
 But still he can put it in the hat I wear ? " 
 
 That is quite another matter." 
 
 Well, then, I make the following proposition. 
 Your portrait is now in my bureau ; when I go home 
 to-day I will take it into the garden and bury it in 
 the ground. If the Hindu sage can come into 
 contact with my hat, it will certainly be quite easy 
 for him to dig up the portrait out of my garden and 
 take it away. I will wait two weeks ; if at the end 
 of two weeks I dig up the spot and do not find the 
 portrait, the phenomenon will be as convincing to 
 me as if the portrait had been put into my cigar- 
 case." 
 
 ^' Very well, I will try," said Helena Petrovna in a 
 crest-fallen voice. 
 
 But the dejection was only momentary ; she got 
 angry directly and was then in no mood to restrain 
 
54 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 herself; all her wisdom vanished, and she showed 
 every symptom of an exasperated woman, who had 
 failed in attaining what she wanted and at the same 
 time had got herself into a mess. 
 
 So, then, you cannot send an account of this 
 phenomenon to any of the Russian papers ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 ''At the moment I certainly cannot," I replied, 
 *' but as soon as ever I am convinced that the por- 
 trait has vanished from my garden, I will write ; and 
 I will not only write, I will proclaim the phenomenon 
 at the top of my voice." 
 
 " Oh, very well then," exclaimed Helena Petrovna, 
 all livid ; " write and say that I am a conjurer and a 
 cheat. Say that you are convinced of it. Describe 
 me from every point of view, with all the honours ; 
 pray do be so obliging." 
 
 Happily Olcott came into the room, and asked me 
 to go with him for a magnetic seance ; or I do not 
 know how my explanation with Helena Petrovna 
 would have ended. But none the less after the 
 seance Miss X and Madame Y, evidently at Madame 
 Blavatsky's suggestion, did all they could to persuade 
 me to send to Russia a communication about the 
 phenomenon. I steadily refused, and they held their 
 peace. 
 
 When I got home, in order to clear my conscience, 
 I dug a hole in my garden and buried the portrait in 
 it. In two weeks I dug up again the spot, which I 
 had noted, and, of course, found the portrait quite 
 intact. I may further say that during the interval 
 Helena Petrovna had been in my garden, and I had 
 purposely taken her to the spot where the portrait 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 55 
 
 was buried, but even her presence did not enable her 
 invisible companion to solve a problem, the success- 
 ful solution of which would probably have converted 
 -me into a fanatical preacher of the phenomena 
 wrought by the ''emissary of the Mahatmas". 
 
VII. 
 
 It was at this time my lot to see more of Madame Y 
 than even of Madame Blavatsky. We used to stroll 
 about Paris together ; we attended the meeting of 
 the Senate where the eloquent Naquet in hery 
 speeches defended the bill for freedom of divorce, at 
 the moment the most lively novelty of the day. At 
 this sitting, in the midst of the throng of sena- 
 tors of the French Republic, the ancient of days," 
 Victor Hugo, slumbered in the most unceremonious 
 fashion, waking only at the orator's loudest outbursts, 
 and staring straight in front with an indifferent and 
 expressionless gaze. This almost mindless stare of 
 the poet who had already long outlived himself told 
 eloquently that he had no concern in freedom of 
 divorce, or indeed in any other matters of this life ; 
 that over his grey head, marked with the seal of 
 God, the pale angel of death was already beating his 
 wing. In less than a year this same pale angel had 
 taken him and set him free from his too long earthly 
 life ; whereat Paris, ever eager for spectacles, was 
 favoured with a spectacle of unheard-of solemnity 
 and originality, of which it was my fortune to be a 
 witness. 
 
 After a long walk which had tired us out, Madame 
 Y and I found ourselves in the charming little Pare 
 
A Modern Priestess of Ists. 
 
 57 
 
 Monceau, where we sat for about an hour, resting on 
 a comfortable garden seat beneath the thick branches 
 of the old chestnuts which sheltered us from the burn- 
 ing rays of the sun. We carried on a lively and unre- 
 served conversation on very various subjects, and 
 Madame Y showed me so much sympathy that I 
 was deeply touched. At last she said: But to show 
 you that my feeling for you is more than empty 
 words, I will speak to you on some matters about 
 which I certainly would not open my mouth to any 
 one who was indifferent to me. I have been thinking 
 a great deal about you lately ; I fancy you are being 
 too much carried away by the Theosophical Society, 
 and I am afraid that this influence may act upon 
 you injuriously and sadly in every way." 
 
 " I heartily thank you for your sympathy," I said, 
 but I do not think I am a man who is so easily 
 carried away as you fancy. No doubt I am greatly 
 interested in the Theosophical Society — it cannot be 
 otherwise — you see, I have already told you that 
 mystical and occult matters of every sort form at 
 present the object of my studies. How can there be 
 anything prejudicial to me in them ? Or are you 
 afraid of my turning Buddhist, under the influence 
 of Olcott and Mohini ? You may make yourself 
 perfectly easy on that point." 
 
 ^'Ah no! It is not that at all," exclaimed 
 Madame Y ; the danger is not in the reading of 
 books on mysticism, and in the study of occultism. 
 You may be carried away by other means than those, 
 and get yourself into a very risky position. There 
 are some things which catch and pervert the eye- 
 sight, and when one sees one's error and recovers 
 
58 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 one's sight, it is too late. You will not repeat to 
 Helena what I say ? " 
 
 If you think I shall repeat it, please do not say 
 another word." 
 
 Well then, listen to me. What are you going 
 to say about the phenomenon of the locket ? " 
 
 ^'You can answer that question yourself; you 
 must have seen what I thought of it." 
 
 ^^And have you made out what I thought of it, 
 and indeed of all Helena's performances ? " 
 
 '^To speak frankly, up to the present I have not 
 made it out." 
 
 ^'That is where it is! You must know that she 
 and I have nothing whatever in common. I love 
 her, I have been accustomed to love her from child- 
 hood ; there are moments when I am very sorry for 
 her ; whatever you may say, she is certainly a 
 grievously unhappy woman. Now I must tell you 
 that out of pity for her I often have to shut my eyes, 
 though she shocks me terribly. But I love her, I 
 am sorry for her, I cannot but be indulgent to her. 
 Just now we had not met for many years ; she wrote 
 and begged me to come and see her, and as I had 
 not the means for such a journey, she sent me the 
 money required, and so I came. I am very glad to 
 see her and to be with her, but still there is nothing 
 but difference between us, we have nothing in com- 
 mon. She is continually coercing me to write about 
 her society and all these phenomena, but what have 
 I to do with all that ? Whatever is possible I am 
 ready to do for her ; but what she asks is impossible; 
 I would sacrifice a great deal for her sake, but I am 
 not prepared to sacrifice my conscience/' 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 59 
 
 ''Your conscience? Does she ask anything of 
 that sort of you ? " 
 
 ''Yes, that is just what she does ask; she has 
 been asking it of me for a long time now, for many 
 years. To her what she wants seems only a trifle, 
 you see ; but for me, if I fell in with her wishes, it 
 would be a crime — I say a crime. She cannot un- 
 derstand me, we look at things quite differently ; I 
 am a Christian, but she — what is she ? I, like you, 
 do not know ; perhaps she herself does not really 
 know. She sticks so close to me that I cannot get 
 away from her. ' So it seems/ she says, ' that you 
 do not love me, if you will not even do this for me. 
 What will it cost you ? Don't you see that this is 
 simply childish simplicity ? ' And fancy, X helps 
 her to worry me. 'So,' she says, 'no one but me 
 loves Helena ; you don't love her, for you will not 
 help her.' Just think what it is ! X really has no 
 bounds for her pity for Helena, but is that real love? 
 Can it be that one should take to falsehood and 
 crime to prove one's love ? That sort of love in the 
 long run will only mean ruin for both of them, and 
 nothing else. There is * * * " (she named a relation 
 of theirs who had recently died, a fairly well-known 
 man), "he was a man of great intellect, and a real 
 genuine Christian ; as he was dying, on his death- 
 bed, he begged me not to yield to Helena's prayers, 
 and to explain to her that if she had her way, if I 
 agreed to do what she was continually begging me to 
 do, it would be her own ruin in the first place." 
 
 "But what is it all about?" I said; "you are 
 only talking in riddles." 
 
 " I cannot talk in any other way." 
 
6o A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 " But from your riddles I cannot but conclude the 
 very worst. You talk of ' crime ' and ' ruin \" 
 
 Yes, that is so. You understand well enough 
 what I am talking about ; that is not hard. Do not 
 press me to explain myself any further ; I have said 
 quite enough to put you on your guard. Beware ! 
 You may get entangled. Helena is such a woman ! 
 Sometimes she acts with extreme simplicity, with 
 absolute folly ; but at the same time she knows how 
 to raise such a smoke. If you only knew the people 
 she has entangled in her meshes ! " 
 
 But you have said so much that you had better 
 go through with it." 
 
 No, I shall say no more ! " exclaimed Madame 
 Y. I have said too much ; and in what I have 
 said there are very few ^'s I have not already dotted, 
 and those you can dot yourself. A bon entendeiir, 
 salut,'' 
 
 ^'That is to say, all these phenomena of the 
 Mahatmas, all these doings, are nothing but deceit, 
 deceit, and again deceit ! " I exclaimed. 
 
 I say nothing," solemnly replied Madame Y ; 
 and in fact she would not utter another word. 
 
 A few months later she wrote to me from Russia, 
 reminding me of this conversation, and repeating 
 in writing all that I have here set down. This 
 letter is still in my possession. 
 
 As I am compelled by Madame Jelihovsky, who 
 knows better than any one who it is that 1 call Y, 
 to speak about the Theosophical Society and its 
 foundress, I cannot ignore so important a fact ; 
 I cannot and must not. In the chain of evidence 
 about the impostures of theosophy, the admissions 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 6i 
 
 of Madame Y, verbal and written, form a most 
 important link. 
 
 I was deeply grateful to Madame Y for these 
 admissions, which, in fact, produced a most powerful 
 impression on me, and led me to devote myself to 
 what was going on before my eyes with yet more 
 rigour and coolness. They could not however weaken 
 my interest in the Theosophical Society and in 
 Madame Blavatsky herself — I was myself already on 
 the alert and had already told myself that not all of 
 Helena Petrovna's phenomena were genuine. 
 
 I was very much inclined to adopt Madame Y's 
 opinion that Madame Blavatsky was a medium, and 
 that the majority of her phenomena were of medianic 
 origin. I had already had occasion to observe many 
 mediums at close quarters, and I knew perfectly 
 from what I had seen that every one of them was 
 certain to produce fraudulent phenomena at times, 
 but that this did by no means prove all the phe- 
 nomena they produced to be fraudulent. If anything 
 ^'abnormal" occurred of itself, well and good; if 
 nothing happened, then some irresistible force 
 drove the medium to ''help" the manifestation and 
 to trick. I had long ago convinced myself that 
 this was a universal law with mediums — not only 
 with professional mediums, but with all. The mar- 
 vellous is an abyss with an irresistible power of 
 attraction, and all the flowers that grow about it, 
 whether poisonous or harmless, alike possess an in- 
 toxicating aroma. 
 
 I had already clearly perceived, without Madame 
 Y's help, that I should not find in Madame Blavatsky 
 and her society that for which I had in the first 
 
62 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 instance come to her ; yet I had as yet no reason for 
 avoiding her ; on the contrary, there were two very 
 important reasons why I should not only not avoid 
 her, but should, so far as possible, keep in touch 
 with her and her society. So far as concerned this 
 new theosophy and its literature, I had as yet 
 learnt nothing ; in other words, I was bound to 
 acquaint myself well with this literature and doc- 
 trine, and to make out clearly what there was in it 
 that was new, and what was drawn from sources 
 already known to me. 
 
 For instance, I, like the rest of the Paris theo- 
 sophists, was much occupied with the question of 
 Karma and Nirvana, as set out by Olcott, Mohini 
 and Madame Blavatsky. And this was not the only 
 thing. There was a great deal that was interesting. 
 
 As for Madame Blavatsky herself, after the con- 
 versation with Madame Y, I definitely promised 
 myself that come what might I would see through 
 this woman. 
 
 Though there was as yet no real theosophical 
 movement in Europe, still it might take a start to- 
 morrow, if not to-day — as indeed happened. At the 
 moment there were but few about Madame Bla- 
 vatsky ; in a year or two there might be thousands 
 coming to her, as they had already come in America 
 and India. What sort of woman was she, this 
 foundress of a religion which, if not new, was at 
 any rate renovated, and was propagated by her 
 phenomena ? which of these phenomena were true 
 and which were false, or was there any truth in 
 them at all ? 
 
 Me she could fortunately not in any case lead 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 63 
 
 astray ; but even in the then narrow circle of the 
 Parisian theosophists I saw some who were being 
 really fascinated, who were on the point of flinging 
 themselves head foremost into the abyss into which 
 Helena Petrovna was inviting them to look, with 
 the lifting of her hand, with the sound of her 
 invisible silver bells, and with the production of her 
 phenomena. And then, if all these phenomena, 
 absolutely all, were one great fraud, what sort of 
 woman could this Helena Petrovna be ? In such a 
 case she must be a terrible and perilous thief of 
 souls. 
 
 And evidently she wished by every means to 
 spread her toils as wide as possible, she dreamt of 
 setting them even in Russia. This is why she 
 asked Madame Y, and had long been asking her, for 
 several years, to help her, and commit a crime. 
 And this is why she had made such a set at me ; 
 no doubt, in a matter like this, she had need of a 
 man who writes a great deal, and whom people 
 read. 
 
 Moreover there remained one more thought, or 
 rather one more feeling; I, like Madame Y, pitied 
 Helena Petrovna, this talented woman in whom, in 
 spite of all, I had marked and divined a soul not 
 yet wholly lost. How could one tell ? Perhaps it 
 was still possible, by one means or another, to stop 
 her and save her, as much for her own sake as 
 for those w^hom she might ruin with her falsehood 
 and fraud. And besides all this, might she not be 
 herself the most interesting phenomenon of all, with 
 her intellect and talents, with her funny simplicity 
 and naivete, with her lies and her sincerity? It was 
 
64 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 tempting to see through and read such a phenomenon, 
 such a Hving human document". It was only 
 needful to know that one's head would not swim, and 
 that the poisoned flower of the abyss would not 
 intoxicate ; but here I had as yet no reason to fear 
 for myself. 
 
VIII. 
 
 My attitude towards the phenomenon of the locket, 
 on which Madame Blavatsky had founded great 
 hopes, evidently produced no small effect ; Helena 
 Petrovna declared that there would be no more 
 phenomena, and that she felt too weak to afford the 
 considerable expenditure of vital force required for 
 these manifestations. From time to time she 
 treated us, though even this very rarely, to the 
 sounds of her silver bell. Sometimes these sounds 
 reached us as though from a distance ; they issued 
 from the end of the passage where her room was. 
 This would have been interesting enough, if I had 
 not known that Babula was in the passage, that he 
 always had access to his mistress's room, and that 
 he was a most consummate rascal ; a glance at his 
 face was enough to convince one of this. Moreover 
 Miss X and Madame Y said to me one day: '^That 
 Babula is most amusing. When Helena is busy 
 and we have nothing to do, we have him in and ask 
 him about all sorts of things. He has a droll way of 
 telling about all that goes on at Adyar." 
 
 Yes, and when I ask him," continued Madame 
 Y, ''if he has seen the Mahatmas, he laughs and 
 says : ' I have often seen them '. ' What are they 
 like ? ' I ask, and he answers : ' They are fine ! ' he 
 says, ' Muslin ! ' and then he laughs again." 
 
 5 
 
66 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 " Dreadful rascal," remarked Miss X ; she 
 asked him what they were like, and he said directly, 
 ' Muslin,' and roared with laughter." 
 
 This conversation seemed to have a certain interest 
 of its own, and I noted it down at the time ; and 
 when talking to Helena Petrovna I advised her, 
 with a laugh, to send Babula off at once. " Mark 
 my words," I said, '^you will have some scandal 
 with him yet ; he is not at all trustworthy." She 
 said nothing in reply, and I do not even know if she 
 grasped the sense of my words. 
 
 What sort of scandal about Babula happened in 
 the course of the next two months in London I do 
 not know ; but he was sent off to India in a hurry, 
 and no more was heard of him thereafter.^ 
 
 When the sound of the bell was heard at the end 
 of the passage, Madame Blavatsky jumped up, say- 
 ing, ''The master is calling," and went off to her 
 room. 
 
 She showed us also, more than once, another 
 small phenomenon. At some quite considerable 
 distance from a table or mirror she would shake her 
 
 ^ I was not wrong in putting down Babula as a rascal at first 
 sight. From the Report of the London Society for Psychical 
 Research which was published about a year afterwards, I learnt 
 that before meeting Madame Blavatsky he had been in the 
 service of a French conjurer, and that he was skilled in various 
 phenomena, particularly in " phenomena with letters and post- 
 men ". This report also clearly shows the meaning of the ex- 
 pression that the Mahatmas were " muslin ". At the time I 
 could not conceive what it meant, but it seems that the rascal, 
 finding out, on what grounds I do not know, that with Madame 
 Blavatsky's immediate relations there was no need of conceal- 
 ment, had told them the simple truth. 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 67 
 
 hand, as though she were sprinkHng some Hquid off 
 it ; and thereupon there would be heard from the 
 surface of the table or mirror sharp and perfectly 
 distinct raps. In reply to my question what this 
 was, she could give me no sort of explanation what- 
 ever, except that she wished the raps to come, and 
 they came. " Try to exert your will," she said, and 
 perhaps you will get them too." 
 
 I exerted my will with all my force, but nothing 
 happened with me. And yet, when she laid her 
 hands on my shoulder, and I shook my hand, pre- 
 cisely the same raps came on the table and the 
 mirror as with her. 
 
 Twice in my presence there occurred another 
 similar manifestation ; more or less loud raps began 
 to be heard all about her, such as are familiar to 
 any one who has been at a spiritual seance. " Listen. 
 The ' shells ' are amusing themselves," she said. 
 The raps increased and began to spread. Hush, 
 you rascals," she cried, and all was instantly still. 
 
 Helena Petrovna had apparently made up her 
 mind that ''at present" there was nothing to be 
 done in Paris, and that the time was not yet come 
 for her to set tout Paris talking about her. Her 
 London friends promised her greater successes and 
 triumphs in the capital of foggy Albion, and she 
 began to talk louder every day about the necessity 
 for an immediate journey to London. 
 
 " I will just enjoy myself a little longer with you," 
 she said to her two kinswomen and tome, ''and then 
 we will say good-bye, and I will jog on to London ; 
 it is high time, they are looking for me. Sinnett is 
 wild with impatience. Everything is duly arranged. 
 
68 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 and the ' psychists ' have long been wanting to 
 examine me in person. They are already tremend- 
 ously interested in me. Very well, let them have 
 their wish." By psychists " she meant the members 
 of the London Society for Psychical Research. 
 
IX. 
 
 Madame Blavatsky left for London, swearing me 
 eternal friendship and giving me in charge to 
 Madame de Morsier, who was to see that my interest 
 in the Theosophical Society " should not wither, if it 
 could not flourish All the second half of the 
 summer I passed in hard work ; I had set about a 
 big novel, and was eagerly digging into the treasures 
 of mystic literature, ancient and modern, which I 
 found in the Bibliotheque Nationale, in the old 
 book-shops of the Quartier Latin, and in the stalls 
 on the bank of the Seine. I was flooded with such 
 rarities, curiosities, and unexpected finds, that I 
 quite forgot all about my overwrought nerves, and 
 did exactly the contrary of what the doctors ordered 
 me, when they prescribed a long journey abroad, in 
 order to get a complete change of life and surround- 
 ings. 
 
 Meanwhile I did not find in the writings and ex- 
 positions of the preachers of the Theosophical Society 
 much that was particularly original ; but still they 
 served as a complement to my studies. I patiently 
 read through the two bulky volumes of Madame 
 Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled, and this in a manuscript 
 French translation, which Helena Petrovna had left 
 with me, that I might consider if it would be possible 
 to publish it with very considerable abbreviations. 
 
70 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 On reading the first part of this work, while 
 Madame Blavatsky was still in Paris, I happened to 
 say to Madame Y: ''It seems to me that Isis Unveiled 
 is the most interesting of Helena Petrovna's pheno- 
 mena, and, perhaps, the most inexplicable ". Now 
 that I am perfectly acquainted with the explanation 
 of these phenomena, I hold this opinion all the more 
 firmly. ''Madame" had spent no little labour on 
 her book. She had read and remembered no small 
 amount. She could no doubt dispense with the 
 "unique" MSS. of the Vatican; but she must un- 
 doubtedly have mastered a whole special library. 
 
 Her Isis is a huge sack, in which the most 
 heterogeneous things are piled up without system or 
 selection. It unquestionably contains interesting and 
 important matter, drawn alike from ancient and from 
 comparatively modern authors ; it contains too some 
 acute remarks and inferences of Madame Blavatsky's 
 own, but together with this there is any amount of 
 nonsense of all sorts, absolutely good for nothing. In 
 order to arrive at this conclusion with respect to 
 Isis, it is not in the least necessary to spend three 
 years in the study of mystic and occult literature, and 
 daily to swallow this spiced draught in allopathic 
 doses ; it is quite enough merely to read through 
 Eliphas Levi, Saint Ives, Franck, Vincent, Gorres, etc., 
 and to be sufficiently posted up in the most recent 
 investigations on hypnotism and kindred subjects. 
 
 Whether or no the sages of Thibet took a share in 
 " Madame's " literary work, they were at least unable 
 at other times to explain to her the simplest matters. 
 As a trifling instance, here is a letter from Elberfeld 
 in the early autumn of 1884 : — 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 71 
 
 " Vsevolod Sergyeitch, dear friend, for God's sake 
 give me a Russian translation of the phrase genera- 
 tion spontanee. Devil take the scientific men who in- 
 vent w^ords that you can't find in the dictionaries. I 
 beseech you, invent a translation at once, and let me 
 have it without delay ; I want it for my article for 
 Katkoff, which is at last coming to an end. Good- 
 bye, dear friend. — Yours, H. Blavatsky." 
 
 How much more simple it would have been for her 
 to raise her hand, to ring her silver bell, and 
 summon from Thibet the omniscient Mahatma or 
 his chela, and ask ! But of Madame's " writings 
 we shall speak later. 
 
 From time to time I corresponded with Madame 
 Blavatsky, and while expressing in my letters an in- 
 voluntary liking and sympathy for herself personally, 
 I none the less held steadily to my aim, and said to 
 myself: ''I will not stop till I ^/zoze' what she and 
 her phenomena really are Of course I did not 
 expect that she would at once, especially in her 
 letters, speak out and betray herself; but I already 
 knew enough of her to reckon on her constant ''little" 
 slips, which when fitted together would form some- 
 thing great and palpable. 
 
 As she was in the highest degree impulsive and 
 indiscreet, and at some moments artless in the ex- 
 treme, Madame Blavatsky could thoroughly baffle 
 only those who were yet more artless and more incon- 
 siderate than herself. Her chief strength, and the 
 secret of her successes, lay in her extraordinary 
 cynicism and contempt for mankind ; a cynicism 
 which she used to conceal as a rule with great skill, 
 but which still broke out irresistibly at times. ''The 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 simpler, the sillier and the coarser the phenomenon," 
 she subsequently admitted to me, ^'the more likely it 
 is to succeed. The vast majority of people who 
 are reckoned clever by themselves and others, are 
 hopeless fools. If you only knew what lions and 
 eagles in every part of the world have turned into 
 asses at my whistle, and have obediently wagged 
 their long ears in time as I piped the tune ! " 
 
 But the time for these confessions was still far 
 distant. Madame " continued to mystify me with 
 her '^master," and to assure me that I stood under 
 his special protection. As for phenomena, she wrote 
 under the depression of her failures in Paris : I can 
 do nothing in the way of phenomena, and I am so 
 sick of them. Do not talk about them." 
 
 She still upbraided me for my suspiciousness. I 
 told her of the seances of the magnetiser Robert and 
 his clairvoyant subject Edouard, who, beyond a doubt, 
 like his teacher used conjuring and simulation. But 
 she wrote in reply : Dear Mr. Vsevolod Sergyei'tch, 
 you are the most dreadful and incorrigible — not 
 sceptic, but ' suspecter '. Why, what has this 
 Edouard done to you, that you should imagine he 
 simulates ? But after all, what does it matter to 
 me ? Suspect all if you think good. It is the worse 
 for you." The underlined all was clear enough. 
 And here is something yet clearer: ''It is horrible 
 to pass one's life in suspecting all and everybody. I 
 am perfectly certain that you do not intend to ex- 
 press your suspicions of me before people. I at all 
 events have never been a suspecter ; and those 
 whom I love I love in earnest ; but of them there 
 are very few." 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 73 
 
 I maintain, and it will be evident in the long run 
 from the sequel of my narrative and from her own 
 letters, that when she had found a man whom she 
 wished to win over and turn into an obedient tool, 
 she worked on him by cordiality and sincerity. She 
 tried to convince him of her devotion, her warm 
 affection and friendship ; and then by virtue of these 
 feelings, she got him to do this or that for her. 
 Everything was founded on personal relations and 
 on feelings. With women these tactics worked 
 wonders. 
 
 From London Madame Blavatsky went at the end 
 of the summer [1884] to Elberfeld in Germany and 
 wrote to me thence : Here I am, dead beat, but in 
 the company of Olcott, Mohini, and some German 
 theosophists. This is a charming little town and 
 a charming family of theosophists ; Mr. and Mrs. 
 Gebhard, his three sons and a daughter-in-law, and 
 nephews and nieces, nine in all. It is a huge, 
 splendid house. She is a disciple of Eliphas Levi, 
 and is mad about occultism. Come here for a few 
 days." 
 
 At this time my excessive overwork had begun to 
 make itself felt. I had suddenly become conscious 
 of great fatigue and weakness. I had to go to the 
 doctor again, and he of course ordered a temporary 
 cessation of all work, complete rest, and distraction. 
 The distractions of Paris had no existence for me, 
 and I decided to get change of air and distraction by 
 a visit to Madame Blavatsky at Elberfeld. If I had 
 considered that an excursion into the region of so- 
 called marvels could but yet further upset my nerves, 
 if I had had the whisper of a presentiment of the 
 
74 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 unexpected trial to which I was about to submit my- 
 self, I should not have gone, in spite of all my desire 
 to see Madame " and to try a fall with her. 
 
 On a hot August day, the 24th, new style, I left 
 Paris. As I felt very unwell, I decided to rest half 
 way, at Brussels. Besides I had at that time never 
 been in Belgium, and had not seen Brussels. I 
 stopped at the Grand Hotel, slept very badly, went 
 out in the morning to see the town, and on the 
 staircase fell in with Miss A. To my surprise she 
 met me most affably. We were both bored, and 
 simply delighted to see one another. I found that 
 she was in Brussels on some business of her own, and 
 that she was going on to Cologne, and then some- 
 where else. 
 
 And why are you here ? " 
 
 I am going to Elberfeld to see Madame Bla- 
 vatsky ; she is ill and has sent for me." 
 
 Very well, then I will go with you." 
 
 Excellent. When shall we start ? " 
 ^'At nine o'clock to-morrow morning, that is the 
 most convenient train, or else we shall have to arrive 
 at Elberfeld late in the evening, not before ten." 
 
 This point settled, we passed the rest of the day 
 together, and in the evening Miss A told me so 
 much that w^as startling, marvellous, and mysterious 
 that I went off to my room with my head positively 
 in a whirl, and though it was very late, I could not 
 get to sleep. I knew very well that in spite of all 
 the efforts of the orthodox science of yesterday to deny 
 the supersensual, it still exists, and from time to time 
 manifests itself in human life; but I equally knew that 
 these manifestations are rare, and cannot be otherwise. 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 75 
 
 Yet here was the supersensual, in the most varied, 
 and sometimes in the most grotesque forms, Hterally 
 inundating the hfe of a healthy, vigorous, energetic 
 person, one who was moreover absorbed in material 
 affairs and business ! The whole night through I 
 hardly slept ; at seven o'clock I dressed and ordered 
 tea. At about eight I received a note from Miss A 
 saying that she had not slept either ; a sort of in- 
 visible struggle had been going on about her, her 
 head was aching, and she could not possibly start, as 
 all her keys were lost. I went to her, and found her 
 standing in the midst of her portmanteaux and 
 travelling bags. She assured me that ''all the keys 
 were lost, every one ; yet last night they were all 
 there, under her eyes". 
 Send for a locksmith." 
 '' I have sent." 
 
 The locksmith appeared and opened a portmanteau : 
 in the portmanteau was a bunch of keys, and on the 
 bunch the key of the portmanteau itself! 
 
 '' There you see the sort of thing that happens to 
 me," exclaimed Miss A triumphantly. 
 I do indeed," I replied. 
 
 As we had by this time missed the nine o'clock 
 train, we agreed to take a walk in the city, and to 
 start at one o'clock. But I suddenly began to feel 
 an unusual weakness, and a desire to sleep came 
 over me. I begged Miss A to excuse me, went to 
 my own room, and threw myself on the bed. How- 
 ever I did not fall asleep, but lay with my eyes 
 closed, — and there before me, one after the other, 
 passed, quite clear and distinct, various landscapes 
 which I did not know. This was so new to me, and 
 
76 
 
 A Modern'^ Priestess of his. 
 
 so beautiful, that I lay without stirring, for fear of 
 interrupting and spoiling the vision. At last all 
 became misty, little by little, then grew confused, 
 and I saw no more. 
 
 I opened my eyes. Drowsiness and weakness had 
 passed away. I went back to Miss A, and could not 
 refrain from telling her what had happened to me. 
 I described in detail, with all the circumstances, the 
 landscapes which I had seen. 
 
 We took our seats in a coupe of the train, which 
 carried us off, and we were talking together, when 
 suddenly Miss A looked out of the window, and 
 exclaimed : See, here is one of your landscapes ! " 
 
 The effect was almost painful. There could be 
 no doubt about it, just as 1 could not doubt that 
 this was the first time I had ever travelled by this 
 line or been in this region. Until it grew dark, I 
 continued to gaze in reality upon all that I had seen 
 in the morning, as I lay on the bed w^ith my eyes 
 closed. 
 
 We reached Elberfeld, and went to the Hotel 
 Victoria ; and finding that it was not very late, we 
 set off to see Madame Blavatsky, in the house of 
 the merchant Gebhard, about the best house in 
 Elberfeld. 
 
X. 
 
 We found our poor Madame " all swollen with 
 dropsy, and almost without movement, in an 
 enormous arm-chair, surrounded by Olcott, Mohini, 
 and Keightley, by two Englishwomen from London, 
 Mrs. and Miss Arundale, by Mrs. Holloway, an 
 American, and Gebhard with his wife and son. The 
 rest of the Gebhards, as well as the nephews and 
 nieces " of whom Madame Blavatsky had written to 
 me, had left Elberfeld. 
 
 Madame " was extremely delighted to see us ; 
 she brightened up, and began to fidget in her arm- 
 chair, and to let off steam " in Russian, to the 
 annoyance of those around her, as I clearly saw. 
 
 We were in a large and handsome drawing-room. 
 It was divided into two portions by an arch, over 
 which heavy draperies were drawn, and what there 
 was behind them, in the other half of the room, I 
 did not know. When we had talked long enough, 
 Helena Petrovna called up Rudolf Gebhard, a young 
 man with very good manners, and whispered some- 
 thing to him, on which he disappeared. 
 
 I am going to give you a surprise directly," she 
 said. 
 
 I soon saw that the surprise had something to do 
 with the half of the room hidden behind the draperies, 
 as a certain bustle was to be heard from there. 
 
78 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 The curtains were suddenly drawn back, and two 
 wonderful figures, illuminated with a brilliant, bluish 
 light, concentrated and strengthened by mirrors, rose 
 before us. At the first moment I thought I was 
 looking on living men, so skilfully was the whole 
 thing conceived. But it turned out that they were 
 two great draped portraits of Mahatmas Morya and 
 Koot Hoomi, painted in oils by Schmiechen, an 
 artist related to the Gebhards. 
 
 Subsequently, when I had thoroughly examined 
 these portraits, I found in them much that was 
 unsatisfactory from an artistic point of view ; but 
 their life-likeness was remarkable, and the eyes of 
 the two mysterious strangers gazed straight at the 
 spectator, their lips could almost have been said to 
 move. 
 
 The artist, of course, had never seen the originals 
 of these two portraits. Madame Blavatsky and 
 Olcott assured us all that he had painted by inspira- 
 tion, that they " had themselves guided his pencil, and 
 that ''the likeness was extraordinary". However 
 that might be, Schmiechen had painted two beautiful 
 young men. Mahatma Koot Hoomi, clad in a 
 graceful sort of robe, trimmed with fur, had a tender, 
 almost feminine face, and gazed sweetly with a pair 
 of charming light eyes. 
 
 But as soon as one looked at '' the master," Koot 
 Hoomi, for all his tender beauty, was at onceforgotten. 
 The fiery black eyes of the tall Morya fixed them- 
 selves sternly and piercingly upon one, and it was 
 impossible to tear oneself away from them. The 
 ''master" was represented as in the miniature in 
 Madame Blavatsky's locket, crowned with a white 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 79 
 
 turban and in a white garment. • All the power of 
 the reflectors was turned upon this sombrely 
 beautiful face, and the whiteness of the turban and 
 dress completed the brilliance and life-likeness of 
 the effect. 
 
 Madame Blavatsky asked for still more light upon 
 her master," so Rudolf Gebhard and Keightley 
 altered the mirrors, arranged the drapery round the 
 portrait, and placed Koot Hoomi aside. The effect 
 was surprising. One had to force oneself to re- 
 member that it was not a living man. I could not 
 turn my eyes away. 
 
 Olcott and Madame Blavatsky kept me more than 
 an hour before this portrait. At last my head began 
 to ache with the excessively bright light, and I felt 
 all the symptoms of severe fatigue ; the journey and 
 the two almost sleepless nights had begun to tell 
 upon me. I told Miss A that I was not capable of 
 staying any longer, and that it was high time for us 
 to return to our Hotel Victoria and go to bed at 
 once. She also complained of extreme fatigue. 
 Madame Blavatsky bade us good-bye, after making 
 us promise that we would come back as early as 
 possible in the morning. 
 
 On the way to the hotel we could talk of nothing 
 but the wonderful portrait of the master," and in 
 the darkness he seemed to stand before me. I tried 
 to shut my eyes, but I still saw him clearly in every 
 detail. When I reached my room, I locked the door, 
 undressed, and went to sleep. 
 
 Suddenly I woke up, or, what is more probable, I 
 dreamt, I imagined, that I was awoke by a warm 
 breath, I found myself in the same room, and before 
 
8o 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 me, in the half-darkness, there stood a tall human 
 figure in white. I felt a voice, without knowing how 
 or in what language, bidding me light the candle. I 
 was not in the least alarmed, and was not surprised. 
 I lighted the candle, and it appeared to me that it 
 was tw^o o'clock, by my watch. The vision did not 
 vanish. There was a living man before me, and this 
 man was clearly none other than the original of the 
 wonderful portrait, an exact repetition of it. He placed 
 
 (himself on a chair beside me, and told me in "an un- 
 known but intelligible language " various matters of 
 interest to myself. Among other things he told me 
 that in order to see him in his astral body I had had 
 to go through much preparation, and that the last 
 lesson had been given me that morning, when I saw 
 with closed eyes the landscapes through which I was 
 to pass on the way to Elberfeld ; and that I possessed 
 a great and growing magnetic force. I asked how I 
 was to employ it ; but he vanished in silence. 1 
 thought that I sprang after him ; but the door was 
 closed. The idea came upon me that it was an hallu- 
 cination, and that I was going out of my mind. But 
 there was Mahatma Morya back again in his place, 
 without movement, with his gaze fixed upon me, the 
 same, exactly the same, as he was imprinted on my 
 brain. He began to shake his head, smiled, and said, 
 still in the voiceless, imaginary language of dreams : 
 Be assured that I am not an hallucination and that 
 your reason is not deserting you. Madame Blavatsky 
 will show you to-morrow in the presence of all that 
 my visit was real." He vanished ; I looked at my 
 watch, and saw that it was about three o'clock ; I put 
 out the candle, and went to sleep at once. 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 8i 
 
 I woke at ten o'clock and remembered everything 
 quite clearly. The door was locked ; it was impos- 
 sible to tell from the candle if it had been lighted 
 during the night, and if it had been long burning, as 
 I had lighted it on my first arrival before the visit to 
 Madame Blavatsky. 
 
 In the coffee-room of the hotel I found Miss A at 
 breakfast. 
 
 Have you had a good night ? I asked her. 
 
 Not very, I have seen the Mahatma Morya." 
 
 Really? And I have seen him too." 
 
 How did you see him ? " 
 I had committed myself, and it was too late to 
 withdraw. I described to her my vivid dream, or 
 hallucination, and learnt from her" that while she 
 was thinking whether she should formally turn 
 theosophist, or if there was not something ''dark" in 
 it, Mahatma Morya had appeared to her and said : 
 ''We have great need of a 'little beetle' like 
 
 you". 
 
 " That is exactly what he said, a ' little beetle,' 
 and he said it in Russian," Miss A assured me, ex- 
 tremely delighted, for some reason or other, that the 
 Mahatma had called her a " little beetle". She then 
 went on: "So let us go to Madame Blavatsky. What 
 will she say ? If it was Morya, and not our own 
 fancy, she must know." 
 
 We set off to the Gebhard's. Madame Blavatsky 
 met us, as I thought, with an enigmatical smile, and 
 asked : " Well, what sort of a night have you had ? " 
 
 " Very good " I replied, and thoughtlessly added : 
 
 " Have you nothing to tell me ? " 
 
 "Nothing particular," she said; "I only know 
 
 6 
 
82 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isi<;. 
 
 that the ' master ' has been to see you with one of 
 his chelas." 
 
 In these words there was no evidential value 
 whatever. She had more than once, both by word 
 of mouth and by letter, assured me that the master 
 visited me. But Miss A considered her words 
 wonderful, and began to narrate our visions. 
 Madame Blavatsky could not conceal the delight 
 which came upon her. She forgot all her sufferings, 
 and her eyes flashed sparks. 
 
 There, there, you are done for, Mr. Sceptic and 
 Suspecter ! " she kept on repeating. What will you 
 say now ? " 
 
 I shall say that I had a very clear, vivid dream, 
 or hallucination, produced by my nervous state, my 
 great fatigue in consequence of the journey, after 
 two sleepless nights, and the powerful impression 
 which had been produced on me by the brilliantly 
 lighted portrait on which I gazed for more than an 
 hour. If it had been in the day-time, or in the 
 evening before I went to sleep, or if, on the other 
 hand, I had not gone to sleep again when the 
 Mahatma disappeared, I should have been inclined 
 to believe in the reality of what happened to me. 
 But you see this came ' between two sleeps,' and he 
 did not talk to me with a voice, or in words, or in 
 any language that I know ; and finally, he did not 
 leave me any material proof of his visit, or take the 
 turban off his head, as he did with Olcott. These 
 are three important considerations which point to 
 its having been only a dream or a subjective de- 
 lusion." 
 
 Well now, really, God knows what this means!" 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 83 
 
 — Helena Petrovna grew warm. " You will drive 
 me out of my mind with your incredulity. But you 
 say he told you some very interesting things ? " 
 
 ''Yes, he told me just what I was busy with, and 
 what was to be found in my brain.'' 
 
 '' But he himself assured you that he was not an 
 hallucination ? " 
 
 ''Yes, but he said that you would prove this to 
 me in the presence of all." 
 
 "And have I not proved it by knowing about his 
 visit ? " 
 
 " I do not consider this a valid proof." 
 
 " Very well, I will prove it in another way. 
 Meanwhile, you surely do not mean to deny that 
 you have seen him and talked to him ? " 
 
 " How can I possibly deny what Miss A has heard 
 from my own mouth, and you have heard from hers ? 
 I ought not to have committed myself, but now 
 you know yourself it is too late ; as they say, a word 
 is not a sparrow ; once off, there is no enticing it 
 back again." 
 
 Madame Blavatsky rang an electric bell, collected 
 all her theosophists, and began, with the irritating 
 loudness which was natural to her, to tell about the 
 great phenomenon which had taken place. 
 
 It is easy to imagine my position, when all these 
 ladies and gentlemen began to congratulate me on 
 the high honour, happiness, and glory which I had 
 won, in the visit which I had received from Mahatma 
 Morya. I declared that I was much inclined to regard 
 the manifestation as a dream or delusion, produced by 
 the state of my nerves and by fatigue. At this they 
 began to regard me with horror as a blasphemer. 
 
84 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 The whole day passed in nothing but talk about the 
 " great phenomenon ". 
 
 In the evening we were all assembled in the pretty 
 
 Oriental " room, all, that is, but Olcott, who was 
 on the second floor. Suddenly Madame Blavatsky, 
 who had been brought to us in her arm-chair, 
 announced : " The master was upstairs just now ; he 
 passed by Olcott's side and put something in his 
 pocket. Keightley, run upstairs and bring the 
 colonel." 
 
 The colonel appeared. 
 Have you just seen the master ? " asked "Madame". 
 
 The ''old cat's eye got loose, and began to stray. 
 I felt his presence and his touch," he replied. 
 
 " On which side ? " 
 On the right." 
 
 ''Show us all you have got in your right-hand 
 pocket. Turn it out." 
 
 Olcott obediently began to carry out her order 
 slowly and methodically. He brought out first a 
 small key, then a button, then a match-box, and a 
 tooth-pick, and lastly a small piece of paper folded 
 up. 
 
 '' What is that ? " exclaimed Madame Blavatsky. 
 
 ''I do not knows I had no piece of paper," said 
 the '' old cat," in a tone of the most innocent sur- 
 prise. 
 
 Madame Blavatsky seized the piece of paper, and 
 solemnly proclaimed : '' The letter of the master. 
 Yes, it is so, the master's letter." 
 
 ^ So Madame Blavatsky used to call Colonel Olcott in his 
 absence. 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 85 
 
 She opened and read it. There was written on 
 the paper, in the " unmistakable " hand of the master, 
 in EngHsh : ''Certainly I was there; but who can 
 open the eyes of him who will not see ? — M." 
 
 All took the paper in turn, with palpitating rever- 
 ence, read what was written on it, and turned their 
 envious eyes on me. Alas, I had really incurred 
 the involuntary and invincible envy of all these 
 good people. Only think ! I have hardly arrived, 
 and not only am I honoured with a visit from the 
 master in person, the stern, the inaccessible, whose 
 very name must not be named, but because I express 
 a ''hair-brained incredulity," he takes the trouble a 
 second time in twenty-four hours to make his astral 
 voyage from the depths of Thibet to the German 
 commercial town of Elberfeld, writes a profound 
 note, skilfully vague and ambiguous, and puts it in 
 Olcott's pocket, between a button and a" tooth-pick ! 
 
 Olcott gazed at me with such an idiotic expression, 
 and "Madame" gazed at me so innocently, and at the 
 same time so triumphantly, that I quite lost my head. 
 And then, my dream and delusion had been so vivid ! 
 
 " Believe" I could not ; but all the glamour of the 
 dazing mise-en-scene had its effect upon me, in my 
 nervous and weak condition ; I was already getting 
 dizzy with the fumes, and beginning to ask myself : 
 " Did I really see him ? is this by any chance really 
 his note ? " And then she was there, this old, sick 
 woman, suffering tortures from her deep-seated 
 maladies, looking death full in the face, and then 
 looking full in the face at me, as a man looks whose 
 conscience is clear, who feels his own innocence and 
 fears no reproach ! 
 
86 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 There must have proceeded from this terrible and 
 unhappy woman some sort of magnetic attraction, 
 not to be translated into words, which so many calm, 
 healthy and judicious people experienced in their 
 own persons. I was so sure of myself ; and lo, she 
 was making me waver ! 
 
 ''Tell me," she asked, fixing on me the turbid 
 gleam of her eyes, '' can you take your oath that you 
 only had a delusion, and that this note is not the 
 master's writing ? " 
 
 ''I do not know," I replied. '' To-morrow morn- 
 ing I shall come to bid you good-bye. I am wanted 
 at home, and to-morrow I shall leave." 
 
XL 
 
 And next day I did come to bid her good-bye. I 
 was taken into a large and lofty room, which served 
 as her study and bedroom. The masters of the 
 house had done everything for her comfort, and she 
 was among surroundings worthy of her. Helena 
 Petrovna was lying, all swollen, on a great bed, and 
 groaning. 
 
 As I looked upon her perfectly grey face, which 
 betrayed extreme suffering, I simply did not recog- 
 nise the Madame " who yesterday evening, though 
 she could hardly move in her arm-chair, was still 
 energetic, and at times even cheerful. 
 
 " My God ! What is the matter with you ? " I 
 asked. 
 
 I almost died last night, my dear," she groaned ; 
 it got at my very heart, and so — look here." 
 With an effort she got her hand from under the 
 bed-clothes. It was no more a hand ; it was but an 
 inflexible thick log. 
 
 How about the doctor ? " 
 She smiled contemptuously. 
 
 One is actually coming from England, he will 
 be here to-morrow or the day after. But what does 
 it matter ? If you die, you die ; we shall all come 
 to that. What does a doctor matter, my dear man ? 
 If the ^ rnaster ' wishes, I shall be up again directly, 
 
88 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 that has happened before now : and if he does not 
 wish, who can help me ? " 
 
 I was ill at ease, grieved and sorry for her to the 
 last degree. 
 
 ''Do you mean to go away? To-day?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " Yes, I must." 
 Don't go away," she suddenly whispered in a 
 peculiar tone. " Can't you stay with me three or 
 four days ? Have a little pity on me." 
 
 Her voice broke, and tears started from her eyes.- 
 
 '' See, I am alone," she went on, amid sobs visibly 
 rising to her throat ; " all these people are strangers, 
 strangers ; they nurse me and attend to me, but I 
 am sick of seeing them ; I should like to beat them, 
 to spit at them. They are all loathsome to me — 
 strangers. But you are my own, a kinsman, a 
 Russian. My friend above price, you, my dear child, 
 do not desert an old woman like me at such a time. 
 If I die, do you close my eyes with a kindred Russian 
 hand. And then there is another thing; I have just 
 finished the Bhie Mountains, and it must be sent 
 to Katkoff ; now the manuscript can't be sent in its 
 present state ; alas, I can't write good Russian ; it 
 wants corrections, and great ones too ; it is no good 
 my thinking of it ; take it, for God's sake, and 
 correct it. Then I will send it. And it is so neces- 
 sary to send it at once ; I have not got a farthing of 
 money of my own, the society gives me very little, 
 and it is not very pleasant to live at other people's 
 expense. For God's sake do me this kindness, it is 
 truly a good act, I shall not forget your goodness 
 either in this world or in the next. Oh, it is so bad." 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 89 
 
 She groaned, and tears again started to her eyes. 
 
 Needless to say that she touched and disturbed 
 me completely, and in the end vanquished me. I 
 told her that I would stay two or three days, or even 
 a week if she wanted me, and that I was prepared 
 to set about reading the Bhie Mountains at once. 
 
 It was something to see how she thanked me ! 
 Though I very soon discovered why it was essential 
 'for her to keep me at Elberfeld, I still think that 
 the torments of loneliness among foreigners, and her 
 attraction to myself as one of her own kin, a Russian, 
 were genuine. If she was only playing a part even 
 then, she played it inimitably. Most probably she 
 was genuine, and was playing a part at the same 
 time ; in her the irreconcilable was reconciled. 
 
 By the evening she was better, enough to put on 
 her black sacque and get into her arm-chair. I w^as 
 able to look about me, and to acquire some informa- 
 tion about the fresh faces which surrounded me. At 
 the time there were not many of them; only Gebhard 
 with his wife and son, and the Arundales. 
 
 I had a good deal of work to do in correcting the 
 manuscript of the Blue Mountains, as Madame " 
 was in fact not distinguished by the correctness of 
 her Russian, in spite of the originality and vigour of 
 her style. It was this work which prevented my 
 being a witness of a phenomenon which took place 
 only a few yards from me, in the next room. Helena 
 Petrovna was lying on her bed, Olcott was sitting at 
 her feet, and Miss A had placed herself in an arm- 
 chair in the middle of the room, and was playing 
 with a little boy. He was not usually admitted into 
 "Madame's" room, and it is easy to suppose that 
 
go 
 
 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 he had been called in on this occasion in order to 
 distract Miss A's attention. 
 
 Suddenly Miss A called out, and when I entered 
 the room she was holding in her hand a letter which 
 had fallen at her feet from above. The letter proved 
 to come from Mahatma Morya; and in it, far from 
 calling her a ''little beetle," he highly flattered her 
 self-respect. This phenomenon secured her for the 
 Theosophical Society. 
 
 The same day there arrived from Cambridge, F. 
 Myers, one of the founders and most active members 
 of the London Society for Psychical Research, and 
 his brother Dr. Myers, who had undertaken to ex- 
 press an opinion on ''Madame's" illnesses. The two 
 stayed, like myself, at the Hotel Victoria. In the 
 evening I had a long conversation with F. Myers, 
 who, by his sincerity and earnestness, produced on 
 me a most favourable impression, which my further 
 acquaintance with him has only strengthened. He 
 begged me in the first place to tell him how I had 
 seen Mahatma Morya, and when I had done so he 
 began to urge me to communicate the fact to the 
 London society in writing. 
 
 " I never considered that I had any right to refuse 
 to give a written confirmation of the occurrence," I 
 replied; ''and if you need my narrative for serious 
 investigation, it is at your service. For you the fact 
 is undoubtedly important, but I cannot understand 
 why Madame Blavatsky clutches at it in this way. 
 Of course, it has all the appearance of an hallucina- 
 tion produced by circumstances, or even of a vivid 
 dream. Moreover, I myself look on it in precisely 
 this light ; and meanwhile not only have I no other 
 
A Modern Priestess of his, gi 
 
 valid grounds for admitting the reality of communi- 
 cations from the Mahatmas to any of us, but the 
 very existence of these Mahatmas is to me quite 
 problematical." 
 
 I do not know if you are right," said Myers; 
 ''that will be seen from our further investigations. 
 In any case, your communication, by the rules of 
 our society, must consist only of a simple detailed 
 account of facts, without any commentaries or criti- 
 cisms of your own." 
 
 '' My account shall be simple and detailed," I 
 said ; but if I am not allowed to say in addition 
 that I consider my experience as anything but a 
 reality, then I cannot give it you in writing. The 
 matter is too serious. In a lady's drawing-room 
 people may chatter and imagine as much as they 
 like; but once we set about a serious investigation 
 of psychical phenomena, we find ourselves in the 
 presence of clear obligations and quite different 
 claims. Do not lose sight of the fact that I am in 
 no way a witness from the theosophical camp, but 
 an inquirer like yourself, so far as my means and 
 circumstances permit. I am only disturbed and 
 interested, and wish to know the actual truth.'' 
 
 And so we decided. 
 
 In the Report of the London Society for Psychical 
 Research my experience is inserted ; and though, in 
 obedience to the rules of the society, I do not myself 
 analyse it, yet I do not in any way admit its reality. 
 The society, moreover, considered it to be a vivid 
 dream, and declared that I '' do not regard it as 
 affording any evidence of occult agency". 
 
 In two days I had finished getting Madame 
 
92 
 
 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 Blavatsky's manuscripts into some sort of order, and 
 took my departure from Elberfeld, leaving ''Madame" 
 in a state of health which, though it did not, accord- 
 ing to Dr. Myers, give any cause for immediate alarm 
 as to her life, was still very serious. When parting 
 with me she was again very touching ; and I told her 
 that, though I had now nothing whatever to do with 
 her Theosophical Society, my heart ached for herself 
 personally, and in all sincerity I was very anxious to 
 do what I could for her. 
 
 [Mr. Solovyoff seems to be under some misap- 
 prehension as to one point of his conversation with 
 Mr. Myers. Mr. Myers can certainly not have said 
 that by the rules " of the Society for Psychical 
 Research the narrative must not be accompanied by 
 any commentaries or criticisms, as no such rule 
 exists. What he believes himself to have said is 
 that the committee would regard as evidence only 
 the mere statement of facts, and could not be bound 
 by any views or comments of Mr. Solovyoff's own. 
 
 The words in the report to which Mr. Solovyoff 
 refers occur in Mrs. Sidgwick's " Note on certain 
 Phenomena not dealt with in Mr. Hodgson's Re- 
 port " {Proceedings^ iii., 395). They are as follows : 
 
 Since writing the above I have learnt that, owing 
 to events which have since occurred, Mr. Solovyoff 
 no longer regards his experience as affording any 
 evidence of occult agency".] 
 
XII. 
 
 Some time after my return to Paris I received the 
 following letter : — 
 ^^Dear V. S., 
 
 Tout est perdu — (meme) Vhonneur, What 
 am I to do ? If you too have confessed to me that 
 you suspect me to be sometimes capable of substi- 
 tuting fraudulent in the place of real manifestations, 
 you, my good and dear friend, what can I expect from 
 my enemies? Madame Coulomb has got her way. 
 She has written letters which she says are from me, and 
 publishes them (I have not even seen them yet) in a 
 Madras missionary paper. And these letters are said 
 to reveal a whole system of organised fraud. But I 
 have never written two lines to her ! ^ It turns out 
 that our Mahatmas are made of bladders, muslin, 
 and masks ! You saw bladders that night, so now 
 you know. Olcott has several times seen the master, 
 and has twice spoken to K. H. face to face — both of 
 them in the form of bladders, etc. Mohini will go to 
 you in two days, that is to Paris, on Thursday ; so 
 you will tell him, and he will explain matters. But 
 how you can help me, in spite of all your good-will, I 
 do not know. You say that you will have nothing 
 
 ^ It is perfectly clear, not only from Hodgson's report, but 
 from her own letter to me of 3rd January, 1885, which I shall 
 give later, that there were letters from her to Madame Coulomb 
 which she did not deny. 
 
94 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 more to do with the society; but I am ready, for the 
 sake of the society, for an abstract idea, to give 
 up not only my Hfe but my honour. I have sent in 
 my resignation, and shall retire from the scene of 
 action. I will go to China, to Thibet, to the devil, 
 if I must, where nobody will find me, where nobody 
 will see me or know where I am ; I will be dead to 
 every one but two or three devoted friends like you, 
 and I wish it to be thought that I am dead ; and 
 then in a couple of years, if death spares me, I will 
 reappear with strength renewed. This has been 
 decided and signed by the ' general ' himself.^ 
 
 First of all, you can say to each and all in Paris 
 that since, in spite of all my efforts, in spite of my 
 having sacrificed to the society life and health and 
 my whole future, I am suspected not only by my 
 enemies but even by my own theosophists, I shall 
 cut off the infected limb from the sound body ; that 
 is, I shall cut myself off from the society. They 
 have all clutched at the idea with such delight, 
 Olcott and Madame Gebhard and the rest, that I 
 have not even met with any pity. I leave the 
 moral to you. Of course, I shall not depart into the 
 ' wilderness ' till Olcott, who starts for India by the 
 first steamer, has arranged matters at Adyar, and 
 exposed and proved the conspiracy — they gave the 
 Coulomb woman 10,000 rupees, as is now proved, 
 in order to destroy the society ; but when all this 
 has settled down, then I shall go off — where, I do 
 not know yet ; it is all the same, besides, so long as 
 
 had once said to her in joke that she ought to call 
 Mahatma Morya the " general," not the " master " ; " Colonel 
 Olcott," "General Morya," and so on. 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 95 
 
 it is somewhere that nobody knows. I can address 
 my letters to Katkoff through you. Of course, Olcott 
 will know where I am, but the rest may think what 
 they like. The more absurd such ideas the better. 
 Now, here you can give me real help. I shall trust 
 you entirely, and I can and will direct the society 
 better from a distance than on the spot. 
 
 There, my dear friend, that is all. The rest I will 
 tell you face to face ; for I want to come and see you 
 for a few days without any one knowing it, if you 
 will have me. Answer at once, and don't try to dis- 
 suade me, for this is the only hope both for me and 
 for the society. The effect of my resignation publicly 
 announced by myself will be immense. You will see. 
 And do you make haste to let it be known in Peters- 
 burg, say in the Rebus there, that our society is not 
 founded for the production but for the investigation 
 of phenomena; not for the deification of Mahatmas, 
 but for a world-wide cause, and to show that faith 
 in the supernatural is superstition, folly ; but that 
 faith, i.e., science, the knowledge of the forces of 
 nature of which our scientific men are ignorant, is 
 the duty of every civilised man ; and that as half the 
 theosophists and all the spiritists consider me, some 
 of them a powerful medium and some a charlatan, 
 I am tired of it all ; and since I love the society 
 better than life, I am leaving it for a time of my own 
 free will in order to save the scandal. For God's 
 sake do this at once, and it will not be too late. 
 Mohini will explain to you all the conspiracy in 
 Madras against Adyar and the society. Discredit 
 these vile Calvinistic missionaries; be a friend to me. 
 And meanwhile answer. I want to start for London 
 
96 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 at the end of this week. Do me a service. Ask at 
 Rue , Byron ii bis, if there is a ^ chromophoto- 
 graphic ' artist, Madame Tchang, Hving there ; and 
 if she has left, where she has gone. But she must 
 neither see you nor know who you are. Oh, if I 
 could only see you and talk it over, and arrange and 
 get your advice. Now it is war, for life and death. 
 
 ''We put our trust in the Mahatmas, and shall not 
 be confounded for ever. 
 
 Yours to the grave, 
 
 '^H. P. Blavatsky.". 
 
 Together with all this, at the end of the letter, 
 evidently in order to win me completely, was a 
 most curious postscript; an '' astral" note from 
 Mahatma Koot Hoomi, in his usual blue pencil, the 
 authenticity of which can be attested by any expert. 
 And this is what the sage Mahatma, having taken 
 the trouble to leave his Thibetan solitude, vouch- 
 safed to write to me in French : Et les ' Mahatmas' 
 ne I'abandonneront pas, mais, la situation est furieuse- 
 ment serieuse, O. est bete, mais il n'y en a pas 
 d'autre.-K. H." 
 
 The wise Mahatma, by frankly admitting Olcott's 
 stupidity to me, spoilt the whole thing. I do not 
 know what imnression this letter of Madame's " 
 would have produced upon me in respect of its 
 sincerity; but in the ''astral postscript" of Koot 
 Hoomi I, without being an "expert," could not help 
 recognising the style, and even the undoubted 
 though disguised handwriting, of Madame Bla- 
 vatsky ; and this at once gave me solid ground 
 to stand on. I no longer doubted that here the 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 97 
 
 matter was not straightforward at all. Of course, I 
 did not carry out either of Madame's " requests; 
 I made no declaration whatever, then or afterwards, 
 either in newspapers or reviews, concerning the 
 Theosophical Society or Madame Blavatsky ; nor, 
 again, did I try to hunt up any chromophoto- 
 graphiste," who was " neither to see me nor know 
 of me " ; all this would have been at least absurd. 
 
 I was so irritated by Koot Hoomi's astral 
 postscript " that at the first moment I was inclined 
 to appeal at once to Madame Blavatsky to forget all 
 about my existence. But I should have repented if 
 I had followed this first impulse ; that very day, 
 at Madame de Morsier's, I met the most convinced 
 and honest of the French theosophists ; and they, in 
 spite of all the obviousness of the deception, 
 admitted the postscript to be the authentic work not 
 of ^'Madame's" hand but of Koot Hoomi's. This 
 absolute blindness on the part of people who were / 
 perfectly rational in everything but the question of f 
 " Madarne's " impeccability, forced me finally to ad- / 
 here to my original plan. Whatever came I would 
 collect such proofs of all these deceptions as should 
 be sufficient not only for me but for all these blind 
 dupes. I would no longer give way to the involun- 
 tary sympathy and pity, which, in spite of every- 
 thing, still attracted me to Helena Petrovna. I 
 would in the first place deal only with Madame 
 Blavatsky, the thief of souls, who was trying to steal 
 my soul too. She was duping me under the veil 
 of personal friendship and devotion ; she was trying 
 to entangle and exploit me ; and so my hands were 
 free. Let her look on me as a friend, in other 
 
 7 
 
98 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 words as her blind and absolute dupe ; for if she 
 got into her head the faintest suspicion of my 
 object, of course I should attain nothing whatever. 
 In any case, whatever happened, I should have 
 more pity for her than she had for me, and I w^ould 
 do my best in every way to get her to listen to the 
 counsels of reason, in order to lessen the scandal ; 
 and to this end I was prepared to give her the best 
 advice, because she was a Russian. But if she was 
 stubborn, I would expose her in the eyes of every- 
 body, even though she was a countrywoman. The 
 first thing needful now was that we should meet ; 
 I could not go to London, let her come to Paris ; 
 fortunately, this was what she herself wished. 
 
 And I wrote to her begging her to come straight 
 from Elberfeld without fail. In a couple of days 
 Madame de Morsier informed me that she had re- 
 ceived a letter from Madame," in which she begged 
 her to meet Mohini, who was to arrive by a certain 
 train. 
 
 It is essential that he should be met," Madame 
 de Morsier explained to me ; ''you see he is coming 
 alone, and, as his French is very bad, he will be en- 
 tirely lost. Can he not stay with you ? Madame " 
 could not make up her mind to ask you straight out 
 for this, as she did not know if you would think it 
 proper, so she left it in my hand." 
 
 I have a spare room, quite by itself," I replied, 
 ''and he will not be any burden to me with his 
 vegetarianism. To be sure, his bronze face and 
 strange costume will make the people in our impasse 
 talk; but that is all the same to me." 
 
 We went together to the railway station, and met 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 99 
 
 the young Brahmin. He handed me a letter from 
 
 Madame She wrote as follows : — 
 
 ^^Dear V. S., 
 
 I tried to do as you wish, but it is im- 
 possible. To go to Paris alone, when I can hardly 
 walk, would be madness. I shall go to London on 
 Monday. I shall remain (for I cannot help it) a 
 couple of weeks in London, and then I shall come 
 to you in Paris for one week or two, as you wish. 
 No one must know where I am except Gebhard, who 
 is entirely devoted to me and the cause. I have 
 resigned, and now there is the strangest mess. The 
 general ordered this strategy, and he knows. I 
 have, of course, remained a member, but merely a 
 member, and I am going to vanish for a year or two 
 from the field of battle. This letter will be handed 
 to you by Mohini. He will stay in Paris till Tues- 
 day. Gebhard will go with me when I wish, and 
 will take me where I wish. But where I am to go 
 so that none but a few devoted friends may know 
 where I am, L positively cannot tell. 
 
 " Understand, my dear V. S., that it is essential for 
 my plan to vanish without a trace for a time. Then 
 there will be a reaction, and to my advantage. I 
 should like to go to China, if the Mahatma will 
 permit ; but I have no money. If it is known where 
 I am, all is lost. Now help me with your advice. 
 The master commanded this, and that in a general 
 way ; but left the details and the carrying out to me, 
 at my own risk and peril, as always. If I break 
 down, so much the worse for me. And then there 
 is Russia ; you can help me there. Say that in 
 consequence of the conspiracy of which Mohini will 
 
100 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 tell you, and of my health, I have been obliged to 
 give up active work for a year or eighteen months. 
 And that is the truth ; I have no strength left. And 
 now I will finish the second part of the Caves, so it 
 will be all the better. But my programme, if you 
 approve, is this : let us be heard of as mysteriously 
 as possible, and vaguely too. Let us theosophists 
 be surrounded now by such mystery that the devil 
 himself won't be able to see anything, even through 
 a pair of spectacles. But for this we must write, 
 and write, and write. So, till we meet again. 
 Mohini will tell you all. 
 
 " Yours ever, 
 
 H. Blavatsky." 
 
 Mohini told ver}^ little, and it was impossible to 
 gather from his words precisely what was going on. 
 One thing was clear: the theosophists, with'' Madame" 
 at their head, had taken fright in good earnest ; it 
 was not without reason that Koot Hoomi had written 
 to me that 'Ma situation est furieusement serieuse ". 
 Mohini stayed three days, gave the Paris theosophists 
 three lectures, and went off to London to give evi- 
 dence to the Society for Psychical Research. 
 
 After his departure I received the following letter 
 from Madame Blavatsky, who was already in Eng- 
 land : — 
 
 " 9 Victoria Road, Kensington. 
 
 " Dear V. S., 
 
 '^ This is my new address, for a fortnight, 
 not longer. They are sending me out to Egypt, and 
 then to Ceylon — nearer home, but not home. It 
 shall be done as the master has commanded — not to 
 
A Modern Priestess of Ists. 
 
 lor 
 
 go back to Madras till Olcott has settled things; but 
 to stay in Europe is equally impossible. We have 
 thought and thought, but thought out nothing. We 
 have not money enough to scatter and live each 
 separately. Some theosophists are going with me 
 now to Ceylon (Mr. and Mrs. Cooper Oakley, who 
 are starting for Madras), but for me to go alone with- 
 out any one is not to be thought of. 
 
 My rheumatism is again about in my shoulder, 
 and a little all over me. If it attacks me again as it 
 did at Elberfeld, then good-bye-- it will fly to the 
 heart. 
 
 Now how are we to meet ? I cannot go to Paris 
 when I can hardly walk. Lord, how I should like to 
 see you once again ! Is it really impossible for you 
 to come here, even for a couple of days ? I know 
 that we ought to have a meeting ; but what am I to 
 do if fate does not permit it ? If I had only been a 
 little better, I would have come. I am dreadfully 
 sorry now that I did not pass through Paris. But I 
 was not alone, and it was impossible to throw over 
 Mrs. HoUoway when she had come to Elberfeld with 
 me, and for my sake alone. Write and advise me, my 
 friend. It is dreadful if I am not to see you again 
 before I start. There is a fearful uproar going on in 
 India. It is a war to the death with the missionaries. 
 They or we ! 220 students of Christian College, all 
 Hindus, have refused to attend the courses and have 
 left the college, after this dirty plot of the mission- 
 aries and the letters they have printed as mine, and 
 the notes to the Coulombs ; they have come over to 
 us in a body. 
 
 " Que c'est un faux, est tout a fait evident. Only a 
 
102 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 person who is entirely ignorant of India, such as this 
 Madame Coulomb, could have written such nonsense 
 as they have written there. For instance, / write of 
 the conjuring tricks which I have arranged for the 
 benefit of the ' Maharajah of Lahore/ when there is 
 no such person in India as the Maharajah of Lahore!^ 
 and so on, and so on. Forgery has already been 
 proved in the case of two or three letters, but the 
 scandal is frightful. You can imagine how they 
 fear and hate me, when a week before the publication 
 of these forged letters, on the day of the municipal 
 elections in Calcutta, there were posted at all the 
 corners of the streets, literally in thousands, bills 
 announcing 'The Fall of Madame Blavatsky'. Well, 
 it is a dodge, and I must indeed be a terrible person 
 to them; it is all the Scotch Calvinistic missionaries, 
 a most vile mean sect, true Jesuits minus the wisdom 
 and craft of the latter. But I am not fallen yet, and 
 please God I will let them see it. My ' fall ' shall 
 be a triumph yet, if I do not die. 
 ' " Send me an answer, dear man. Tell me if you 
 have finished the French Isis, part ii. Send it on if 
 you do not want it. Madame Novikoff would greatly 
 like to make your acquaintance. Oh, if you would 
 only come here ! 
 
 " Yours to the grave, 
 
 H. Blavatsky." 
 
 ^ It appears from Hodgson's inquiries that H. P. Blavatsky in 
 her letters to the Coulombs used to speak of certain persons 
 by nicknames invented by her and known to her correspondents. 
 Thus a certain Padshah was called King. It was entirely in 
 accordance with Madame Blavatsky's habits to call people by 
 nicknames, both in letters and in conversation. 
 
A Modern Priestess of his, 103 
 
 Some time passed without a word from Madame 
 Blavatsky. At last I wrote to inquire after her. I 
 received the following reply : — 
 
 ^'Dear V. S., 
 
 For God's sake do not accuse me of 
 indifference. There is a most abominable con- 
 spiracy against me ; and if we do not take it in time, 
 all my ten years' work will be lost. Later on I will 
 explain, or Olcott. Olcott is starting for Adyar from 
 Marseilles on the 20th. He leaves London on 
 Wednesday, to-morrow evening, and will be in Paris 
 on the morning of the 14th. He stops at a hotel, 
 you will learn where from Madame de Morsier. 
 For God's sake come if you can. I and the devoted 
 theosophists who are going to Adyar with me have 
 taken a little house here together, where I shall stay 
 for two, or at the very most three weeks ; then I am 
 going to Egypt, where I shall stay some days. It is 
 impossible to say everything in a letter. Do write, 
 if only a few words. If you only knew what a 
 terrible position I am in, you would not think 
 whether I wrote or not. O Lord, if I could but see 
 you ! Please write. Olcott will explain all to you. 
 
 Your ever devoted 
 
 " H. Blavatsky/' 
 
 Olcott came, and had no fresh news to give, 
 beyond what I already knew from Helena Petrovna's 
 letters. As I looked on the president of the Theo- 
 sophical Society I could not but recall the testi- 
 monial which Mahatma Koot Hoomi had given him. 
 
 It must, however, be observed that in spite of his 
 disagreeable position the colonel wore a truly martial 
 
104 ^ Modern Priestess of I sis, 
 
 air, and kept boldly repeating : " Oh, this is nonsense. 
 I will go and put it all right." 
 
 In a few days I wrote again to Madame Blavatsky, 
 once more begging her to come to Paris. She 
 replied: ^'Too late, dear V. S. ; telegram after 
 telegram is calling me home.^ There is such a 
 hubbub there that the world is upside down. Hart- 
 mann, one of our theosophists at Adyar, has 
 thrashed a missionary half dead for a lampoon on 
 the society and me. Now the battle is beginning, 
 and it is for life and death. I shall lay down my old 
 bones for the true cause : do not bear me ill-will, my 
 dear friend. Do not be afraid, the master will 
 support me. I am going with Mr. and Mrs. Cooper 
 Oakley, friends of Madame de Morsier. They have 
 even sold their house, and are going with me either 
 to conquer the foe together or to die. In the aid of 
 Parabrahm we put our trust, and we shall not be 
 ashamed for ever. Think what devotion ! You see 
 they have broken up their whole career. I shall 
 stay not more than a fortnight at most in Egypt, 
 and then home. We start from Liverpool on Nov. i 
 in the steamer Clan Mac Carthy, and we shall stop 
 in Alexandria. I will write you from there and tell 
 you everything. Good-bye for a long time. 
 
 " Your ever devoted 
 
 H. Blavatsky." 
 
 She started, and I was left without having carried 
 out my plan, and thinking it doubtful if I should ever 
 
 ^ She had evidently quite forgotten that it was not long 
 since she had written to me quite differently about the 
 decisions and commands of the ''master". 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 105 
 
 take it up again. Could I suppose that I had not parted 
 with her for ever, and that I should see her again in a 
 few months, and fully attain my goal ? I imagined 
 that she would be brought home not alive but dead. 
 
 Three months had passed when I suddenly received 
 a huge packet from Madras. It contained photo- 
 graphic groups of some frightful Hindu faces, views 
 of Adyar, a portrait of ''Madame'' herself, not dead 
 but alive, and the following letter : — 
 
 "Adyar, Madras, ^rd January, 1885. 
 
 Dear kind V. S., 
 
 I am worn out and harassed, but still 
 living, like an old cat with nine lives. It is 
 a conspiracy, my dear man, according to all the 
 rules of Jesuitical art. Will you say now that the 
 master does not protect me, openly and palpably ? 
 Any other in my place could not have been saved 
 by God Himself and the hundred devils, had I been 
 as innocent as the babe at the font ! And I have 
 only to show myself, and I am triumphant ! Only 
 fancy, they have printed letters with my name, some 
 forty notes and letters, the most silly and senseless 
 in their contents generally, but many of them in my 
 style, and all referring to phenomena which actually 
 occurred. They (the letters) are all supposed to 
 give instructions as to the best way of taking in some 
 dignitary or other ; all this with names and titles in 
 full, and with the usual jeers at the supposed 'fools'. 
 All this has been published by the missionaries, who, 
 as is now proved, bought them of these scoundrels, 
 who had been turned out of the society for theft and 
 slander, for 3000 rupees, with commentaries and 
 
io6 
 
 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 explanations. Even before they appeared in print 
 there were distributed throughout India as many 
 as 50,000 printed announcements of ' The Fall of 
 Madame Blavatsky. Exposure of her Tricks and 
 shameless Frauds. Fall of Mahatma Koot Hoomi. 
 The Great Adept a Doll of Bladders and Muslin' — 
 all in big letters, and posted up on all the street 
 corners of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, etc. For the 
 space of four months the newspapers, which do not 
 even wait and give me time to reply from Paris 
 whether I wrote such letters and when, have been 
 openly declaring that I am guilty, arguing en conse- 
 quence, and abusing me in Billingsgate language. 
 Then the American and London papers take up the 
 part of a Greek chorus ; and so the game goes on. 
 Hundreds of theosophists are compromised, and 
 made into laughing-stocks. Not one has wavered, 
 they all stand by me in mass. They have proved 
 that the letters are forged, that the Coulombs are 
 scoundrels and thieves, and therefore may have imi- 
 tated my writing with the missionaries (as is now 
 proved) ; they are told that they are fools, that the 
 phenomena do not exist, and never can exist in the 
 world ; ergo, the explanation by trickery is most 
 natural, especially as Blavatsky is a criminal, a well- 
 known Russian spy (well-known, indeed! Rubbish!). 
 The papers are burying me a little too soon ; they 
 thought that it was not possible for me to return to 
 India at any time. At last, when they found that I 
 was coming back in spite of all this, they begin to 
 cry that cest le courage du desespoir. So much for 
 that. Meanwhile I went to Cairo. There I learnt 
 through the consuls (Hitrovo gave me great assist- 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 107 
 
 ance, and a letter to Nubar Pasha) that the Coulombs 
 are fraudulent bankrupts who had decamped on the 
 sly by night, and had several times been in prison 
 for slander. She is a well-known charlatan anc^ 
 ' sorceress/ who revealed buried treasure for money, 
 and 'was caught red-handed — i.e., with the ancient 
 coins which she used to bury beforehand, and so on. 
 The French consul gave me official authority to hang 
 them (!), and entrusted me with a power of attorney 
 to get 22,000 francs from them. Countess della 
 Sala, veuve Beketoff, nee princesse Vera Gagarine, has 
 turned theosophist, princess Hussein is ours, so is the 
 wife of the Khedive's brother. Maspero, le directeur 
 du Musee de Boulak, le grand Egyptologiste, idem. 
 I left Suez for home after a fortnight's stay in Cairo. 
 Fin de Vacte premier. The curtain falls. Act II. I sail 
 in company with Mr. and Mrs. Cooper Oakley (ami de 
 Madame de Morsier), and the Reverend Leadbeater 
 (a week before our departure from London he was a 
 parson, un cure, and now he is a Buddhist), and we 
 sail with a party of eight disgusting missionaries, 
 with whom we all but quarrelled every day about 
 myself. These four males and four females of 
 American Methodists had already read the lampoons 
 of their devilish brethren the Scotch Calvinists, and 
 they cackled. I looked at them as an elephant looks 
 at a pug-dog, and got my own restlessness calmed 
 down. They go for my Protestant parson, and he 
 goes from them to me, in my defence. In Ceylon I 
 took public vengeance on them. I sent for the high 
 priest of the Buddhists, and introduced the English 
 parson theosophist to him ; I proclaimed in the 
 hearing of every one that he wished to enter into 
 
io8 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 Buddhism. He blushed, but was not greatly dis- 
 turbed, for he had seriously made up his mind to do 
 it, and in the evening a solemn ceremony was per- 
 formed on shore in the temple of Buddha. The 
 parson theosophist uttered tht pansil (les cmq preceptes); 
 a lock of hair was cut from his head ; he became a 
 Buddhist and a novice, and — I was revenged. In 
 Ceylon we were met by Olcott, Hartmann, and 
 many theosophists ; a whole company of us set off 
 for Madras. The day before our arrival (Gebhard le 
 jeune, you remember, Rudolphe, was with us too) a 
 new villainy had been done in Madras. In the 
 name of the Coulombs the missionaries issued a 
 pamphlet in which they added several new calumnies 
 to the old ; for instance, that in the year 1872 (when 
 I was in Odessa), I was giving seances in Cairo, 
 that I produced manifestations by fraud, that I 
 took money for it, was found out and dishonoured. 
 Fortunately I had asked Hitrovo in Cairo to get 
 from the vice-consul, who knew me in Egypt in 
 1871, and used to come to see me, and was con- 
 sidered a friend of mine, a sort of certificate 
 or testimonial of proper conduct. Foreseeing that 
 Madame Coulomb, whom I knew at the time 
 in Egypt, would tell lies against me, I put to 
 the consul all the questions which could arise 
 through her in such a case, and received a reply on 
 all the points, stamped with the consular seal ; to 
 the effect that the consul knew me, that he used to 
 see me every day, and that he neither saw any ill 
 conduct on my part, nor heard of an}/. Well, we 
 arrived ; the missionaries were drawn up on shore to 
 enjoy my disgrace. But before the anchor had been 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 109 
 
 cast, a whole crowd of our theosophists was swarm- 
 ing over the deck. They threw themselves down 
 and kissed my feet, and at last hurried us on shore. 
 Here there was a dense mass of people ; some thirty 
 vans with bands, flags, gilded cars and garlands of 
 flowers. I had no sooner appeared on the wharf 
 than they began to hurrah. I was almost deafened 
 by the furious cries of triumph and delight. We 
 were drawn, not by horses, but by theosophists, in 
 a chariot preceded by a band walking backwards. 
 The Brahmins blessed us, and all welcomed and 
 cheered us. After an hour's procession, during 
 which all the missionaries disappeared as if they had 
 rushed off to hell, we were taken to the town-hall, 
 where we found 5000 people to complete my deaf- 
 ness. Lord, if you had only been there ; how proud 
 you would have been of your countrywoman ! 
 Imagine 307 students of that very Christian 
 College, whose missionary professors had hatched 
 all this plot, signing an address which they publicly 
 presented to me and read aloud amid the loud 
 applause of the public (Hindu, of course). In this 
 address, which I send you as a memento, and beg 
 Madame de Morsier to translate, they say what you 
 will see, and abuse their own principals. The chief 
 point is that not one of them is a theosophist, they 
 are merely Hindus. Then I was obliged to get up 
 and make a speech. Imagine my position ! After 
 me Olcott spoke, Mrs. Oakley and Leadbeater. 
 Then they took us homic, where I spent the first 
 night in fever and delirium. But there was no time 
 for being ill now; on the 25th (we arrived on 
 December 23rd) our anniversary began, and some 
 
no 
 
 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 hundreds of people had ah'eady collected. I demanded 
 that they should let me go into court with a suit 
 against the Coulombs and the missionaries, but they 
 would not permit it. At last a deputation of our 
 delegates begged me not to take any step without the 
 consent of the committee of the Grand Council, as the 
 quarrel was rather a Hindu national than an inter- 
 national affair, and I, H. P. Blavatsky, was only a 
 transparent pretext selected in order to crush the 
 society. They say that my enemies are only seeking 
 and longing to lure me into court, as all three English 
 judges are on the side of the missionaries ; that the 
 libel is entirely founded on phenomena and Mahatmas 
 in whom and in whose powers neither the law nor 
 the ordinary public believe ; in a word, that they are 
 trying to get me into court, to catch me in my words 
 when provoked, and to condemn me to imprisonment ; 
 i.e., to kill the society and morally kill me. This 
 turns out even more transparent than Madame 
 Smirnoff's calumny ! So I have left myself in the 
 hands and at the disposition of the committee. They 
 sat three days and three nights on the letters and 
 documents, and called more than 300 witnesses, six 
 of them Europeans, the rest les natifs. They brought 
 in a verdict entirely acquitting me, and many letters 
 were shown to be forgeries of my handwriting.^ 
 One theosophical rajah offers me by letter 10,000 
 
 ^ Why she invents that the letters were in the hands of the 
 Theosophical Committee is absolutely unintelligible. It was 
 always very easy to catch her lying, as she used constantly to 
 forget her own words, assertions and depositions. As for the 
 verdict of acquittal brought in by her own accomplices, she 
 had of course no reason to be anxious. 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 Ill 
 
 rupees, another 30,000 rupees, another two villages, 
 for legal expenses, if I sue them, but the committee 
 will not permit it. ^ You,' they say, ' are the pro- 
 perty of the society. The conspiracy is not against 
 you but against theosophy in general. Sit still, we 
 will defend you.' Even the public understand at 
 last that it is a trick of the missionaries. Several 
 letters have appeared in the papers advising me to be 
 on my guard and not to fall into a trap. Lord, what 
 a position ! Here is the London Psychical Society 
 (your friend Myers) ^ sending out a member to make 
 inquiry. He too finds that it is a huge plot (!). Mean- 
 while I am ^ sitting by the sea and waiting for the 
 weather'. The solemnity of the anniversary was 
 immense. When the pamphlets are ready I will 
 send them all. Meanwhile I send groups of the dele- 
 gates and a group of the residents, all chelas of the 
 Mahatmas. Once on a time, dear friend, you wrote 
 and said that my honour and reputation were dear to 
 you. Do defend me in the Rebus, in the name of all 
 that is sacred. You see they will believe in Russia, 
 and this will be a disgrace. You are my one friend 
 and defender, for God's sake, my angel, do intercede 
 for me. Write the truth in the Rebus, to prevent 
 their believing in the tattle of the newspapers. And 
 there is another thing. You worried me to send 
 Katkoff my Blue Mountains as soon as possible. Well, 
 I sent it from Elberfeld in an insured parcel at the 
 end of September or beginning of October, and to this 
 day there has not been a word from him. I do not 
 even know if he has received the manuscript, or 
 
 ^ [Dr. Hodgson was sent out by the committee of the S. P. R. 
 at Prof. Sidgwick's expense. — Tr.] 
 
112 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 has only not made up his mind to print. He is 
 writing to me to hurry up the second part of the 
 Caves, but not a word about the Blue Mountains. Do 
 for God's sake write and find out at the office whether 
 it is to be pubhshed, or if it is lost. Ill luck on 
 every side ! May you be well and happy if possible. 
 Answer me soon; I don't believe that you have 
 turned my enemy too. My greetings to Madame de 
 Morsier and all our friends. 
 
 Yours to the end of the world, 
 
 H. Blavatsky. 
 Oh, if I could only see you once more alive ! " 
 
 The reader will himself perceive the importance of 
 these extraordinary letters, especially of the last, for 
 the appreciation of a woman who has made so much 
 stir, as well as for the appreciation of her " cause," 
 which, far from having died with her, has been con- 
 stantly spreading. The letters are peculiarly interest- 
 ing when compared with the real circumstances and 
 facts set out in Hodgson's investigation, and published 
 a year later by the London Society for Psychical 
 Research. 
 
XIIL-XV. 
 
 [These chapters contain, in some sixty pages, an 
 abridgment of the Report of the Committee on 
 Theosophicai Phenomena, in which Mr. Hodgson's 
 report is incorporated. This our readers will find in 
 vol. iii. of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical 
 Research. We here give only Mr. Solovyoff's final 
 criticisms. 
 
 After giving Mr. Hodgson's four conclusions on pp. 
 312-13 of Proceedings, vol. iii., he goes on to say : — ] 
 
 Here I think Hodgson should have stopped, as 
 his task was completely and conscientiously fulfilled. 
 Though his report is somewhat diffuse, and is 
 generally speaking, from the external point of view, 
 not very skilfully put together, the internal contents 
 of it are entirely satisfactor}^ All the facts are col- 
 lected and impartially investigated, and the frauds 
 of H. P. Blavatsky and her confederates are un- 
 answerably exposed. But Hodgson was not satisfied 
 with this. He wished, by the side of the facts 
 which he had investigated, to express his final judg- 
 ment on the founders of the Theosophicai Society, 
 Blavatsky and Olcott, and here he made two very 
 great blunders. He asks what Madame Blavatsky's 
 motive was in organising a complete system of 
 fantastic imposture. He answers that many 
 
 suppose it to have been only a morbid mania, the 
 
 8 
 
114 ^ Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 idee fixe of the creation of a new religion. But a 
 nearer acquaintance with Madame Blavatsky's 
 character shows the insufficiency of such a supposi- 
 tion. Did she act from cupidity ? No ; he regards 
 such an imputation as even less founded than the 
 first. Nor does he think that she thirsted for noto- 
 riety and fame. What then was the motive ? It 
 was this : " she was a Russian spy," he decides. 
 
 But this he had to prove, and to prove exactly as 
 he proved her fraudulent phenomena and all her 
 other deceptions ; yet he has no evidence of any 
 sort, for it is impossible to regard as evidence the 
 fragments he quotes from her writings, from which 
 no serious man could draw a conclusion of the sort. 
 But what may be beyond a serious man in general 
 is not beyond a most serious Englishman, when 
 once he has heard the words: ''A Russian spy in 
 India". I am sure that Hodgson reached and 
 maintained his conclusion with perfect honesty, and 
 that the members of the Society for Psychical 
 Research quite honestly believed him, as did many 
 English in their train. 
 
 None the less this honesty cannot do away with 
 the grave blunder into which Hodgson and the 
 '^psychists" fell. H. P. Blavatsky was not a spy; 
 and this I say, not because I believe her incapable of 
 playing such a part, but because, in the autumn of 
 1885 {i.e., at the time when Hodgson's investigation 
 was completed, and his report, with all its contents, 
 was being printed), ''she was extremely anxious to 
 become a secret agent of the Russian Government 
 in India". If she ''wished to become," it is plain 
 that " up to that time she was not ". How I learnt 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 115 
 
 this I will relate in its proper place ; and at the end 
 of my narrative I shall of course proceed to the 
 conclusions to which it leads, to the question, that is, 
 of the motive which guided our " modern priestess of 
 Isis" in her melancholy career. 
 
 If Hodgson's conclusion as to Madame Blavatsky 
 being a spy, in spite of its entire want of evidence, 
 can still be regarded as honest, and explained by the 
 Englishman's tendency to see Russian spies every- 
 where, it is much harder to find a decent ground for 
 his verdict on Olcott. To the last he declares that 
 the colonel was an innocent dupe, and not a con- 
 federate of Madame Blavatsky in her various frauds ; 
 while at the same time he adduces facts from which 
 every attentive reader of the report must infallibly be 
 convinced that Olcott is a liar and a knave, in spite 
 of his stupidity. These facts, adduced with full 
 knowledge of the false evidence of the president of 
 the Theosophical Society and his share in phenomena 
 whose fraudulence is there incontrovertibly proved, 
 by the side of the unproved assertion of his innocence, 
 produce a rather strange impression. One cannot 
 but suspect in Hodgson a kind of " gentlemanliness," 
 unintelligible in a case like this, which makes him 
 wish to save one at least of the clique of cheats 
 whom he has unmasked. In any case the service he 
 has rendered the colonel is ill-timed and trans- 
 parently inadequate. 
 
 [Mr. Solovyoff then goes on to give a Russian trans- 
 lation of the protest published by Madame Blavatsky, 
 with comments, of which we need give only that on 
 the sentence in which Madame Blavatsky says: ''I 
 was naturalised nearly eight years ago as a citizen of 
 
ii6 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 the United States, which led to my losing every 
 right to my pension of 5000 rubles yearly as th^ 
 widow of a high official in Russia". On this Mr. 
 Solovyoff remarks : What will the modest and 
 honourable N. V. Blavatsky (who though old is still 
 alive) say, when he hears that he is a ' high official 
 in Russia,' and that his widow was to receive, during 
 his lifetime, a pension of 5000 rubles a year ? What 
 an irony of fate ! Helena Petrovna, while still al- 
 most a child, married a middle-aged official in spite 
 of her relations ; after a stormy and almost incredible 
 career, she died at sixty years of age, and he, though 
 she had long given herself out as a widow, survives 
 her."] 
 
 [A reference to the actual report in vol. iii. of the 
 Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research suggests 
 the following remarks on the preceding criticisms : — 
 
 (i) The acquittal of Olcott rests on the responsi- 
 bility of the comm.ittee of the society as a whole, 
 not on Mr. Hodgson alone, as Mr. Solovyoff seems 
 to think. The wording of the report is as 
 follows : " There is only one special point on 
 which the committee think themselves bound to 
 state explicitly a modification of their original 
 view. They said in effect in their first report 
 that if certain phenomena were not genuine it 
 was very difficult to suppose that Colonel Olcott 
 was not implicated in the fraud. But after con- 
 sidering the evidence that Mr. Hodgson has laid 
 before them as to Colonel Olcott's extraordinary 
 credulity, and inaccuracy in observation and inference, 
 they desire to disclaim any intention of imputing 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 117 
 
 wilful deception to that gentleman/' The com- 
 mittee held, and its survivmg members still hold, 
 that on the evidence which they then had before them 
 it was just possible to regard Olcott as merely a 
 dupe; so that, acting in a quasi-judicial capacity, 
 they were bound to give him the benefit of the 
 doubt, whatever their private opinions might be. 
 
 (2) The theory that Madame Blavatsky was a 
 Russian spy was put forward on Mr. Hodgson's 
 authority alone and was not endorsed by the com- 
 mittee, or indeed universally accepted. But Mr. 
 Solovyoff's own evidence, far from condemning Mr. 
 Hodgson, will probably be regarded as strong testi- 
 mony to the acumen of his general view of Madame 
 Blavatsky ; and will remove the feeling, entertained 
 by many at the time, that he had in this one point 
 done her an injustice. For on her own statement, 
 as given in chap, xx., she had some years before 
 actually offered her services as a secret agent to the 
 Russian Government, and had been doing her best 
 since then to gain a position in which she could 
 repeat the application with more hope of success. 
 Mr. Hodgson thus came very near the truth. — Tr.j 
 
XVI. 
 
 The spring had now insensibly stolen on, and I had 
 heard not a sound or sign about Madame Blavatsky. 
 After her triumphant letter she had sent me, still in 
 January, some photographic groups of the Indian 
 theosophists, a collection of the most incredible 
 physiognomies, in the centre of which was inserted 
 her globular figure with the rolling eyes, and Olcott 
 with his spectacles, but now clothed in a white robe, 
 and — barefoot. Herewith Olcott announced that 
 
 Madame " had been sick unto death, past all hope ; 
 that doctors had pronounced her to be dead, but that 
 Mahatma M. had unexpectedly saved her, and that 
 she was convalescent. After this news there was 
 complete silence till the end of April (new style). 
 
 Suddenly I received a letter from Italy : — 
 
 "Torre del Greco, Naples, 
 
 " Hotel del Vesuvio, April 29. 
 
 Dear Vsevqlgd Sergyeitch, 
 
 "Arrived! They have brought mebackhalf dead, 
 and if I had stayed in India, I should have been dead 
 altogether. ' In the mangle if not in the wash,' you see.-^ 
 The intrigues of the Coulombs and the cursed mission- 
 aries have not succeeded, not a single theosophist has 
 
 ^[Ix. (they were determined to have me) " by hook or by 
 crook ". — Tr.] 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. iig 
 
 deserted ; they received me on my return to Madras 
 all but with a salvo of cannons, so they must try some- 
 thing else. The Russians, they say, are coming to 
 India through Afghanistan; ergo, the Russian woman 
 Blavatsky must be a Russian spy. No matter that 
 there is not the least particle of evidence for it ; the 
 missionaries spread the calumny, and for the Govern- 
 ment, frightened at Madame Blavatsky's enormous 
 influence over the Hindus, it was just handy; they 
 began to declare officially that I was undoubtedly a 
 spy. They certainly could not prove anything, but 
 meanwhile, on mere suspicion, it might have been a 
 matter of sending me to jail, arresting me, and doing 
 who knows what to me. I have only now heard all 
 this in detail ; they did not tell me, and packed me 
 off straight from my bed on to the French steamer, and 
 sent with me Doctor Hartmann, Bavaji (a chela of 
 Mahatma Koot Hoomi, bidden by him to follow me 
 everywhere till death), and an English girl. Miss F., 
 who would not leave me ; and they have brought 
 me to Naples. Here in loneliness and quiet on the 
 slopes of Vesuvius I must either recover — or die. It 
 must be the latter. I have taken rooms for three, or 
 even six, months (? ! !). Do not give my address to 
 any one but Madame de Morsier. I wish you would 
 come ; the view is marvellous, the air healthy, and 
 the living cheaper than stewed turnip ". I am pay- 
 ing ninety francs at the hotel for four furnished rooms, 
 board included. For 400 francs a month the four 
 of us live well for theosophists, no worse than a 
 Parisian. Do come directly. One cannot say every- 
 thing in a letter, and I have a great, great deal to 
 tell you before I go off, A disease of the heart like 
 
I20 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 mine does not let one off ; and then my other sick- 
 nesses do not forget me. I am very ill ; dear friend, 
 come to me. Here you can write better than in 
 Paris, and I will inspire you with glorious subjects. 
 Well ! the Mahatm.as who have again saved me from 
 death preserve you ! If I get well, I shall go to India 
 if I am alive ; if I die, Bavaji will take my body 
 back. They have already arranged for this. The 
 heavenly powers preserve you ! 
 
 " Yours ever, 
 
 ^^H. P. Blavatsky." 
 
 I immediately replied to this letter, expressing to 
 Helena Petrovna my satisfaction at knowing that she 
 was no longer at the ends of the earth, but in Europe, 
 advising her not to think about dying, and not to fall 
 into such a minor key, and regretting that it was 
 doubtful if I could soon come to Naples, much though 
 I should like to do so. I communicated the contents 
 of her letter to Madame de Morsier, who was greatly 
 delighted, and at once sent to Torre del Greco a 
 whole bundle of newspapers, with remarks about 
 the Theosophical Society, etc. 
 
 In the middle of May Madame de Morsier handed 
 me the enclosed letter which she had received. 
 
 Chere et Bonne Amie, 
 
 " Merci pour les journaux, merci pour tout. Je 
 suis tombee encore une fois malade et je n'ai pu vous 
 repondre plus tot. Mais je vous supplie de m'ecrire 
 deux mots pour me dire ce que devient Solovioff et 
 pourquoi il ne me repond pas ? Je lui ai ecrit deux 
 lettres d'ici — pas un mot de lui. Serait-il malade ? 
 Ou bien a-t-il ete entraine par d'autres, et pretant 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 121 
 
 I'oreille aux infamies debitees m'a-t-il tourne le dos, 
 lui aussi, comme M. Myers de la Societe Psychique 
 de Londres ? Les missionaires protestants ont de- 
 pense 45,000 roupies — Olcott m'ecrit, — pour payer 
 les faux temoins qui ont tellement menti et embrouille 
 les choses lors de I'enquete faite par M. Hodgson, 
 I'envoye de la Societe Psychique pour les phenom- 
 enes, que le pauvre Hodgson a perdu la tete. II a 
 fini par croire que pas un phenomene, avec ou sans 
 moi, n'etait vrai, et que commengant par moi et le 
 colonel et finissant par Damodar nous etions tous 
 des fraudes, des charlatans ! Amen. Mais Solovioff 
 est-il encore ami ou dois-je le perdre lui aussi ? De 
 grace repondez-moi. 
 
 " A vous de coeur, 
 
 ^^H. P. Blavatsky." 
 This letter at the first moment disturbed even 
 Madame de Morsier. Even the 45,000 rupees did 
 not avail. 
 
 What do you think of all this ? " she asked me. 
 
 I think that your Koot Hoomi's rose is a very 
 precarious talisman, that our poor ' Madame ' has been 
 found out, that from her somewhat fantastic letters 
 there is no possible means of making out the truth, 
 and that it would be well for me to make, by way of 
 a pendant to Hodgson, a careful and dispassionate 
 inquiry. Unluckily I cannot possibly go to Naples 
 now." 
 
 Still Madame de Morsier could not be shaken yet. 
 She did not admit Madame Blavatsky's guilt, though 
 already inclined to admit some entramement on her 
 part. In any case she was maligned, in any case 
 she was unhappy, grievously unhappy. 
 
122 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 With this last conclusion one could not but agree. 
 H. P. B. had disappeared, and we had only Helena 
 Petrovna before us, sick and weary, and by no means 
 stranger to our hearts. I hastened to reply that my 
 letter had evidently gone astray, and that I had 
 only received one from her. Among other things I 
 observed that she had with her a man who was not 
 altogether to be trusted (I alluded to Hartmann, of 
 whom she had told me a good deal in Elberfeld 
 which was not attractive), and that his constant 
 presence could not but react painfully on her. I 
 wrote that I had not ''turned my back on her" at 
 all, and that just at the present moment I should 
 particularly like to see her; but that I was unwell, 
 and would come if it were possible. 
 
 I had not long to wait for her answer. 
 
 " Torre del Greco, 
 
 " May 23, Saturday. 
 
 " My dear V. S., 
 
 " We are evidently both out of luck. I am 
 in bed again with bad attacks of rheumatism 
 and gout. It is so cold here in the day-time, 
 and actual frost at nights and evenings, that it might 
 be Russia. There is something wrong with the 
 world in the top story. And this is your southern 
 Italy. No, my own father, don't come, for I shall 
 set off myself on the first opportunity, for somewhere 
 where, even if the climate is cold, there are warm 
 rooms to be found without any draughty zephyrs, 
 and one can get something to eat besides the eternal 
 macaroni. But there will be no possibility till 
 Katkoff sends the money for the Enigmatical 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 123 
 
 Tribes, which was finished in the April number of 
 the Rvissky Vyestnik, Although it is not much, 
 altogether 274 pages, at either seven rubles or six 
 and two-thirds or three-quarters per page (the devil 
 himself could not make out their accounts), yet I 
 shall be grateful for it ; it will be some six thousand 
 francs in all in my pocket. And then I mean to 
 start at once — if I don't die first — to the waters in 
 Germany. But where, I don't know. Write to me, 
 for Allah's sake, to say what waters will do good to 
 this vile albumen, or whatever they call it, which 
 has poisoned my blood, and brought my heart to 
 such a state of weakness that it is not audible even 
 in the stethoscope. Inquire of the doctors, and send 
 me a line. And by the way, how many francs are 
 there in a ruble ? Also, can I ask Katkoff for ten 
 rubles per printed page (160 per sheet), instead of 
 6 r. 71 kop. (100 per sheet) ? You see, at the present 
 contemptible value of our ruble, it is the devil knows 
 what. In America, in New York, I get twenty-five 
 dollars for a single column of the ' Letters from India'. 
 If so, why should I waste my time on Katkoff? 
 Tell me plainly ; can I ask ten rubles a page or not ? 
 At present I have not got a brass farthing in my 
 pocket. They sent off this servant of God, with 
 three others, and 700 rupees in our pocket ; not in 
 mine, but in Bavaji's ; that is what the society gave 
 us for our sustenance, and we have to live on this 
 money. He foolishly, poor young fellow, paid here 
 for three months in advance. I was lying sick, and 
 he has never been in Europe before, and is even 
 worse than Mohini at the business of life. Thank 
 God Hartmann has gone, and there are only three of 
 
124 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 us now ; my devoted Mary F. who has voluntarily 
 converted herself from a worldly Bombay young lady 
 into my nurse and lady's-maid, and my little Deb 
 (Darbagiri Nath) whom we call Bavaji. He would 
 go through fire and water for my sake. He has 
 abandoned country, and caste, and society for my 
 ♦ sake, and has solemnly vowed, in the face of all 
 India that loves me, not to leave me while I live. 
 But he is an innocent Hindu ; he has never talked to 
 a single woman, before me, except his own mother 
 when he was a child ; he is an ascetic, and does not 
 know the A B C of Europe and its ways, nor even 
 what I require. Mary is a heart of gold, but an 
 arrant fool, spoilt at home, and does not even know 
 how to boil coffee in a coffee-pot. One cannot talk 
 to her about anything but dress, and can only love 
 her for her devotion. That is my situation. 
 
 If your heart is not attracted to Hartmann, you 
 are quite right. This dreadful man has done me 
 more harm by his defence, and often by his deceit, 
 than the Coulombs by open lying. One moment he 
 was defending me in the papers, the next he was 
 writing such ' equivokes ' that even the papers hostile 
 to me could only open their mouths and say : ' There 
 is a friend for you ! ' One day he defended me in letters 
 to Hume and other theosophists, and then hinted 
 at such infamies that all his correspondents went 
 against me. It was he who turned Hodgson, the 
 representative sent by the London Psychical Society 
 to inquire into the phenomena in India, from a friend, 
 as he was at first, into an enemy. He is a cynic, a 
 liar, cunning and vindictive, and his jealousy of the 
 master, and his envy for any one on whom the 
 
A Modern Priestess of I sis. 125 
 
 master bestows the least attention, are simply re- 
 pulsive. He has turned our devoted Judge, when 
 despatched by Olcott from Paris to Adyar, into our 
 enemy. He set against me at one time all the 
 Europeans in Adyar, Lane Fox, Mr. and Mrs. Oakley, 
 Brown ; the Hindus alone, who hate him and have 
 long since taken his measure, he was unable to stir. 
 Now I have been able to save the society from him, 
 by agreeing to take him with me under the plea that 
 he is a doctor. The society, and Olcott at their 
 head, were so afraid of him that they did not dare 
 expel him. And all this he did in order to have the 
 sole command of me, to suck out of me all I know 
 while I am yet alive ; not to allow Subba Rao to 
 write La Doctrine Secrete with me, but to write it 
 himself under my direction. But he is greatly mis- 
 taken. I have brought him here and told him that 
 I shall now not write The Secret Doctrine at all, but 
 shall write for the Russian reviews, and I have re- 
 fused to speak to him a single word about occultism. 
 Seeing that I had vowed to keep silence and teach 
 him nothing, he has gone at last. No doubt he will 
 now set about telling lies about me to the German 
 society. But it is all the same to me now. Let him 
 lie. It was he who persuaded Bavaji to pay for 
 three months in advance, knowing that I had no 
 money, and must stay here whether I would or no.^ 
 
 ^ If to the facts of Hodgson's report we add this description 
 by Madame Blavatsky herself, the picture of Dr. Hartmann 
 is a perfectly clear one. But Madame Jelihovsky in her 
 articles draws from this gentleman great profit for herself. To 
 her articles in the Novosti she prefixes the following motto, 
 " The future is not far distant when the historian will be glad 
 
126 
 
 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 " But I am writing to Katkoff and asking for 
 my payment, my own money, for the Enigmatical 
 Tribes, and then I shall go to Wiesbaden, Marien- 
 bad, or some other Bad, which I greatly need ; after 
 that I shall settle in Munich or near Vienna ; it is all 
 the same where, so long as I can find a w^arm room 
 and be nearer to Russia and to X, so that when I die 
 I may see her beside me. Advise me what I am to 
 do. 
 
 Of your two letters I have received one ordinary 
 one, and the other registered, this very day only, and 
 I am losing no time in answering. Here even the 
 post-office seems to have gone out of its mind. One 
 day, a few days ago, they brought me an insured 
 letter; I gave the receipt, and was just about to 
 
 to rummage all archives, in order to find a single word about 
 H. P. B.," and to this she appends, "Dr. Hartmann ". The 
 reader supposes that this is the famous German philosopher 
 Edward Hartmann, who is deeply interested, as is generally 
 known, in various unexplained phenomena ; he accordingly 
 bows reverently, thinking: "Oh, if Hartmann says so, then it 
 means that the matter may be no farce after all". But this is 
 only a small and innocent mystification. The words of the 
 motto do after all belong to the theosophist Franz Hartmann, 
 who first attached himself to Madame Blavatsky, then left her, 
 and since, as appears from Madame Jelihovsky's articles, has 
 again joined her. Madame Jelihovsky speaks of him {Russkoe 
 Obozrenie, Nov., i8gi, p. 244) as one of the best but most cool- 
 headed appraisers of Madame Blavatsky, and in consideration 
 of this cool-headedness she quotes his words and opinions with 
 particular satisfaction. But what will the historian say, as he 
 rummages all the archives to find a single word about H. P. B., 
 when he reads this sketch of the panegyrist of H. P. B. drawn 
 by herself? Madame Jelihovsky has no luck with the defen- 
 ders and friends of " Madame 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 127 
 
 open it, when I suddenly saw that it was not for 
 me, but for some Mr. Blagoveshchensky at Nagasaki 
 in Japan, and not at Naples at all. And with money 
 in it too, it seems. But the postman had gone. 
 Three days afterwards I handed it back at the post- 
 office in Naples to the postmaster himself, and he 
 was frightfully upset. It would be a good thing to 
 publish this in Russia. So your letter has very 
 likely gone off to Japan. 
 
 " Eternal love and friendship from 
 
 " Yours faithfully till the grave, 
 
 H. Blavatsky. 
 I want a philosophical journal to edit over here. 
 But I shall have no time. My end is near, my dear 
 friend. Write to me soon." 
 
 From this letter compared with the ''triumphant" 
 one from Adyar, with the first from Torre del Greco, 
 and with the French one to Madame de Morsier, in 
 spite of all Helena Petrovna's entrainements her really 
 piteous plight was clear enough. She had evidently 
 suffered a complete defeat over there, and even her 
 marvellous rescue from death by the Mahatmas had 
 failed to produce its due effect. She fled to Europe 
 (for, with her character and habits, the initiative 
 could have belonged to herself only, and not in any 
 way to Olcott, nor to any " Council of the Society"), 
 very ill, with companions who were of no use 
 to her ; and now she was lying in miserable sur- 
 roundings, without assistance, without money, and 
 forgotten by all. This was why she so eagerly 
 clutched at me, and was so afraid that I might have 
 turned against her. It was unfortunately out of the 
 question for me to go to her, and I consoled myself 
 
128 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 with the thought that it was now only a matter of 
 two or three months, that I should see her somewhere 
 or other, and at last learn everything, with circum- 
 stance and certainty. 
 
 A few days later, at a very critical moment, 
 Helena Petrovna received "from an unknown friend " 
 a sum of money, and was particularly anxious to 
 learn who it was that had come to her help. She 
 wrote to Madame de Morsier. 
 
 . . . Ah, ma pauvre amie ! Les temps sont 
 bien changes et la pauvre societe de Madras etant 
 sans le sou, je le suis aussi ; de maniere que cet 
 argent est arrive bien a propos, je vous assure. Si 
 je pouvais ecrire mes articles russes — ^j'en ferai bien 
 vite ; mais le malheur est que j'ai a rester alitee les 
 trois quarts de temps. Je ne durerai pas longtemps 
 — allez ! J'accepte cet argent de Tami inconnu sans 
 fausse honte, mais je tiens a savoir son nom. Le 
 maitre a refuse de me le dire, en disant simplement 
 que c'etait d'un vrai ami et que je pouvais accepter. 
 Mais vous, ne me le direz vous pas ? Est-ce la 
 duchesse ? Mais non — car pourquoi s'en cacherait- 
 elle, et puis c'est un ami, et non ^me amie. Dans 
 tout cas le Maitre le connait, c'est sur, car il a ajoute 
 que son intuition pour les verites occultes etait grande 
 et qu'il avait de I'etoffe en lui, quoique . . . mais je 
 ne dois pas le dire, a ce qu'il parait. Ah, que je 
 m'ennuie done ici, bon Dieu ! et que je voudrais m'en 
 aller — si le maitre le permettait. . . . Que fait 
 done Solovioff ? Est-il malade toujours ? Je I'aime 
 bien, mon ami Solovioff, mais il dit des betises de 
 nos Mahatmas, ce pauvre Thomas I'incredule. 
 
 A vous de coeur, 
 
 ^^H. P. Blavatsky." 
 
A Modern Priestess of I sis. I2g 
 
 Though unhappy, though regarding herself as for 
 ever vanquished and disgraced, though evidently 
 falling at times into despair, though sick and deserted, 
 Helena Petrovna still remained true to herself. She 
 continued to delude good folks with her " master," not 
 in the least disturbed by the artlessness and primi- 
 tiveness of these astral" visits of the mysterious 
 Mahatma, during which he used to make her com- 
 munications which communicated nothing, and 
 "save" her, without regard to what he saved her 
 from. What need to invent anything more subtle 
 and crafty, when this simple ' farce ' was good 
 enough not only for educated ladies, but even for 
 educated men, provided only they were friends of 
 Helena Petrovna's " ? At the same time, feeling her 
 need of me, and while sending me her love, friend- 
 ship, and faithfulness to the grave," she was already 
 very anxious lest I should ''spoil" som.ething, for I 
 had spoken very disrespectfully in my letters to her 
 of her '' master," and generally about all her ''Ma- 
 hatma business " ; so she hastens to warn Madame 
 de Morsier against me, as an " unbelieving Thomas ". 
 
 Madame de Morsier was not able to give her any 
 information about the " unknown friend," and I sent 
 her in reference to her "warning" a playful letter, 
 in which I said that I had grown definitely tired of 
 her Theosophical Society, and that I believed in 
 none of her phenomena or Mahatmas; but for 
 herself, my kindest Helena Petrovna, I loved her no 
 less than she loved me, and that I intended to de- 
 molish her malicious enemy, Madame Coulomb. I 
 added that I should soon be taking a trip to Switzer- 
 land, and hoped that we should meet, and that she 
 
 9 
 
130 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 would turn aside to me on her way into Germany. 
 I received the following reply : — 
 
 " Dear V. S., 
 
 ''Write where you will settle down. I 
 have decided to go to Germany for the winter ; 
 even if it is cold, at least the rooms are warm, and 
 here I am always catching cold ; so in passing I can 
 stop where you are staying. Krishna Swami ^ is 
 with me, and he is kind. Why do you make attacks 
 on the society in your letters to Y too ? For God's 
 sake, if only for the sake of our personal friendship, 
 do not desert it ; poor Olcott does what his con- 
 science bids him, and he would be delighted to sacri- 
 fice himself this instant for the good of the society. If 
 we meet I will tell you all. But why is it that you 
 write so obscurely ? What have you made up your 
 mind to do with this rascally Coulomb woman ? 
 Why, when I left she had persuaded the mission- 
 aries to get up a subscription for her, for the 
 ' service she had rendered humanity and society in 
 general by unmasking Madame Blavatsky ! ' The 
 Bishop of Madras headed the list, and the mission- 
 aries collected her 5000 rupees, or 10,000 francs. 
 She is coming to Europe ' on Madame Blavatsky's 
 track,' as the missionary Patterson writes, the editor 
 of the paper which is unmasking me. 
 
 Heartily welcome ! But is it not true, comme 
 V innocence triomphe et le vice est puni ? How charm- 
 ing the world is — what a darling ! What will be in 
 the future ? What has Sinnett done, as Madame X 
 writes, in Paris ? I do not understand anything. 
 
 ^ One of the many aliases of Bavaji. 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 131 
 
 And why do not you write me in detail ? Oh, what 
 a man you are ! Her pamphlet ? It is good, and so 
 truthful ! I owe her money to this day ? Why, I 
 have a letter of hers from Ceylon, eight years after I 
 was in Egypt, in which she begs me to lend her 
 money. I did conjuring at Cairo? But all the 
 town knows and remembers that I was not in the 
 place when our hired mediums, her friends, were 
 detected in this conjuring, and I instantly turned 
 them off and lost 600 francs myself. Oh, she 
 is a vile woman. Let who will inquire at Cairo; 
 they all know her there, and she is never called 
 anything but la sorciere and la voleuse. And now the 
 missionaries have taken her under their wing ! Lord, 
 what infamy, what a conspiracy! But enough of 
 this abomination. 
 
 I am writing the second part of the Caves. You 
 have not answered my question about Katkoff. I 
 have caught a cold, and was in a fever all night. 
 '^Till we meet, dear V. S., 
 
 Your ever devoted 
 
 H. Blavatsky." 
 On reading this letter I could not help feeling 
 amazed. I knew nothing of the pamphlet of the 
 Coulomb woman " ; but it was clear that I had 
 now before me a fight royal of two grand fish-wives". 
 Only the causes of the battle were, instead of tubs 
 of fish, the " universal brotherhood," and the " secrets 
 of the human soul, and of nature " ; and the war-cry 
 was : There is no religion higher than truth 
 
 I left for Geneva, and thence for the mountains, 
 and soon appeared high up in a little hamlet called 
 St. Cergues, where I found myself with Madame de 
 Morsier and her family. 
 
XVII. 
 
 We were well off in the modest but perfectly com- 
 fortable Pension Delaigue, in the midst of a garden 
 full of flowers. For six francs a day we were given 
 a clean room with a soft bed, breakfast, dinner 
 and supper ; abundant meals prepared by a skilful 
 Parisian cook. The Lake of Geneva was seen from 
 the height like a blue pond, and Mont Blanc looked 
 us straight in the face in all his silver grandeur. Still 
 I sent Madame Blavatsky our address. At the end 
 of July there was a letter from her : — 
 
 Dear V. S., 
 
 ^' Pardon me, I could not write ; my right 
 hand is so swollen that my fingers are numb. I am 
 in a bad way. I start to-morrow to settle for the 
 winter in Wiirzburg, a few hours from Munich, i.e., 
 in Bavaria. I shall winter there, and meanwhile see 
 if the Pandour waters in Kissingen won't do my gout 
 good. I shall go there with Bavaji and Miss F., my 
 friend, but a great fool. 
 
 '^Lord, how sick I am of life ! Now do write if you 
 cannot come yourself. It seems that it is not far 
 from Munich to your place ; but Wiirzburg is still 
 some hours from the Bavarian capital. Madame X 
 promises to come. I do not know if it will be so. 
 But still Munich is nearer than Naples to O. Here 
 
A Modern Priestess of Ists, 
 
 133 
 
 we have passed from cold, frost, and rain to a heat 
 more oppressive than in India. My cordial bow to 
 you, and eternal, unceasing love and friendship. I 
 shall go through Rome and Verona. 
 
 Farewell, till we meet again, or, as fate ordains, 
 till death, 
 
 " H. Blavatsky." 
 
 Five days later came a telegram from Rome: "En 
 route pour Wiirzburg pres Munich pour hiver. Blavat- 
 sky." The same day, three hours after the first, a 
 second telegram : Restons Hotel Anglo- Am ericain, 
 Rome, huit jours ecrivez ici. Blavatsky." I tele- 
 graphed. Come here," and explained by what route 
 they should come. Answer on the third day : Va 
 banque ! Partons demain Geneve telegraphiez oii la 
 rencontre. Blavatsky." I telegraphed, '^A St. Cer- 
 gues," and waited, having agreed with Madame de 
 Morsier that if Madame" did not come we would 
 meet her at Geneva. 
 
 But she came. Heavens, what a sight it was ! I 
 fancy that the inhabitants of St. Cergues must speak 
 of it to this day as a mythological event. 
 
 At the usual hour, after dinner, about three o'clock, 
 the Geneva diligence arrived at the Pension Delaigue. 
 Round it, as always, there gathered a crowd to get 
 the newspapers and letters, and to observe the new 
 arrivals, if such there were. 
 
 Suddenly there sprang from the diligence a strange 
 creature, something half way between a great ape 
 and a tiny black man. Its leanness was amazing. 
 A poor half-European sort of dress dangled on it, as 
 though there were nothing but bones beneath ; a face 
 
134 
 
 A Modem Priestess of I sis. 
 
 the size of a fist, of a dark cinnamon colour and 
 without any signs of vegetation ; on the head a dense 
 cap of long black curling hair ; huge eyes, also 
 perfectly black, of course, with a frightened and sus- 
 picious expression. The black man said something 
 in English with a piping but at the same time hoarse 
 voice. 
 
 After him emerged a clumsy young person, with 
 a red, disconcerted and not particularly intelligent 
 face. 
 
 The public gazed open-mouthed at the black man. 
 But the most interesting was yet to come- The 
 black man and the clumsy young woman, and then I 
 and Madame de Morsier, succeeded with great diffi- 
 culty in extricating from the diligence something that 
 was shut up in it. This something was Madame " 
 herself, all swollen, tired out with travelling, grum- 
 bling ; with a huge dark-grey face, and wide open 
 eyes, like two round discoloured turquoises. On her 
 head was set a very high grey felt fireman's helmet 
 with ventilators and a veil. Her globular figure 
 seemed yet more globular from an incredible sort of 
 sacque in which she was draped. 
 
 After embracing us and declaring that Bavaji 
 understood nothing at all, and that this idiot of a 
 girl " was so stupid that there had never been a like fool 
 upon the earth, " Madame " set about scolding them 
 in very choice language and worrying them without 
 the least mercy. At last they both became incapable 
 of understanding anything whatever^ suffering was 
 depicted on their countenances, and tears stood in 
 their eyes. 
 
 To complete the misfortune it appeared that our 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 135 
 
 pension had not the requisite accommodation free, 
 viz., three adjoining rooms. 
 
 Somehow or other all was finally arranged, and in 
 an hour Helena Petrovna settled in an adjacent 
 , house, dined with a poor appetite, and scolded on ; 
 the black and the young person were driven from 
 pillar to post, unable to please her with anything, 
 and I and Madame de Morsier sat and looked on at 
 it all. 
 
 There, my friends, now you see my position 
 yourselves," she at last addressed herself to us. 
 
 Some days I can move neither hand nor foot and 
 lie like a log, and no one to help me to anything. 
 Bavaji only spins like a top and never stirs from his 
 place, and this Mashka F. " (she never called her any- 
 thing but Mashka^) ''is a born fool, and I curse the 
 day when I agreed to take her with me. You see, 
 the fact is she was dreadfully bored there at home, 
 and thought that she would find some agreeable 
 distractions in travelling; and can you imagine, 
 as soon as a man shows his face she is all over 
 ribbons, she rolls her eyes, and generally behaves 
 herself in the most unbecoming way, though she 
 is a Buddhist. Why she took to Buddhism I cannot 
 conceive. 
 
 ''And yet, though she is a fool" — "Madame" 
 suddenly recollected herself — "yet, just ask her, she 
 sees the master almost every day, when he appears 
 to me. Mary, come here." 
 
 Mashka ran up panting, with a frightened expres- 
 sion on her red face. 
 
 1 The Russian diminutive of Mary. 
 
136 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 Tell the truth ; do you see the master ? " 
 Oh yes, yes ; I see him." 
 ''There now, you see! Why should she lie? 
 And she is such a fool that she could not even make 
 up a lie ; she does see, and there is an end of it. 
 Now go and disprove her, or say that she has hal- 
 lucinations every day ! And yet, according to the 
 psychical gentleman, I invented the Mahatmas 
 myself ! " 
 
 She was positively unable to grasp the fact that 
 her method of proof, with the aid of witnesses like 
 Mashka and Bavaji, was extremely insufficient on 
 European soil. When she got to the Coulombs, 
 Hodgson, and the Protestant missionaries, there 
 poured from her lips such contradictory assertions, 
 and such choice abuse, that Madame de Morsier and 
 I quite lost heart, and almost stopped her mouth 
 and quieted her by force. 
 
 She suddenly calmed down, changed her manner, 
 passed out of her malicious mood, and soared into 
 other spheres. And from these other spheres was 
 heard her inspired voice. 
 
 Her thoughts, at any rate interesting, and some- 
 times very deep, were always expressed by Helena 
 Petrovna with an unusual simplicity and clearness 
 which were an indubitable proof of true talent, and 
 were in fact the principal magnet which drew me to 
 her. At other times, and quite unexpectedly, she 
 changed into a really inspired prophetess, she was 
 entirely transfigured, and farced one to forget that 
 after all she was no more than a most shameless 
 impostor, whom it was one's only duty to unveil, 
 finally and evidently for all the world ; whom one 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 137 
 
 must endeavour to force to give up for ever her 
 pernicious and revolting deceptions. 
 
 Changing hourly, and displaying in turn all her 
 qualities and defects, herself constantly blazing and 
 boiling, she set up a sort of whirlwind all about her, 
 into which every one fell, though but for a time, who 
 came into immediate contact with her. For the 
 moment it was impossible to hold oneself straight ; 
 one's head swam. Yet, in spite of her physical 
 sufferings, her attacks of despair, of fury and of 
 hopelessness, she still went on to her goal. It was 
 now necessary for her, before all things, to get me 
 and Madame de Morsier into her hands. Her 
 friend and assistant, Sinnett, had already communi- 
 cated to her from London the detailed contents of 
 Hodgson's report, now being prepared for the press, 
 and straight to her heart had gone that insult ; she 
 was proclaimed an impostor, and Olcott an innocent 
 fool. 
 
 But do, in the name of all that is sacred, write to 
 Myers," she begged me, that this is idiotic on their 
 part. If I am an impostress, then Olcott is an im- 
 postor. Of course he is a fool and credulous, but not 
 to that degree. Why, it would be positively unnatu- 
 ral ! And why do they want to acquit him ? " 
 
 This injustice " perturbed and irritated her in the 
 highest degree. But she forgot even Olcott when, in 
 the course of conversation, I told her that we should 
 soon have to part and go in different directions. 
 
 " And where are you going ? " 
 I mean to spend the early autumn in Lucerne, 
 and by October i I must be in St. Petersburg." 
 
 She began literally to beseech me to go with her to 
 
138 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 Wiirzburg, and, well knowing that August and 
 September in a stuffy German town would not be 
 particularly attractive to me, she tried seduction. 
 
 Stay two months in Wiirzburg, and I swear you 
 will not repent it. What Hartmann begged for in vain 
 you shall have — I will give you daily lessons in occult- 
 ism ; the master has permitted me. I will hide no- 
 thing from you. And there shall be phenomena, as 
 many as you will." 
 
 Helena Petrovna, don't joke ; you surely know 
 my present opinion of the ' master ' and the pheno- 
 mena." 
 
 I know that you are an ' unbelieving Thomas ' ; 
 but I will bring you to such a point that you will 
 believe against your will. I give you my word of 
 honour that I will reveal all to you, all that is pos- 
 sible." 
 
 But I knew that, even without this ^'word of 
 honour," it would be my fate to breathe the dust of 
 Wiirzburg. Of course she would not give me any 
 lessons in occultism," for such lessons cannot be 
 given ; but so long as I was necessary to her, so long 
 as she was alone and abandoned even by her most 
 devoted friends, she would do everything in her power 
 to delude me with phenomena, and so I should get 
 to learn everything which I wanted. I should be 
 able to observe from every side this phenomenal 
 nature, the like of which it would certainly never be 
 my fortune to meet again. 
 
 I wrote to Myers that not knowing Hodgson nor 
 his investigation, nor how exact and dispassionate it 
 was, I should undertake one of my own ; I should 
 pass a longer or shorter time at Wiirzburg, where 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 139 
 
 Madame Blavatsky was to settle, and should learn 
 everything. The results of my investigation I should 
 report in proper time. 
 
 This letter I show^ed in Madame de Morsier's 
 presence to Madame Blavatsky, and she, far from 
 being confused, was highly delighted. She evidently 
 calculated either on her own cunning or on my 
 
 friendship And friendship, in her jargon, was 
 synonymous with secrecy. 
 
 At her ease on my account, and having postponed 
 the lessons in occultism" to Wiirzburg, she turned 
 her attention to Madame de Morsier. In the matter 
 of the Theosophical Society there was one rather 
 ticklish question. According to the teaching of all 
 the ancient and modern magians, the great Goddess 
 Isis lifted her veil only before the face of a virginally 
 pure being, unacquainted with the passions and de- 
 sires of humanity. In order to be a true adept, to 
 learn the highest secrets and to attain the power 
 of directing the forces of nature (in more simple words, 
 of producing sundry phenomena), it was essential to 
 have been a severe ascetic through life, from the 
 cradle to the grave. 
 
 This, you see, is why Mohini may in time be- 
 come as great an adept as Morya or Koot Hoomi," 
 Madame Blavatsky declared; ''he is a virgin, and 
 never looks on women, he is an ascetic." 
 
 By the side of all this, the Paris theosophists 
 '*knew," among other things on the word of Olcott 
 and of Mohini himself, that " Madame " had already 
 reached a very high initiation ; that she was on one 
 of the topmost steps of the mystic ladder, that she 
 had unceremoniously unveiled Isis, and produced 
 
140 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 amazing phenomena. The ascetic Mohini, at a sign 
 from her, crawled at her feet Hke a reptile, and 
 kissed the hem of her garment. 
 
 How was all this to be reconciled with the equally 
 undoubted fact that ''Madame" was madame, and 
 not mademoiselle ; that she was the " veuve Blavat- 
 sky " ? 
 
 The question had come to a head, Madame " had 
 more than once been approached on the subject, and 
 at such a perilous moment it was more than ever 
 necessary to meet it with a decided reply. Madame 
 de Morsier, that warm heart of gold, that fiery 
 orator, that passionate defender of woman's rights 
 and woman's honour, seemed certainly to be the 
 best and cleanest sheet of paper on which such an 
 answer could be written. But it was first necessary 
 to try the pen, to see if it would run well ; and 
 Helena Petrovna turned upon me her enigmatic 
 gaze. 
 
 With an art which Sara Bernhardt might envy, 
 she confessed to me the secret of her life. All was 
 against her; but after all the great thing was not to 
 be called^ but to be. To this day there were still 
 current the most astounding stories as to the ro- 
 mantic adventures of her youth, and she was only 
 surprised that I had heard nothing of the sort about 
 her in Russia. But meantime, here was the truth : 
 she had never been capable of loving passionately ; 
 men, as such, did not exist for her. " I evidently 
 have such a fish-like nature ! " From her childhood 
 she had never had but a single passion, occultism. 
 She married Blavatsky only in order to free herself 
 from family tutelage ; but he never was a husband 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 141 
 
 to her, and she soon ran away from him. She had 
 wandered all her life from land to land, she had 
 eagerly given herself to the study of occultism, she 
 had sought and knocked till she found and it was 
 opened to her. And now she was an old woman, 
 the "veuve Blavatsky"; and in spite of all she 
 remained a virgin, an untainted virgin. 
 
 Still there is no smoke without fire ; how came it 
 that she had the reputation of a priestess of Venus 
 rather than of Isis ? This is how it came : she had 
 wished to save the honour of a friend, and had 
 adopted the child of this friend as her own. She 
 never parted from him, she educated him herself, 
 and called him her son in the face of the world. 
 Now he was dead. 
 
 I cannot say that I believed her ; but her acting 
 was so good, and I was not at that time in a position 
 to guarantee the entire falsehood of the story ; I 
 knew nothing yet about her, I had no evidence to 
 contradict the sworn statements of her confession. 
 In any case she evidently left off well satisfied with 
 herself, and in her first tete-a-tete with Madame de 
 Morsier she admitted her too into this secret. I 
 was not present at the conversation, but I saw the 
 result. Madame de Morsier was deeply affected, she 
 believed it all implicitly, and with tears in her eyes 
 kissed Helena Petrovna's hand. 
 
 ''Ah, quel acte d'heroisme feminin/' she kept on 
 repeating. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 Madame Blavatsky passed eight days at St. Cer- 
 gues. The weather broke up, "Madame's " rheumatism 
 was increasing, and Mary F.had driven her to madness. 
 It must be admitted that this young person behaved 
 strangely enough. She used to invent herself wonder- 
 ful coiffures and head-dresses, and though she could 
 hardly speak a word of French, she set off for a 
 country fair, and there sang and danced with the 
 greatest animation. She ended by trying to preach 
 Buddhism to some innocent Swiss. The sermon was 
 for the most part limited to certain strange gestures, 
 and the exhibition of a certain amulet which Mary 
 F. wore on her neck instead of the cross. The unin- 
 telligible gestures and the fairly intelligible amulet 
 certainly produced a sensation. 
 
 Madame Blavatsky made up her mind that Mashka 
 did nothing but madden and compromise her, and it 
 was accordingly necessary that she should be packed 
 off to England, where her uncle lived. The decision 
 was much assisted by the fact that a maid was found 
 on the spot, in the pension, who spoke French and 
 German, and was willing to go to Wiirzburg and 
 take upon herself the multifarious duties of poor 
 Mashka. 
 
 Bitter though life at "Madame's" side was to this 
 Anglo-Indian Mashka, so hardly used by nature, she 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 143 
 
 still showed a dog-like devotion to her tormentor, and 
 her unexpected ostracism deeply hurt and offended 
 her. Tears and sobs began. But ''Madame" had 
 a nice little phenomenon ready by way of a sweet 
 sedative. While at Torre del Greco Mashka had 
 lost a beautiful jewelled ring. She was greatly dis- 
 tressed at this loss. And lo ! at the moment of her 
 departure the master " appeared to Madame'' and 
 left with her a ring '' the same at every point," 
 which was solemnly placed on Mashka's finger in his 
 name. This calmed her to a great extent, and she 
 went off without making a heart-breaking scene. 
 
 At last the weather changed for the better. It 
 turned warm and clear. We moved from St. Cergues, 
 and said good-bye to Madame de Morsier, who was 
 to stay for some time longer. The parting of the 
 two ladies was affecting. They did not think or 
 guess that at no very distant time their relations to 
 one another would be entirely altered, and that they 
 were not fated to meet again in this life. 
 
 I went as far as Lucerne with Madame Blavatsky, 
 and then decided not to continue the journey with 
 her ; she and Bavaji attracted general attention, and 
 were the centre of the excessively amused glances of 
 .the public. I explained that I should pass some days 
 in Lucerne, should then go to Heidelberg, and arrive 
 at Wlirzburg from there. Helena Petrovna made no 
 objections, as she had heard that she was expected 
 in Wiirzburg by some friends who had come there 
 to meet her, and would help her to settle down 
 there. 
 
 In fact I found her at Wiirzburg in a very different 
 position and mood. There had been arranged for her 
 
144 
 
 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 very convenient and roomy lodgings in the Ludwig- 
 strasse, the best street of the town, incomparably 
 better and more comfortable than those she had had 
 in Paris. 
 
 The time had now come for me to set about 
 my investigation in earnest. I settled myself in 
 Rligmer's Hotel, not far from the Ludwigstrasse ; 
 here I lived on the most peculiar German breakfasts 
 and dinners, and all the time which I did not spend 
 in sleeping, eating, and walking through the town, 
 I passed with Madame Blavatsky. She again fell 
 very ill ; and lo ! Bavaji came running up to me, all 
 trembling with terror, and exclaimed in his piping, 
 hoarse voice that '^Madame" was very bad, and that 
 the doctor, a famous specialist for internal com- 
 plaints, was greatly alarmed. 
 
 I hurried with Bavaji to the Ludwigstrasse and 
 found the doctor in the sitting-room. To my inquiry 
 about his patient he replied: ''I never saw anything 
 like it in the whole course of my many years of 
 practice. She has several mortal diseases — an 
 ordinary person would have been dead long ago from 
 any one of them. But hers is a phenomenal nature ; 
 and if she has lived so long, she may, for all we can 
 tell, live on yet." 
 
 " For the moment then her life is not in danger ? " 
 ^* Her life has been in danger for years, but you 
 see she is alive. A wonderful, wonderful phenome- 
 non." 
 
 He had all the appearance of a man who was 
 deeply interested. 
 
 I again found Helena Petrovna all swollen up and 
 almost without movement. But a day passed, and 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 145 
 
 she managed to crawl out of her bed to her writing- 
 table, and wrote for several hours, gnashing her 
 teeth with anguish. She told me that she used to 
 work the whole night, but that, at all events, I could 
 not verify. However that may be, pages and sheets 
 were pouring from her pen at an astonishing rate. 
 
 Our theosophical lessons in occultism did not offer 
 me any particular interest ; it was not that she would 
 not, but simply that she could not, tell me anything 
 new. She passed into no state of prophetic ecstasy, 
 and I took back untouched the note-book in which I 
 meant to record her interesting thoughts, aphorisms 
 and sentiments. I was waiting for the promised 
 ''phenomena," and this fact evidently troubled her. 
 She used to press me to print an account of the 
 master's " appearance to me at Elberfeld, and 
 thereby to confirm the reality of the Mahatmas' 
 existence. 
 
 I replied that, for all my willingness to do what 
 she wished, I could not fulfil her request, for I was 
 more than ever convinced that no ''master'' had 
 ever appeared to me, and that I had only had a vivid 
 dream, produced on the one hand by nervous ex- 
 haustion, on the other by the fact that she had kept 
 me nearly the whole evening looking at the dazz- 
 lingly illuminated portrait. 
 
 This drove her to despair. For the next couple of 
 days I had a feeling as I looked at her that she was 
 on the point of producing some sort of phenomenon. 
 And so it turned out. 
 
 I called one morning. Helena Petrovna sat behind 
 her great writing-table in an arm-chair of unusual 
 dimensions, sent her as a present by Gebhard from 
 
 10 
 
146 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 Elberfeld. At the opposite end of the table stood 
 the dwarfish Bavaji with a confused look in his 
 dulled eyes. He was evidently incapable of meeting 
 my gaze, and the fact certainly did not escape me. In 
 front of Bavaji on the table were scattered several 
 sheets of clean paper. Nothing of the sort had 
 occurred before, so my attention was the more aroused. 
 In his hand was a great thick pencil. I began to 
 have ideas. 
 
 Just look at the unfortunate man," said Helena 
 Petrovna suddenly, turning to me. '' He does not 
 look himself at all ; he drives me to distraction. He 
 imagines that here, in Europe, he can carry out the 
 same regime as in India. He never used to eat any- 
 thing there but milk and honey, and here he is doing 
 the same. I tell him that if he goes on like that he 
 will die, but he will not listen. And so he had an 
 attack last night." 
 
 Then she passed from Bavaji to the London Society 
 for Psychical Research, and again tried to persuade 
 me about the '' master Bavaji stood like a statue ; 
 he could take no part in our conversation, as he did 
 not know a word of Russian. 
 
 '' But such incredulity as to the evidence of your own 
 eyes, such obstinate infidelity as yours, is simply un- 
 pardonable. In fact, it is wicked !" exclaimed Helena 
 Petrovna. 
 
 I was walking about the room at the time, and did 
 not take my eyes off Bavaji. I saw that he was 
 keeping his eyes wide open, with a sort of contortion 
 of his whole body, while his hand, armed with the 
 great pencil, was carefully tracing some letters on a 
 sheet of paper. 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 147 
 
 Look ; what is the matter with him ? " exclaimed 
 Madame Blavatsky. 
 
 Nothing particular," I answered ; "he is writing 
 in Russian." 
 
 I saw her whole face grow purple. She began to 
 stir in her chair, with an obvious desire to get up and 
 take the paper from him. But with her swollen and 
 almost inflexible limbs, she could not do so with any 
 speed. I made haste to seize the paper and saw on 
 it a beautifully drawn Russian phrase. 
 
 Bavaji was to have written, in the Russian language 
 with which he was not acquainted : " Blessed are 
 they that believe, as said the Great Adept ". He had 
 learnt his task well, and remembered correctly the 
 form of all the letters, but he had omitted two in the 
 word believe". [The effect was precisely the same 
 as if in English he had omitted the first two and last 
 two letters of the word.] 
 
 Blessed are they that lie,'\ I read aloud, unable 
 to control the laughter which shook me. That 
 is the best thing I ever saw. Oh, Bavaji! you should 
 have got your lesson up better for examination ! " 
 
 The tiny Hindu hid his face in his hands and 
 rushed out of the room ; I heard his hysterical sobs 
 in the distance. Madame Blavatsky sat with dis- 
 torted features. 
 
 So you think 1 taught him this ! " she exclaimed 
 at last ; you think me capable of such arrant folly ! 
 It is the spirit ' elementals ' who are making fun of 
 him, poor fellow ! And what a vexation for me ! My 
 God ! as though I could not have thought of some- 
 thing cleverer than that if I had wanted to de- 
 ceive you! This is really too silly." 
 
148 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 Declaration of Madame de Morsier : — 
 
 " Lorsque Bavadjee passa a Paris au mois de 
 Septembre il me dit ceci a peu pres : A vous on peut 
 tout dire, je puis bien vous raconter que Madame 
 Blavatsky, sachant qu'elle ne pouvait gagner M. 
 Solovioff que par Toccultisme, lui promettait toujours 
 de lui enseigner de nouveaux mysteres a Wurtzbourg 
 et meme elle venait me demander a moi : ' Mais que 
 puis-je lui dire encore ? Bavadjee, sauvez-moi, trou- 
 vez quelque chose, etc. Je ne sais plus qu' inventer.' 
 
 E. DE Morsier." 
 
 After this abortive phenomenon things marched 
 faster, and I saw that I should soon be in a position 
 to send Mr. Myers and the other persons concerned 
 some very interesting additions to the report of the 
 Psychical Society. 
 
XIX. 
 
 Bavaji's Russian writing, with its ''blessed are they 
 that He," at once advanced matters. Madame 
 Blavatsky was still suffering severely, but she was 
 now able to walk about a little in her room. In 
 spite of her illness, she was working double tides ; 
 she was finishing her article for the Russky Vyestnik, 
 writing some fanciful stories, translating something, 
 I do not remember what, for her Theosophist, and 
 preparing to begin her Secret Doctrine, Sinnett was 
 soon to come from England, and to him she meant 
 to dictate a new ''truth about her life 
 
 Meanwhile, in her complete isolation, she was 
 depressed, and could not do without me. I was 
 bound, come what might, to make the most of the 
 time, for as soon as her "non-Russian" friends 
 arrived she would slip out of my hands. 
 
 Every day when I came to see her she used to try 
 to do me a favour in the shape of some trifling 
 "phenomenon," but she never succeeded. Thus, 
 one day her famous "silver bell" was heard, when 
 suddenly something fell beside her on the ground. 
 I hurried to pick it up — and found in my hands a 
 pretty little piece of silver, delicately worked and 
 strangely shaped. Helena Petrovna changed counte- 
 nance, and snatched the object from me. I coughed 
 
ISO 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 significantly, smiled, and turned the conversation to 
 indifferent matters. 
 
 Another time I said that I should like to have 
 some of the real essence of roses made in India. 
 
 I am so sorry," she said, I have none with me. 
 I do not like strong scents in general, and do not 
 keep them. But I will not guarantee that you may 
 not receive some essence of roses from India, such 
 as you speak of, and that very soon." 
 
 Watching her from this moment, I distinctly saw 
 her open one of the drawers of her table and take 
 something out. Then some half-hour later, after 
 having walked round me, she very gently and cau- 
 tiously slipped some little object mto my pocket. If 
 I had not watched her every movement, and had 
 not guessed why it was that she kept passing round 
 me, I should probably not have noticed any- 
 thing. 
 
 However, I immediately produced from my pocket 
 a little flat flask, opened it, smelt, and said : " This 
 is not essence of roses, Helena Petrovna, but oil of 
 oranges ; your ' master' has made a mistake ". 
 
 " Eh, devil take it ! " she exclaimed, unable to 
 restrain herself. 
 
 At last came the decisive day and hour. I saw on 
 my arrival that she was in a very gloomy and dis- 
 turbed state of mind. 
 
 "What is the matter? You seem quite upset. 
 Has anything happened ? " I asked. 
 
 " I have had such annoying, horrible letters to-day. 
 I had better not have read them ! " she exclaimed, 
 all livid, and with symptoms of the irritation which 
 used to make her entirely lose her head and become 
 
A Modern Priestess of I sis. 151 
 
 capable of any follies, for which she was afterwards, 
 no doubt, often sorry. 
 
 Where are the letters from ? From London ? " 
 Yes, from London. Never mind from whom ; — 
 from false friends, from people to whom I have 
 shown nothing but kindness, and who are ready to 
 spit on me now, when I need all their support. Well, 
 well, now it is the end of all things. Now I throw 
 up the sponge ! Then they won't be any the better 
 for this It is too bad, my friend, things like that. 
 Trash — couldn't be worse/' 
 
 Well, things are going on like that," I said, ''and 
 here are you spending your time in child's play, and 
 arranging your miserable phenomena for me." 
 
 Her eyes flashed at me, and she grumbled out : 
 '' Well, and you are always asking for phenomena ". 
 
 " And then there is a letter from Russia ! " she went 
 on in a changed tone. " My dear X writes that she 
 is coming here to see me in a few days." 
 
 '' I am very glad to hear it," I said, and thought to 
 myself: " Now there is no time to be lost, while she 
 has no accomplices, and is still in this humour". 
 
 At this very moment a lucky chance came to help 
 me. 
 
 Madame Blavatsky was talking about the Theoso- 
 phist, and mentioned the name of Subba Rao, a 
 Hindu who had attained the highest degree of 
 knowledge. 
 
 " And then he has such a wise, wonderful face. Do 
 you remember, I sent you some groups of theoso- 
 phists with their names written below ? I wonder if 
 you ever cast your eyes on his face ? " 
 
 " I don't remember." 
 
152 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 " Well, wait a moment ; look there, in the table ; 
 open the drawer and look, — I think there must be 
 a photograph of him, with me, Damodar and 
 Bavaji." 
 
 I opened the drawer, found the photograph, and 
 handed it to her — together with a packet of Chinese 
 envelopes such as I well knew; they were the same 
 in which the " elect " used to receive the letters of 
 the Mahatmas Morya and Koot Hoomi by " astral 
 post 
 
 Look at that, Helena Petrovna ! I should advise 
 you to hide this packet of the ' master's ' envelopes 
 farther off. You are so terribly absent-minded and 
 careless." 
 
 It is easy to imagine what this was to her. I looked 
 at her, and was positively frightened ; her face grew 
 perfectly black. She tried in vain to speak ; she 
 could only writhe helplessly in her great arm-chair. 
 
 Surely it is high time now to put an end to all 
 this comedy,'' I went on. " I have been looking at 
 you for a long time, and I am simply astonished. 
 You, a clever woman, are treating me as if I were a 
 baby. Do you really mean to say that you have not 
 seen till this moment that even in Paris, after the 
 phenomenon of the ' portrait in the locket,' I was 
 convinced of the spuriousness of your phenomena ? 
 From that day my conviction could only grow in- 
 stead of disappearing. I always fancied that I was 
 studiously ' not concealing' my opinion from you. I 
 have been waiting for you to put an end to this 
 ridiculous game yourself, and begin to treat me 
 seriously." 
 
 Helena Petrovna opened her eyes wide and gazed 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 153 
 
 at me with all her might. I had already pretty 
 well prepared her to believe that I was a man who 
 was fond of his laugh, and thought lightly of her 
 
 society/V although personally liking herself. I 
 well knew the part I had to play, and 1 knew no less 
 well that it was only by playing this part that I should, 
 at last, obtain to-day all for which I had so long been 
 striving. " Madame's " piercing eyes did not trouble 
 me ; I smiled and gazed at her with a reproachful 
 shake of the head. 
 
 But then, if you are sure that I do nothing but 
 take in all the world, you must despise me!" she 
 exclaimed at last. 
 
 There was no help for it ; she must think that I 
 was capable of very broad" view^s. I made up my 
 mind at once. 
 
 ''Why so?" I replied. ''There is deceit and de- 
 ceit, and there is trickery and trickery ! To play the 
 part you play, to make crowds follow you, to interest 
 the learned, to found ' societies ' in distant lands, to 
 start an entire movement — good gracious ! Why, it 
 is all so out of the common, that I am enraptured at 
 you against my will ! In all my life I have never met so 
 extraordinary a woman as you, and I am sure I shall 
 never meet another. Yes, Helena Petrovna, I admire 
 you, as a real, mighty, Herculean force, at work in 
 times when it is but too rare to meet with anything 
 but petty feebleness. Of course, there may be pass- 
 ing clouds, but I believe you will yet find a way to dis- 
 perse them. There is a grand arena before you ; you 
 march through it like a gigantic elephant surrounded 
 by your 'monkey theosophists,' Indian and European, 
 playing their apish games about your feet. It is a 
 
154 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 magnificent picture, and you simply hold me spell- 
 bound." 
 
 ''I have crossed the Rubicon!" I said to myself, 
 and it was now my turn to look her through and 
 through. Yes, she was indeed an elephant, but even 
 an elephant can be taken captive if you know how to 
 set about it. It was not for nothing that I had so 
 long studied her ; I knew her thoroughly, and saw 
 that the moment was propitious, that she was in a 
 suitable mood, and that I had struck the right note. 
 
 Her sombre, stupefied, almost terrified expression 
 began suddenly to clear up. Her eyes blazed, she 
 breathed with difficulty under overwhelming excite- 
 ment. 
 
 ^' Yes," she suddenly exclaimed. You have a 
 very warm heart and a very cool head ; it was not 
 for nothing that we met ! And there is the pity of it, 
 that round the elephant, if I am an elephant indeed, 
 there are none but apes. ' One man in the field does 
 not make a soldier,' and now, in the midst of all 
 these disasters that have befallen me, old and ill, I 
 feel it but too well. Olcott is useful in his place ; 
 but he is generally such an ass, such a blockhead ! 
 How often he has let me in, how many blunders 
 he has caused me, by his incurable stupidity ! If 
 you will only come to my aid, we will astonish the 
 world between us, we shall have everything in our 
 hands ! " 
 
 I could hardly bear the strain, both of delight 
 and repugnance. I had gained my end, but my part 
 was an excessively difficult one. I could now only 
 listen in silence. Fortunately she needed no words 
 of mine. The barrier was broken, and, as was 
 
A Modern Priestess of I sis. 155 
 
 always the case with her, she could not control 
 herself. 
 
 She was in ecstasies. It was evident that in her 
 fiery imagination there were suddenly springing up 
 and ripening the most unexpected and daring com- 
 binations ; she felt herself freed from the isolation 
 which had so grievously weighed upon her. 
 
 In fact, since the time of the '^treachery" of 
 Madame Coulomb, and thanks to Olcott's absence, 
 she had no companion to whom she could unbosom 
 herself. Bavaji, an inferior creature, a mere subordi- 
 nate tool, was not qualified either by position or 
 culture to supply what she needed. And without a 
 personal friend and companion with whom she could 
 converse and consult frankly, indulging at the same 
 time her passion for cynicism and ridicule, it was 
 evidently impossible for her to live. She was 
 terribly hungry after her intolerable fast, and simply 
 glutted herself in complete self-forgetfulness. 
 
 ''What is one' to do," she said, ''when in order to 
 rule men it is necessary to deceive them, when in 
 order to persuade them to let themselves be driven 
 where you will, you must promise them and show 
 them playthings ? Why, suppose my books and the 
 Theosophist had been a thousand times more 
 interesting and more serious, do. you imagine I 
 should have had any sort of success anywhere, if 
 behind all that there had not been the 'phenomena'? 
 I should have done simply nothing. I should have 
 long ago starved to death. They would have crushed 
 me, and it would never have even occurred to 
 any one to think that I too was a living creature, 
 that I too must eat and drink. But I have long, 
 
156 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 long since learnt to understand these dear people, 
 and their stupidity sometimes affords me unbounded 
 satisfaction. Why, you are ' not satisfied ' with my 
 phenomena, but do you know that almost invariably 
 the more simple, the more silly and the more gross 
 the ' phenomenon/ the more likely it is to succeed ? 
 I may tell you such stories about this some day as 
 will split your sides wath laughter, indeed they will. 
 The vast majority of people who are reckoned clever 
 by themselves and others are inconceivably silly. 
 If you only knew how many lions and eagles in 
 every quarter of the globe have turned into asses at 
 my whistle, and obediently wagged their great ears 
 in time as I piped the tune ! " 
 
 Still, you must have been caught sometimes," I 
 said. ''And with your astonishing carelessness and 
 inattention I expect it must have happened pretty 
 often." 
 
 "You are greatty mistaken !" she exclaimed with 
 temper. '' Yes, I certainly am careless and inatten- 
 tive, but others, with very, very rare exceptions, are 
 far more inattentive than I am; they are just so 
 many sleepy owls, so many blind men, and never 
 observe anything at all. Would you believe that all 
 this time, before and after the Theosophical Society's 
 foundation, I have not met more than two or three 
 men who knew how to observe and see and remark 
 what was going on around them ? It is simply 
 amazing ! At least nine out of ten people are entirely 
 devoid of the capacity of observation and of the power 
 of remembering accurately what took place even a 
 few hours before. How often it has happened that, 
 under my direction and revision, minutes of various 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 157 
 
 occurrences and phenomena have been drawn up ; lo, 
 the most innocent and conscientious people, even 
 sceptics, even those who actually suspected me, have 
 signed en toutes lettres as witnesses at the foot of the 
 minutes ! And all the time I knew that what had 
 happened was not in the least what was stated in the 
 minutes. Yes, my dear sir, I venture to assure you 
 that in history, even the best attested, there is far 
 more fancy than truth." 
 
 " Perhaps ; yet still you have been caught. You 
 may be sure that I am not the only one who has 
 such a cool head, as you put it." 
 
 Well, what then ? I was caught, and when I 
 was caught J wriggled out, and it always ended in 
 those who h%d found me out being left with empty 
 hands." 
 
 Are you alone the author of Koot Hoomi's letters, 
 philosophical and otherwise ? " 
 
 No, the chelas used sometimes to help me, 
 Damodar and Subba Rao and Mohini." 
 
 And Sinnett ? " 
 
 Sinnett won't invent gunpowder ; but he has a 
 beautiful style, he is splendid at editing." 
 '^And Olcott ?" 
 Olcott is not bad at editing either, when he under- 
 stands what he is talking about. But one has always 
 to chew everything for him till one is sick. But he 
 knows how to make himself clear to the Hindus ; 
 he has a sort of way of influencing them, and they 
 are always ready to follow him : one must do him 
 that justice. And then he has very often helped me 
 in phenomena, both over there and here. But he 
 never can think of anything for himself. It is always 
 
158 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 the same story with him : ' Sit there, do this, say 
 that Don't you remember at Elberfeld ? And the 
 ' psychists ' have acquitted him ! There is an investi- 
 gation for you ! Ah, Httle father, it is worth laughing 
 at — it is indeed ! '' 
 
 Please let me see the magic bell." 
 She made a peculiar movement with her hand 
 under her shawl, then she stretched out her arm and 
 somewhere in the air there sounded the tones of the 
 ^olian harp which had astonished every one. She 
 again made a movement beneath her shawl, and in 
 her hand with its supple-pointed fingers appeared 
 the little piece of silver with which I was already 
 acquainted. 
 
 Yes, it is the magic bell," she boasted in her 
 thoughtlessness. A cunning little thing. That is 
 my occult telegraph, through which I communicate 
 with the ' master'." 
 
 I wished to take the little thing in my hand 
 and examine its construction. But she stood up, 
 held the clever little machine to my eyes, and 
 suddenly put it into the drawer and turned the 
 key. 
 
 ^'You shall know enough; you will soon grow 
 older," she said : all in good time ; but now to the 
 point. Save me, help me. Prepare the ground for 
 me to work in Russia. I thought I should never go 
 back to my own land ; but now it is possible. Some 
 people are doing all they can there, but you can do 
 more than any one now. Write more, louder, about 
 the Theosophical Society, rouse their interest. And 
 * create ' Koot Hoomi's Russian letters. 1 will give 
 you all the materials for them," 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 ^59 
 
 No doubt I was bound to expect something of the 
 sort, and I did expect it. But I no longer had the 
 strength to sustain my part ; I seized my hat, and 
 without a word I almost ran out into the fresh 
 air. 
 
XX. ^ 
 
 As soon as I had got back to my room in Riigmer's 
 Hotel, and had written out word for word all this 
 amazing conversation, I grew calm, and in cold blood 
 began to think over what had just happened. I 
 soon came to the conclusion that on the one hand 
 I had gained everything — on the other, almost no- 
 thing. 
 
 What I had from the first suspected, and had then 
 convinced myself of, I now knew ; I knew it on the 
 word of Madame Blavatsky herself. She had made 
 me a confession, such as, of course, she had never 
 made to any but her own confederates. But who 
 would believe that I had heard all this from herself, 
 and in such circumstances ? One must begin by 
 knowing this woman as well as I knew her, before 
 one could admit the possibility of such folly on her 
 part. 
 
 No doubt if I had then had in my hands Hodg- 
 son's report, and other documents which saw the 
 light of day independently of myself, and more or 
 less showed the outrages on common-sense of which 
 Madame Blavatsky was capable, I should have seen 
 in them a sufficient confirmation for myself. But I 
 was not yet acquainted with these documents. 
 
 I knew that, in spite of the odious and fatiguing 
 hour through which I had passed, I had won nothing. 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. i6i 
 
 On the contrary, my position was worse. It is not 
 particularly pleasant to know the truth, to have 
 attained it by so painful a road, and then to have 
 to keep it to oneself, or to hear it said : But 
 yet, my good sir, all this is sufficiently improbable 
 and you have no legal evidence of the possibility of 
 what you say ". Why, a few of my friends will even 
 say to me : We believe you ; but still you had 
 better hold your tongue, till there is clear evidence 
 that Madame Blavatsky is capable of making such 
 admissions ". And meanwhile, lacking strength to 
 carry my part through to the end, I had deprived 
 myself of the possibility of obtaining anything that 
 would serve for such evidence as the case demanded. 
 Madame Blavatsky would now infallibly try to cover 
 up the traces of the folly she had committed, and 
 endeavour to leave me, in her own words, " with 
 empty hands 
 
 What is the next thing to do ? Why, to go away 
 at once, and forget all about the matter. But then, 
 in the first place, I could not start off at once, for I 
 had unexpectedly found some business to do in 
 Wiirzburg, and was obliged to spend there some two 
 weeks more ; and in the second, I was certain that 
 Madame Blavatsky would, beyond all doubt, let me 
 hear of her, and would not allow me to take leave of 
 her on a footing like this. And then I longed to see 
 what device this incredible woman could still invent. 
 
 I was still reflecting thus, when there was a knock 
 at my door, and I saw before me the tiny, piteous 
 I figure of Bavaji. 
 
 This is pretty quick," I thought to myself. 
 
 The Hindu's apish movements betrayed the great- 
 
l62 
 
 A Modem Priestess of his. 
 
 est perturbation. His great black eyes flashed, his 
 blue lips trembled, and all his dark cinnamon-coloured 
 face was twitching. 
 
 ''Voici la lettre, — monsieur, lisez — Madame at- 
 tend — " I heard his hoarse, repulsive voice and his 
 halting French. 
 
 I opened the letter, and read : — 
 I have just seen the master (twice underlined). 
 He has commanded me to tell you something which 
 will be a surprise to you and will decide perhaps 
 not only your fate and mine, but perhaps, if you will 
 only trust me for once (only the beauty of it is that 
 it would have been even better for me and better for 
 the cause if you had seen in me alone a resume of all 
 the so-called imaginary many masters), then you 
 as a patriot would perform an immense service to 
 Russia also. Come as soon as ever you can. 
 
 ^^H. B." 
 
 I read this through once, twice, thrice. She was 
 so disturbed, so hurried, that she had actually written 
 what, according to the sense of the Russian words, 
 was perfectly shapeless. She must see me, come 
 what may, and was afraid that I should disappear for 
 ever after what had happened. She was trying to 
 arouse my interest by every means in her power, 
 and was clutching at Russia and patriotism to help 
 the effect of her mystifications. But the Master" ! 
 What could be her object in continuing to talk about 
 the master now ? In any case she gained her object ; 
 she puzzled me, and induced me to make up my mind 
 to go to her — which, in my then mood, it was not 
 hard for her to do. It would be curious in the highest 
 degree to see her at this moment. 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 Ever since his blessed are they that He," Bavaji 
 had kept himself hidden from me, and all Madame 
 Blavatsky's cries and orders had not brought him 
 into the study when I was there. One day I came 
 upon him face to face ; he made me a deep bow, 
 turned away his head, and ran off. He had now 
 evidently received orders not to dare to return with- 
 out me under pain of death. It is likely enough that 
 he had even been beaten, for it is doubtful if he would 
 otherwise have ventured to show himself in my hotel. 
 He would not look at me, he trembled all over, and 
 said hoarsely and in an imploring voice : Monsieur, 
 — allons nous deux — Madameprie — Madame malade". 
 
 When he saw that I was going to start, he began 
 to squeak oddly, burst out laughing, threw himself 
 about, flew downstairs like an arrow, and dashed 
 ahead with the joyful news. 
 
 What fresh thing will the wonderful ''Madame" 
 devise, when one would say that there was certainly 
 no more devising possible ? 
 
 I went to her room, and found her in her usual 
 place, in her arm-chair at the table. Her face was 
 terrible, all covered with dark red blotches. She was 
 gasping, but trying with all her might to seem calm. 
 
 '' Why did you run off so suddenly, little father ? " 
 she asked me at once with a not very successful 
 smile ; '' what happened to you ? You were here, and 
 suddenly I look up and you are gone. But there, 
 were you with me to-day ? Perhaps it is only my 
 fancy that I had seen you and talked to you ? " 
 
 ''No, Helena Petrovna, it was not your fancy. 
 What was, was." 
 
 " Then, where did you take yourself off to ? " 
 
164 
 
 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 " Don't you see that I may very well admire you 
 and be interested in you, I may, malgre tout, feel an 
 involuntary liking for you, as my countrywoman, 
 and one beyond the common ; I may be heartily 
 sorry for you, and wish you all sorts of good ; but it 
 does not follow that you have the right to propose 
 that I should create Koot Hoomi letters. Such an 
 employment is not in my way." 
 
 She gave me no time to finish, and cried : What, 
 I ? — I made such a proposal ? I never said any- 
 thing of the sort to you ! " 
 
 It struck me as absurd that I should never have 
 guessed that this was what she would begin with ; 
 and that, in fact, being what I knew her to be, she 
 could not possibly begin with anything else. But 
 what would come next ? 
 
 Oh, you did not say so ! " I said ; then it must 
 have been some one else who offered me that honour- 
 able charge. But then there was no one here but 
 you, we were alone." 
 
 She suddenly burst into real tears, clasped her 
 head, and, with a very well feigned despair, tossed 
 upon her chair. 
 
 What a disaster," she cried ; again, again, that 
 beast, that devil, that black wizard, the master's 
 enemy and mine, has taken possession of me. He 
 rendered me unconscious, and took possession of my 
 body. He talked with my tongue, it seems, and I 
 knew nothing of it." 
 
 My God ! she is going out of her mind, she has 
 gone crazy," was the thought that flashed through 
 my head. 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 165 
 
 Meanwhile her tears ceased, she calmed down 
 somewhat, and continued : — 
 
 Yes, you won't believe, of course ; you will think 
 it is all a story, a fresh impudent lie of my own 
 inventing ; but meanwhile I will tell you what hap- 
 pened to me some years ago in America. I was 
 almost as old and ugly as I am now ; but, you see, 
 there are different kinds of ugliness in the world, 
 and so a handsome young Armenian fell in love 
 with me there. He suddenly appears in my house, 
 and begins to treat me as only a husband would 
 treat a wife. I order him off, but he does not go, 
 declares that I am his wife, and that he has just 
 been legally married to me, married before witnesses, 
 Olcott among them. I turn to Olcott ; imagine my 
 horror when he confirms it. He was a witness at 
 the wedding, and signed the register ! So you may 
 imagine how much money it cost m^e to get rid of 
 this Armenian. That is what happens to me, and 
 so it is now. Think what you will, I swear to you 
 by all the saints that I remember nothing. You 
 heard sounds coming from my mouth, but my judg- 
 ment, my will and my consciousness were not 
 there." 
 
 No," I concluded, she is not out of her mind, 
 she is quite herself." 
 
 Think of some tolerably plausible explanation," 
 I said to her aloud. 
 
 She immediately thought of one. 
 *'Why, of course," she said; '^perhaps after all 
 it was not our enemy, but the ' master ' himself 
 who talked like that ; he simply wanted to expose 
 you to a test." 
 
i66 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 Well, that explanation is somewhat better than 
 the other, but still it will not stand severe criticism/' 
 I remarked. 
 
 She suddenly changed her tone, and looked at me 
 maliciously. 
 
 Still — you have no right to be severe,'' she said 
 slowly. It will not do for you to be very severe ; 
 you see that, come what may, you have already 
 deeply compromised yourself by giving the London 
 ' psychists ' an account of the ^ master's ' appearance 
 to you. Whether reality, or dream, or even my 
 hypnotic suggestion, still you saw^ it all the same, 
 you wrote an account, and they have printed it over 
 your signature. So it is too late now to go back, 
 and your own self-love will not allow it. The part 
 I am playing may be a poor one, and not do for you ; 
 but the only thing for you is to faire bonne mine a 
 mauvais jeviJ' 
 
 " I have long known that sooner or later you would 
 talk to me like this," I answered; ^^but you must 
 please understand that all this does not frighten me 
 in the least. It is clear that you know me but little. 
 I must beg you not to have recourse to a weapon like 
 that with me." 
 
 I am not frightening you at all," she cried; but 
 do just think a little. If you now begin suddenly to 
 assert that you no longer believe in the existence of 
 the 'master' and Koot Hoomi, you will meet with 
 very, very great unpleasantnesses. Think it over ; 
 it is not a joke." 
 
 ''I never have assured any one, whether by word 
 or letter, that I believed unconditionally in the exist- 
 ence of your Mahatmas. As for unpleasantnesses, 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 167 
 
 can I avoid them anyhow, when I have been so closely 
 acquainted with you ? " 
 
 "Don't get angry and don't be sarcastic," interrupted 
 Madame " with another change of tone and a gracious 
 smile. " It is all the same to me, I am only thinking 
 about your peace of mind and welfare. Yes, after all, 
 it is most likely that all that was a test," she con- 
 tinued, now quite calmed down ; " an explanation like 
 that, even if it is not good enough for you, will satisfy 
 all the theosophists at any rate. All the more, be- 
 cause, as I told you, the ' master ' has been with me 
 and told me a great deal with reference to you. I 
 will repeat you some of his words, about what is 
 going to happen to you in the course of the next two 
 months. I beseech you to wait only two months ; 
 and by then you must be convinced, in spite of every- 
 thing, that the ' master ' really does exist. Listen ! 
 this is what is going to happen to you." 
 
 And then, with unusual assurance, in the most 
 precise detail, she proceeded to make a whole series 
 of prophecies announcing to me most surprising events 
 in my private life, which were to happen one after 
 another in the course of not more than two months. 
 
 There, please stop, Helena Petrovna," I said ; 
 " you really must take account of what you are doing. 
 This is ridiculous ; you are talking as confidently as 
 a fortune-teller over her coffee grounds." 
 
 I am speaking confidently," she said with dignity, 
 " because I am speaking to you the ' master's ' words, 
 and he cannot err. You have been so patient with 
 me, you have borne with me so long, you say that 
 even now, malgre tout, you like me and are sorry for 
 me. I beseech you to fulfil my last request. Have 
 
i68 
 
 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 patience for only two months, you understand ; only 
 two months. If in two months' time you are not 
 convinced of the ' master's ' existence and of the ful- 
 filment of all his prophecies, then do what you will, 
 print all you know. Only two months ! I beseech 
 you ! Promise me." 
 
 She evidently wanted to gain time. She was 
 calculating on all sorts of chances and coincidences, 
 and most of all feared lest, at a moment when her 
 affairs were in so bad a way, her rupture with me 
 might get abroad through the Theosophical Society. 
 But after all it made no difference ; with the poor 
 budget I possessed I could do but little. I could 
 communicate nothing of real importance, no docu- 
 mentary evidence, that is, either to the London 
 Society for Psychical Research or to the Paris 
 theosophists. 
 
 My only hope was that in the course of two 
 months something might turn up and my budget be 
 enlarged. 
 
 " Well," I said, " I promise you to wait quietly for 
 two months, but you must not imagine that you 
 have raised in me the least shadow of a doubt." 
 
 Oh, you may remain in doubt or free from 
 doubt," she interrupted, ''you will be terribly unde- 
 ceived. All's well that ends well. The 'master' will 
 know how to amaze you, to punish and to forgive. 
 But you must write down his prophecies, and then, 
 if you wish, I will not utter a word about him in 
 your presence, till you yourself begin to speak of 
 him." 
 
 " Yes, that I beg of you." 
 
 She was now quite calm, and wore the expression 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 169 
 
 of a conqueror. The long years of her extraordinary 
 existence and manifold adventures had taught her to 
 live for the present moment. 
 
 But will you permit me to ask," I said, ''what 
 was the very important affair concerning Russia 
 vv^hich you wished to communicate to me, and why 
 did you appeal to my patriotism ? " 
 
 She had probably already forgotten the contents 
 of her note, at all events she had forgotten the part 
 which the ' master ' was to play in the matter. She 
 said: ''Well, this has nothing to do with the 'master'. 
 I have been long wanting to talk to you about it; but 
 I could not make up my mind ; — but to-day I have 
 made it up, and by so doing I shall show you my 
 infinite confidence in you. Still, malgre tout, I look 
 on you as a friend." 
 
 " Thank you for the honour," I said with a smile 
 and a bow. 
 
 She either did not observe, or pretended not to 
 observe, my tone of voice. 
 
 " Look here, this is what it is," she began ; " you 
 are soon going to St. Petersburg ; now do undertake 
 a very important business of the greatest benefit to 
 Russia. I wish to propose myself as a secret agent 
 of the Russian Government in India. To promote the 
 triumph of my country over those vile English I am 
 capable of anything. I hate the English Government 
 in India, with its missionaries ; they are all my per- 
 sonal enemies, thirsting for my destruction. That 
 alone is reason enough why I should throw my whole 
 soul into the struggle with them. And that I can do 
 them immense harm in India is certain ; and I alone 
 can do it, no one else is capable of the task. My 
 
170 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 influence on the Hindus is enormous ; of that I can 
 easily produce as much evidence as you will. At a 
 sign from me, millions of Hindus would follow me. 
 I can easily organise a gigantic rebellion. I will 
 guarantee that in a year's time the whole of India 
 would be in Russian hands. Only they must give 
 me the pecuniary means — I don't want much. You 
 know how I am in this respect. And they must put 
 it in my power to penetrate into India through Russia, 
 — for I can't go back there any other way, since this 
 affair of the Coulombs and the missionaries — and 
 I will bring about one of the greatest events in history. 
 I proposed the same thing before, some years ago, 
 when Timasheff was still minister ; but I did not 
 receive any answer. But now, now it is much easier 
 for me ; I can arrange the whole thing in a year. 
 Help me in such a patriotic cause." 
 
 So this was what she had brought herself to think 
 of. This was the revenge she planned for the English 
 who had not appreciated her. There is not the least 
 doubt that she was genuinely captivated by the plan, 
 and believed it perfectly feasible. 
 
 1 cannot undertake any trouble myself in such a 
 matter," I said; ''but this is what I should advise, if 
 you really want to bring about a great historical 
 event, and if it is not a freak which you will have 
 forgotten by to-morrow : put down clearly and cir- 
 cumstantially on paper what you have just told me, 
 produce all the evidence of your influence over the 
 Hindus, set out your plan of action, etc. Send this 
 paper to Katkoff, with whom 3^ou have already been 
 for a long time in correspondence. And then, await 
 his answer. If you are afraid to send such a docu- 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 171 
 
 ment through the post, give it to me, and I promise 
 that I will hand it over to Katkoff. That is all I can 
 say and do for you." 
 
 She was very dissatisfied, and by the way she 
 looked at me when I was saying that I would take 
 charge of the documents themselves, and hand them 
 over to Katkoff, I almost fancied that she might be 
 afraid of trusting such a document to my hands in 
 particular. However that might be, she never re- 
 turned to the subject in conversation up to the time 
 of my departure from Wurzburg. 
 
XXI. 
 
 Two or three days afterwards I saw Madame X 
 who had come from Russia. She kissed me thrice, 
 in Russian fashion, and expressed in choice phrases 
 her dehght on the occasion of our second meeting. 
 I even spent two days in her company, thanks to a 
 trip which we made to Nuremberg to see an exhibi- 
 tion of various curiosities. I have preserved some 
 very queer and comic reminiscences of this trip. I 
 fancy that my readers would not regret it if I decided 
 to make them better acquainted with this very 
 interesting personage, interesting in her external 
 characteristics as well as for her inner qualities 
 of heart and mind. Nor would it be tedious to 
 relate the vengeance which I incurred from her for 
 having, after investigation, withdrawn from my 
 acquaintance with Helena Petrovna. But I have 
 to deal with my relations with Madame Blavatsky 
 and not with her family, and I shall not depart from 
 the limits which I have set myself. 
 
 After Madame X there came to Wiirzburg Sinnett 
 with his wife, and Mohini with Miss Arundale. 1 
 used to call at Madame Blavatsky's lodgings to talk 
 to Madame X, and hear her tales about various sorts 
 of devils and ghosts, and their tricks. I used to go 
 for walks with her, leaving Miss Arundale with 
 Mohini, and Sinnett with Madame Blavatsky. The 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 ^73 
 
 latter was now occupied several hours a day, 
 dictating to this first-rate editor" the very latest 
 truth about her life 
 
 Miss Arundale soon went back to London, taking 
 with her Bavaji as well as Mohini. I also was on 
 the point of leaving Wiirzburg. 
 
 Before my departure I paid Madame " a farewell 
 visit. As I was taking leave, I said : Now, Helena 
 Petrovna, the hour of farewell has come ; the final 
 farewell this time. Listen to my honest advice, 
 which comes alike from my head and my heart. 
 Have pity on yourself ; throw away all this horrible 
 tinsel, resign the Theosophical Society, as you your- 
 self wished to do not long ago, nurse your health 
 in quiet, and write. You have a real literary talent; 
 this can supply you with a livelihood and with 
 satisfaction for your self-love. You work so easily, 
 write ; write in the Russian journals about all you 
 have seen and learnt ; but throw aside all this, all 
 these Mahatmas and chelas, all these English and 
 Hindus. Let the evening of your life, at least, be 
 bright and calm. Do not take needless burdens on 
 your soul ; make a pause." 
 
 Too late ! " she said in a stifled voice ; " for me 
 there is no going back." And in a moment, in quite 
 another tone, she went on : Know that all the 
 ' master's ' predictions will be fulfilled, and in no 
 more than a month and a half from now." 
 
 By these last words she made it possible for me 
 to part from her without any feeling of pity. 
 
 I paid a short visit to Strassburg, and went on to 
 Paris, in order to see my French friends belore 
 hurrying off to Russia. 
 
174 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 I still received letters from Madame Blavatsky, 
 first in Paris and afterwards in St. Petersburg. She 
 would on no account admit that our relations had 
 come to an end, and that I had said good-bye to her 
 for ever. Besides, on thinking over all that had 
 passed between us, she was bound to attempt to get 
 letters of mine in reply, in order that, if anything 
 happened, she might be able to say: Excuse me, 
 we are on the best of terms, we are in correspond- 
 ence, here are his letters''. 
 
 She used to rely on my pity for a sick old woman, 
 and at last upon my courtesy". How is it that I 
 do not answer, when she thus complains of her 
 sufferings, and appeals to my heart ? 
 
 But I thought I had had enough, and that 
 a correspondence with a lady who had passed 
 seven years in Thibet " could bring me neither 
 profit nor satisfaction. I ceased to answer her 
 letters. 
 
 She assumed a jocose tone, and lectured me on 
 my silence: ''You do not answer: God be with you, 
 and I will write no more. Widow H. P. B." ; or 
 *' Yours ever, veuve Blavatsky I kept silence, but 
 still she wrote. 
 
 At last the rain of letters ceased, and I even 
 began to think that she had taken offence and 
 become silent for ever. I was unspeakably glad 
 of it ; for at that very time, in St. Petersburg, it was 
 my fortune to receive from several quarters, especi- 
 ally from Madame Y and her family (the honourable 
 Madame Y was at that time on bad terms with 
 Helena Petrovna), some very unexpected information. 
 This information was very important for the picture 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 175 
 
 of the foundress of the Theosophical Society," and 
 for comparison with her own declarations, oral and 
 printed, which she scattered abroad by means of 
 Sinnett and Co. 
 
 Some two months more passed. By this time I 
 had completed my budget by gaining trustworthy 
 information about Madame Blavatsky, and I com- 
 municated the results of my inquiries to Mr. Myers 
 and Charles Richet. I then returned to Paris, where 
 I found Madame de Morsier quite ill and upset by a 
 scandalous affair affecting a well-known theosophist. 
 
 She was now sufficiently prepared, and I told her 
 all about my stay in Wiirzburg and about the infor- 
 mation I had obtained in St. Petersburg. 
 
 '^This only confirms what is, unhappily, but too 
 clear to me already,'' she said, and she in turn told 
 me the Paris news and showed me letters to herself 
 from Madame Blavatsky, in which our Madame" 
 did not stand on ceremony, and revealed a very 
 repulsive side of herself 
 
 Some days later, to my greatest amazement, I 
 received from Madame Blavatsky a fresh letter of 
 many pages. 
 
 In this, among other things, she reported to me, 
 in her own style, the contents of Hodgson's report, 
 just published by the London Society for Psychical 
 Research, and naturally considered that this report 
 was worth nothing and that Hodgson had not proved 
 anything. 
 
XXII. 
 
 Having read Helena Petrovna's letter, I replied 
 begging her to leave me in peace, to remain quiet, 
 and not to run into the halter. I repeated the advice 
 I had given her on leaving Wiirzburg. To this I 
 received in answer a document which revealed her 
 in her entirety, and before which even her Wiirzburg 
 admissions paled. She headed it " My Confession " ; 
 and this is what 1 read in her missive : — 
 
 " I have made up my mind (doubly underlined). 
 Has the following picture ever presented itself to 
 your literary imagination ? There is living in the 
 forest a wild boar — an ugly creature, but doing no 
 harm to any one so long as they leave him in peace 
 in his forest, with his wild beast friends who love 
 him. This boar never hurt any one in his life, but 
 only grunted to himself as he ate the roots which 
 were his own in the forest which sheltered him. 
 There is let loose upon him, without rhyme or reason, 
 a pack of ferocious hounds ; men chase him from the 
 wood, threaten to burn his native forest, and to leave 
 him a wanderer, homeless, for any one to kill. He 
 flies for a while, though he is no coward by nature, 
 before these hounds ; he tries to escape for the sake of 
 the forest, lest they burn it down. But, lo! one after 
 another the wild beasts who were once his friends 
 join the hounds ; they begin to chase him, yelping 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis, 177 
 
 and trying to bite and catch him, to make an end of 
 him. Worn out, the boar sees that his forest is 
 already set on fire and that he cannot save it nor 
 himself. What is there for the boar to do ? Why, 
 this ; he stops, he turns his face to the furious pack 
 of hounds and beasts, and shows himself wholly 
 (twice underlined) as he is, from top to bottom, and 
 then falls upon his enemies in his turn, and kills as 
 many of them as his strength serves till he falls dead 
 — and then he is really powerless. 
 
 " Believe me, / have fallen because I have made up my 
 mind to fall, or else to bring about a reaction by 
 telling all God s truth about myself, but without mercy 
 on my enemies. On this I am firmly resolved, and 
 from this day I shall begin to prepare myself in order 
 to be ready. I will fly no more. Together with this 
 letter, or a few hours later, I shall myself be in 
 Paris, and then on to London. A Frenchman is 
 ready, and a well-known journalist too, delighted to 
 set about the work and to write at my dictation 
 something short, but strong, and what is most im- 
 portant—a true history of my life. / shall not even 
 attempt to defend, to justify myself. In this book I 
 shall simply say : In 1848, I, hating my husband, 
 N. V. Blavatsky (it may have been wrong, but still 
 such was the nature God gave me), left him, aban- 
 doned him— virgin (I shall produce documents and 
 letters proving this, although he himself is not such 
 a swine as to deny it). I loved one man deeply, but 
 still more I loved occult science, believing in magic, 
 wizards, etc. I wandered with him here and there, 
 in Asia, in America, and in Europe. I met with 
 So-and-so. (You may call him a wizard, what does it 
 
178 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 matter to him ?) In 1858 I was in London ; there 
 came out some story about a child, not mine (there 
 will follow medical evidence, from the faculty of 
 Paris, and it is for this that I am going to Paris). 
 One thing and another was said of me ; that I was 
 depraved, possessed with a devil, etc. I shall tell 
 everything as I think fit, everything I did, for the 
 twenty years and more that I laughed at the qu'en 
 dira-t-on, and covered up all traces of what I was 
 really occupied in, i.e., the sciences occulteSy for the 
 sake of my family and relations who would at that 
 time have cursed me. I will tell how from my 
 eighteenth year I tried to get people to talk about 
 me, and say about me that this man and that was 
 my lover, and hundreds of them. I will tell too a 
 great deal of which no one ever dreamed, and / will 
 prove it. Then I will inform the world how suddenly 
 my eyes were opened to all the horror of my moral 
 suicide; how I was sent to America to try my 
 psychological capabilities. How I collected a society 
 there, and began to expiate my faults, and attempted 
 to make men better and to sacrifice myself for their 
 regeneration. / will name all the theosophists who 
 were brought into the right way, drunkards and 
 rakes, who became almost saints, especially in India, 
 and those who enlisted as theosophists, and continued 
 their former life, as though they were doing the work 
 (and there are many of them) and yet were the first to 
 join the pack of hounds that were hunting me down, 
 and to bite me. I will describe many Russians, 
 
 great and small — Madame S among them, her 
 
 slander and how it turned out to be a lie and a 
 calumny. I shall not spare myself, I swear I will 
 
A Modern Priestess of I sis. 179 
 
 not spare ; / myself will set fire to the four quarters 
 of my native wood, the society to wit, and I will 
 perish, but I will perish with a huge following, God 
 ^rant I shall die, shall perish at once on pubhcation ; 
 but if not, if the master would not allow it, how 
 should I fear anything? Am I a criminal before 
 the law? Have I killed any one, destroyed, de- 
 famed ? I am an American foreigner, and I must 
 not go back to Russia. From Blavatsky, if he is 
 alive, what have I to fear ? It is thirty-eight years 
 since I parted from him, after that I passed three 
 days and a half with him in Tiflis in 1863, and then 
 
 we parted again. Or M ? I do not care a straw 
 
 about that egoist and hypocrite ! He betrayed me, 
 destroyed me by telling lies to the medium Home, who 
 has been disgracing me for ten years already, so much 
 the worse for him. You understand, it is for the 
 sake of the society I have valued my reputation these 
 ten years. I trembled lest rumours, founded on my 
 own efforts (a splendid case for the psychologists, for 
 Richet and Co.) and magnified a hundred times, 
 might throw discredit on the society while blacken- 
 ing me. I was ready to go on my knees to those 
 who helped me to cast a veil over my past ; to 
 give my life and all my powers to those who helped 
 me. But now? Will you, or Home the medium, 
 
 or M , or any one in the world, frighten me 
 
 with threats when I have myself resolved on a 
 full confession ? Absurd ! I tortured and killed 
 myself with fear and terror that I should damage 
 the society — kill it. But now I torture myself 
 no more. I have thought it all out, coolly and 
 sanely, I have risked all on a single card — all 
 
 - 
 
i8o A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 (twice underlined) ! I will snatch the weapon from 
 my enemies' hands and write a book which will 
 make a noise through all Europe and Asia, and 
 bring in immense sums of money, to support my 
 orphan niece, an innocent child, my brother's orphan. 
 Even if all the filth, all the scandal and lies against 
 me had been the holy truth, still I should have been 
 no worse than hundreds of princesses, countesses, 
 court ladies and royalties, than Queen Isabella herself, 
 who have given themselves, even sold themselves to 
 the entire male sex, from nobles to coachmen and 
 waiters inclusive; what can they say of me worse than 
 that ? And all this I myself will say and sign. 
 
 No ! The devils will save me in this last great 
 hour. You did not calculate on the cool determina- 
 tion of despair, which was and has passed over. To 
 you I have never done any harm whatever, I never 
 dreamt of it. If I am lost I am lost with every one. 
 I will even take to lies, to the greatest of lies, which 
 for that reason is the most likely of all to be believed. 
 I will say and publish it in the Times and in all the 
 papers, that the 'master' and ' Mahatma K. H.' 
 are only the product of my own imagination : that I 
 invented them, that the phenomena were all more or 
 less spiritiialistic apparitions, and I shall have twenty 
 million spiritists in a body at my back. I will say 
 that in certain instances I fooled people ; I will ex- 
 pose dozens of fools (underlined twice), des hallucines ; 
 I will say that I was making trial for my own 
 satisfaction, for the sake of experiment. And to this 
 I have been brought hy you (underlined twice). You 
 have been the last straw which has broken the camel's 
 back under its intolerably heavy burden. 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 i8i 
 
 "Now you are at liberty to conceal nothing. Re- 
 peat to all Paris what you have ever heard or know 
 about me. I have already written a letter to Sinnett 
 forbidding him to publish my memoirs at his own 
 discretion. I myself will publish them with all the 
 truth. So there will be the ' truth (underlined 
 twice) about H. P. Blavatsky," in which psychology 
 and her own and others immorality and Rome and 
 politics and all her own and others filth once more 
 will be set out to God's world. I shall conceal no- 
 thing. It will be a Saturnalia of the moral depravity 
 of mankind, this confession of mine, a worthy epilogue 
 of my stormy life. And it will be a treasure for 
 science as well as for scandal : and it is all me, me 
 (underlined twice) ; I will show myself with a 
 reality (underlined twice), which will break many, 
 and will resound through all the world. Let the 
 psychist gentlemen, and whosoever will, set on foot 
 a new inquiry. Mohini and all the rest, even India, 
 are dead for me. I thirst for one thing only, that 
 the world may know all the reality, all the truth, and 
 learn the lesson. And then death, kindest of all. 
 
 H. Blavatsky. 
 
 You may print this letter if you will, even in 
 Russia. It is all the same now." 
 
 After this " confession," I could, and can, speak 
 at my ease of her verbal admissions to me at Wiirz- 
 burg, which were besides fully confirmed by the 
 investigations of the London Psychical Society. 
 These admissions are lost like a drop in the ocean 
 in the midst of her precisely similar doings, estab- 
 lished by documentary proof. Her confession is a 
 
l82 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 ''human document," on which, in very truth, not 
 only the artistic reader but the psychologist and the 
 alienist may dwell with lively interest. 
 
 Of the numerous " truths" about the life of H. P. 
 Blavatsky beginning with the ''truth " according to 
 Madame Jelihovsky and Sinnett, and ending with the 
 latest "biographers" of "Madame," the confession sent 
 to me, written in her own hand (as can be established 
 b}^ any expert) is indubitably the most interesting 
 "truth". This "truth" is not a private letter, but " 
 one destined for the public as well, and containing 
 the author's own permission to print. May be there 
 is no less falsehood in it than in the works of Sinnett, 
 Madame Jelihovsky, Olcott, Countess Wachtmeister, 
 and similarly trustworthy biographers and witnesses. 
 In it truth is artistically interwoven with falsehood, 
 there are contradictions in every word, feverish im- 
 agination struggles with shameless cynicism, passions 
 boil and fume, sudden sincerity, called forth by de- 
 spair, by the seeming hopelessness of the situation, 
 alternates with conscious, crafty calculation. 
 
 For a biography, a really truthful biography of 
 " Madame," even this autograph " confession," written 
 under the impulse of the moment, offers no adequately 
 ( trustworthy material. But as a revelation of her 
 character and moral qualities, as a full-length por- 
 trait of her, taken from nature, and taken not by an 
 artist capable of completing and idealising, but by 
 the sun itself, dispassionate and exact, this " confes- 
 sion" of hers is a priceless treasure. In it this deeply 
 interesting and terrible woman is wholly reflected — 
 the woman whom the inquirers of the London 
 Society for Psychical Research have declared to be 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 183 
 
 one of the most accomplishecf, ingenious and inter- 
 esting impostors of our time".^ 
 
 In my opinion, this judgment, far from being ex- 
 aggerated, does not go far enough. Where in our 
 time is there a similar impostress or a similar im- 
 postor? H. P. Blavatsky is unique; she surpasses 
 the famous charlatan of the last century, Balzamo 
 Cagliostro, inasmuch as when the divine, mighty 
 Copt " vanished mysteriously from the arena of life, 
 there remained nothing but a memory of him behind; 
 whereas after the death of H. P. Blavatsky, and the 
 cremation of her sorely-tried, sinful body, there are 
 left 60,000^ members of the Theosophical Society, 
 there remains a whole religious movement, with 
 which, perhaps, it will some day be necessary to 
 reckon seriously. When the London inquirers into 
 psychical phenomena passed their judgment, they 
 did not foresee the proportions which would be at- 
 tained by the movement started by the interesting 
 Russian impostress 
 
 Both I and Madame de Morsier, when we had 
 read and sufficiently weighed the confession, saw 
 very clearly that it was useless to expect the appear- 
 ance of Madame Blavatsky in Paris and London. 
 She was not likely to stir anywhere now. It is 
 highly probable that the moment she had sent me 
 the letter she was sorry for having done so, and in 
 a couple of days had forgotten, if not the whole 
 contents, at least a good half of it. 
 
 But she could not fail, when her mood altered, to 
 
 ^ [The words of the report (Proceedings of the Society for 
 Psychical Research, iii., 207) are "in history". — Tr.] 
 ^ [4000 would probably be nearer the mark. — Tr.] 
 
184 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 make fresh attempts to improve her position. There 
 flashed before her a hope that, after all, she still 
 might convert me. This would be such a triumph 
 now ! She was thinking me as yet so tame in every 
 way. And how could I betray her, my own country- 
 woman ? Surely, she thought, there must be some- 
 thing wrong here ; there was probably some one 
 between us, telling tales about her. 
 
 She suddenly put on a virtuous mask, assumed 
 the part of an injured innocent, and several days after 
 her confession she wrote to me again, completing 
 her portrait of herself, saying all she had left unsaid, 
 and finally revealing herself. 
 
 Great were my sins in the past, but not against 
 you ; it is not for yoti to punish me, before whom I 
 am as guiltless as Christ before the Jews. I have 
 never done you any harm, and may be I shall be use- 
 ful to you." Then she wrote about Bavaji : He is 
 an obedient and clever boy ! He is an obedient 
 weapon in my hands! 'Je Tai psychologist,' you 
 would say to Madame de Morsier. And only see 
 what this obedient boy has done to me. He threw 
 me over at the first shot of the Psychical Society. 
 He is abusing me to the Gebhards worse than your- 
 self. He says ' que j'ai commis un sacrilege, des- 
 honore le nom des Maitres, que j'ai avili la science 
 sacree en la donnant aux Europeens'. He is going 
 against you, Sinnett, me, every one, and devil knows 
 what they will do together (with Mohini?) in London 
 — now that he is going, and perhaps has gone, there. 
 He is a very dangerous enemy, because he is a fanatic, 
 and he is capable of raising all India against me." 
 
 And again : What have I done io you (underlined 
 
A Modern Priestess of I sis. 185 
 
 twice) ? What have I said ? What have you 
 learnt ? Do not do Hke the Psychical Society or 
 Madame de Morsier, who fancied that I knew every- 
 thing, that I must know everything, and therefore 
 betrayed me. Beware (underlined twice) ! You are 
 surrounded by such a ring that all your cool head 
 will not help you. I only beg you to answer me this 
 riddle — What can you have against me ? Did I ever 
 want to bite you ? Do I wish you ill ? If I wrote 
 to you that I am in despair, then I wrote only what 
 I feel. It was your friendship I valued, not your 
 presence or your membership of the society. I wrote 
 that I would be the first to upset all the continental 
 societies, the Parisian and the German, where (ex- 
 cepting the Gebhards and poor Hubbe-Schleiden) 
 all are men of straw and enemies, and I am ready 
 to do it after I have put in print all their meannesses. 
 But only think what you would have thought of me 
 if we had changed places. Even if I were going to 
 be hanged I would not betray you, and I would 
 betray no one else, even if I knew that it was true, 
 but would keep silence. And what have I done to 
 you ? I am ready to forget all to-morrow and to 
 love you as of old, because I have no spite in me, 
 and because you are a Russian — a sacred thing for an 
 exile like me. Farewell. 
 
 I am convinced that she honestly did not under- 
 stand why I had parted from her and appeared 
 among the number of her accusers. Her moral 
 notions were so radically perverted that she had lost 
 all grasp of certain ideas. She imagined that every- 
 thing in the world was founded on personal relations, 
 
i86 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 and that to this there was no exception. What 
 have I done to you — you ? " Others/' that is to 
 say, I may cheat and ruin; I may mar all their 
 lives, I may abandon myself to every sacrilege, and 
 huckster the greatest truths, but if I like you person- 
 ally, and cannot take you in because you have seen 
 through me, if it may yet be in my power to serve 
 you in one way or another, then why do you betray 
 me, and that to foreigners?" That is what she 
 insinuated. 
 
 Return to me, and all will be forgotten " — of 
 course ! And she was thinking to herself : Once 
 come back to me, and I will see that there shall be 
 only one way of escape from me, — a ball in your 
 brain. And even now, beware ! for you are surrounded 
 by such a magic circle that all your cool head will 
 not help you." 
 
 She could not control herself, and admitted into 
 her letter these words, which, as I was soon to know 
 but too well, were no empty threat. She was already 
 preparing to collect her army, and avenge herself 
 upon me in a very theosophical " fashion. 
 
XXIII. 
 
 Thus ended all my immediate relations with Madame 
 Blavatsky. I did not reply to her last letter, I was 
 not enticed by the prospect that the past should be 
 forgotten," I did not return to her friendly embrace. 
 I was not alarmed by her threats, I did not feel 
 myself fettered in the magnetic ring of her ''theo- 
 sophical " vengeance, and was generally like the 
 little bird of which the song speaks : — 
 
 Gaily hops the little bird 
 Down the path of sorrow, 
 Troubled not by any word 
 Of what may come to-morrow. 
 
 Everything was now perfectly clear. There was no 
 need to wait for any further revelations, and nothing 
 could now weaken the facts which had become 
 known to me. I had already told Madame Blavatsky 
 in the autumn of 1884, at Elberfeld, that I did not 
 wish to remain on the list of the members of the 
 Theosophical Society, as I had observed that the 
 actions of some of the members, beginning with 
 Olcott, were not consistent with the fundamental 
 rules of the constitution. But Helena Petrovna, 
 who was very ill at the time, began to beseech " 
 me not to resign officially, nor to cause her such an 
 annoyance and scandal. 
 
i88 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 Let me go and die," she said in her favourite 
 jargon, then you can do what you Hke ; but so 
 long as I am not off the hooks, even though I am 
 lying like a log, don't put me to shame and don't give 
 food for all sorts of talk ; think how my enemies will 
 rejoice: 'There, you see, she could not even keep her 
 own fellow-countryman, he is off!' Even if you do 
 dislike any one, Olcott, or any of the rest, just spit 
 on them and don't make me responsible for one and 
 all ; have pity on a sick old woman."' 
 
 Leaving pity aside, I clearly saw that my official 
 retirement from the society would offend Madame" 
 in the highest degree ; her friendship for me would 
 not survive it, and I should get positively nothing 
 out of her and learn no more. The rest of the theo- 
 sophists would begin to shun me, and there would 
 be an end to any further relations with them. In 
 view of this I determined to wait for the time when 
 my doubts and suspicions should be changed into 
 evident facts. The ''Widow Blavatsky's" last letters 
 to me were more than sufficient facts, and accord- 
 ingly, on i6th February, 1886, a few days after the 
 receipt of the '' confession," I despatched to Adyar 
 in India, to the address of the secretary of the 
 Theosophical Society, Mr. Oakley, with w^hom I 
 was slightly acquainted, a registered letter with my 
 formal resignation. 
 
 When I had addressed this letter, I felt like a man 
 who has had a bath after a journey in a close and 
 dirty railway carriage. I wrote a concise account 
 of my acquaintance wath H. P. Blavatsky and of 
 the Wiirzburg conversations, and then translated 
 into French extracts from her last letters to me, and 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 189 
 
 her confession In view of any eventuality, and 
 with the object of giving my translation a document- 
 ary character, I had recourse to my honoured old 
 friend Jules Baissac, the well-known scholar and 
 linguist, who besides filled the office of sworn 
 translator to the Paris Court of Appeal". 
 
 Jules Baissac, as has already been mentioned at 
 the beginning of this narrative, in his character as a 
 student of the history of religion, had been greatly 
 interested in the Theosophical Society and its foun- 
 dress, to whom he had been introduced by Madame 
 de Morsier. He had several serious conversations 
 with H. P. Blavatsky, Olcott, and Mohini, he had 
 learnt from their mouths everything bearing on 
 his studies, he had made acquaintance with the 
 writings of Madame Blavatsky and Sinnett, and re- 
 garded the Theosophical Society as the most curious 
 phenomenon of contemporary religious life. He had 
 written a lengthy and circumstantial article entitled 
 "La Nouvelle Theosophie," and published it in the 
 periodical Revue de rHistoire des Religions, The article 
 was by no means a propaganda of theosophy, but an 
 account of what was known to the author from the 
 statements of the foundress and the active members 
 of the society. 
 
 Still, in spite of the sober tone of the ''report,'' 
 one could see in it a man who had been ''touched 
 to the quick," and was unconsciously almost befogged 
 by the witchcraft of " Madame " and her champions. 
 It is highly probable that, under favourable circum- 
 stances, the fog would have grown denser, and that 
 Jules Baissac's pen would have rendered no slight 
 services to the cause of the New Theosophy. But 
 
igo 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 the action of the London Society for Psychical 
 Research and Hodgson's report cooled the veteran 
 scholar down at once. 
 
 When I saw him again, he had the air of a man 
 who had been saved from a great peril. He listened 
 to my story with the greatest interest, and relished 
 Madame Blavatsky's letters in a way which con- 
 vinced me of his thorough knowledge of the Russian 
 language. 
 
 But for me the serious question was whether he 
 had the right, in his character of sworn translator, 
 to certify officially the translations from the Russian 
 documents. It appeared that he had the right, and 
 I at once obtained his kind consent. We examined 
 my translations together, phrase by phrase, word by 
 word, stop by stop. He then attested them all, by 
 his own signature, and attached the official seal, as 
 sworn interpreter, both to the translations and to 
 the Russian originals from which they had been made. 
 
 A meeting of all the effective Paris theosophists 
 was called at Madame de Morsier's. When all had 
 appeared at the muster, the reading of my account 
 and of Madame Blavatsky's letters was begun. The 
 majority of those present were already prepared for 
 what awaited them ; but none the less Helena 
 Petrovna's amazing confession, and Madame de 
 Morsier's documentary communication about another 
 matter, wherein the foundress of the Theosophical 
 Society also appeared in an unexpected light, pro- 
 duced an overwhelming effect. 
 
 The French branch of the Indian parent society, 
 founded by the Duchesse de Pomar under the title 
 of the Societe d' Orient et d' Occident, was broken up 
 
A Modern Priestess of I sis. 191 
 
 by the retirement of almost all its members, with 
 the soul of the branch and its principal secretary, 
 Madame de Morsier, at their head. The resigna- 
 tions were immediately drawn up and signed for 
 transmission to Mr. Oakley at Adyar in India. 
 
 There now appeared on our Parisian horizon a 
 personal friend of Helena Petrovna, compromised 
 and indignant. This was Gebhard/ senior, from 
 Elberfeld. Madame " had summoned him to Wiirz- 
 burg, and, one may imagine after what explanations 
 and scenes, had entrusted him with a very honour- 
 able mission : he was to persuade me to hold my 
 tongue and withdraw all my evidence, and moreover 
 to sow dissension between me and Madame de 
 Morsier, as enjoined by the rule divide et impera. 
 It was decided to act on me by means of threats, 
 while Madame de Morsier, being bewitched by me, 
 was to be turned into the way of truth by flattery. 
 
 But the fact was that our latest moves were still 
 unknown in Wurzburg, and Helena Petrovna told 
 him nothing of her confession and the subsequent 
 letter, evidently not understanding their importance. 
 
 Herr Gebhard appeared with the greatest aplomb ; 
 but when Madame de Morsier, in my presence, read 
 him my account and the translations of the letters, 
 he cut a very poor figure. He was evidently unpre- 
 pared for anything of the sort, and lost his head ; 
 lost it to such an extent that he could not utter a 
 single word, and hurried away from Paris in order 
 to think over the position in consultation and to 
 prepare himself quietly for the execution of the task 
 imposed upon him. He was prepared for it, as will 
 soon be seen, in the course of a few months. 
 
XXIV. 
 
 I WAS to experience in my own person the means to 
 which " Madame " and her intimates had recourse in 
 order to get rid of a dangerous man, to disarm him 
 and force him to silence. My excursions into the 
 region of the occult, which had led me to interest 
 myself in Madame Blavatsky, my desire to unriddle 
 this wonderful woman and to expose her to those 
 whom I regretted to see deceived by her, all this cost 
 me very dear. I was to undergo the secret theosophi- 
 cal vengeance, and am now compelled to make up 
 my mind to speak of it, because I see that without 
 setting out some facts, at all events, and their docu- 
 mentary confirmation, my story will be very imper- 
 fect, as well as my picture of Madame Blavatsky 
 and her staff. 
 
 In an attack of fury and despair Madame Blavatsky, 
 simultaneously with the despatch of the '^confession" 
 to me in Paris, wrote to Madame X in Russia to 
 say that I was an " enemy," and a dangerous enemy, 
 for I evidently knew a great deal, and had learnt 
 much of it, in all probability, from Madame Y, who, 
 having fallen out with Madame Blavatsky, had be- 
 trayed her to me. Madame X on receiving this 
 letter turned into a fury, and wrote to Madame Y, 
 who, in the character of a friend, hastened to give 
 me warning of everything from St. Petersburg. 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 For God's sake write to them " (Mesdames Bla- 
 vatsky and X) , she besought me, ' ' that I had no reason 
 to ' betray Helena to you,' to use X's expression, or 
 to murder her, as she writes herself ; for her past 
 is perfectly well known to the large majority of 
 people (several persons are named), and I don't 
 myself know to whom. You cannot imagine to 
 what they expose me, by picking me out as the 
 scapegoat, responsible for everything, a sort of tele- 
 graph wire for the transmission of all kinds of abom- 
 inations. Still the unhappy, crazy Helena is not 
 the one to do that ; she is to be pitied. But X is 
 malice and calumny personified." 
 
 Later on Madame Y informed me that they were 
 collecting over there the addresses of some close 
 connexions of mine ; for what purpose she did not 
 know. From these words I was to understand that 
 the good ladies were starting their vengeance in a 
 very simple way, by means of anonymous letters 
 addressed to my near connexions, in order, somehow 
 or other, to calumniate or estrange me, on the prin- 
 ciple " calomniez, calomniez — il en restera toujours 
 quelque chose ". 
 
 A few days after I received another short letter 
 from Madame Y ; but this time it contained nothing 
 definite, only the exclamation: "Yes! X is a hundred 
 thousand times more malicious and more guilty 
 than Helena." 
 
 From this phrase I could only conclude that the 
 quarrel between Madame Blavatsky and Madame 
 Y was, to all appearance, coming to an end. Evi- 
 dently Madame " had made up her mind that the 
 best way to influence me was through Madame Y. 
 
 13 
 
194 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 For this reason she wrote her a tender sisterly letter, 
 and convinced her that she was a thousand times 
 less guilty than Madame X ; so now the attack upon 
 me could proceed from this side as well. 
 
 I wrote to her begging her not to be uneasy, not 
 to mix herself up in the matter, and to tell me no- 
 thing of the ladies and their friends. I reminded her 
 that she had been the first to open my eyes to Helena 
 Petrovna and her Theosophical Society, and that 
 the point at issue was not Helena Petrovna's past, 
 but her present deceits. Once I had convinced my- 
 self of these deceits, I could no longer hold my 
 peace, and told out aloud all I knew. Accordingly 
 the thing was done, and I anticipated nothing fresh. 
 I was persecuting no one, I wished to think no more 
 of " Madame " and her society. If they would not 
 leave me in peace, then let them do what they would; 
 what had I to do with it ? I had done my work and 
 retired, and did not see what they wanted of me, now 
 that all was finished. 
 
 All this quarrel, diverting me from more interest- 
 ing and more useful occupations, became at last so 
 vexatious to me that I hastened into a quite different 
 atmosphere in the complete quiet of the ancient 
 Breton town of Dinan, on the sea-shore, close to 
 where there rises one of the wonders of the world, 
 the famous Mont St. Michel. My request, addressed 
 to Madame Y and her family, was apparently fulfilled; 
 none of them transmitted me any further gossip 
 about Blavatsky and Co. 
 
 But I was not permitted entirely to forget her; 
 Mr. Myers came to Dinan to meet me and to receive 
 from me various information, and I was obliged once 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 195 
 
 more to unroll all my budget before him. At last, 
 at the end of April, the attack was recommenced from 
 St. Petersburg. I received a letter from one of the 
 members of Madame Y's family, in which, from 
 great friendship to myself," I was warned that my 
 affairs were in a bad way ; the honourable Helena 
 Petrovna demanded (there follow extracts from her 
 letter) '^that I should withdraw what I had said 
 about the phenomena which I had seen, and give no 
 account of her to any one " ; if I did not fulfil this 
 demand, '^then she would not hesitate as to the 
 course she would take, as she had nothing to lose ; 
 that she would publish about me whatever she would, 
 and how she would, for she must defend herself". 
 
 Next day came a letter from Madame Y herself; 
 a wonderful letter, full of friendly anxiety on my 
 account. "Listen to my warm and sincere prayer; 
 withdraw from everything that concerns Helena. 
 Let it fall on her, if such a punishment is destined 
 for her ; but not through you — have pity on me. I 
 should be sorry that among all our good relations 
 there should come the black vision of her last 
 grievous sufferings, never mind how well-deserved 
 they may be. She has one folly; that idea of 
 virginity has stirred up all this mud. Let the dead, 
 who have nothing to lose, bury their dead. But you 
 are living. Helena is dead ; what has she to lose ? 
 She has long ago burnt her boats. I pity her for 
 the sufferings of the last years of her life, wedded 
 to her severe illness ; but you see that morally she 
 has nothing to lose. A lawsuit the more, or an ac- 
 cusing article the more, have no such alarming con- 
 sequences for her as they have for those whose future 
 
196 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 is before them. How would you like various 
 humorous journalists of London and Paris to bring 
 reports to St. Petersburg, to the delight of your 
 enemies and the damage of your future career ? I 
 hear that Myers has been w^ith you, and that the 
 affair is again kindled and spreading by your instru- 
 mentality. It is impossible to wait longer, and I tell 
 you, be on your guard, or you will bitterly repent! " 
 
 Some days after Madame Y again wrote to me 
 among other things : Yes ; you have put the fat in 
 the fire ; I hope to God you may get well out of it. 
 You were terribly wrong in thinking that Helena 
 was so defenceless that it was easy to frighten and 
 vanquish her ; you have made an enemy of her by 
 your own acts, without any need ; for she has no- 
 thing to lose and nothing to fear. I cannot and will 
 not name any one, but I hope that you must believe 
 me ; a day does not pass that you are not attacked 
 by letters and rumours reflecting on you. Withdraw 
 your evidence ; declare that you do not wish either 
 in word or deed to mix yourself up in the troubles of 
 the theosophists. I do not even know what 3/ou are 
 preparing for yourself here. If you are really start- 
 ing to come, start at once. I cannot refuse Helena 
 her wish to say good-bye to me ; I shall go and do 
 all in my power to put an end to her hostile action 
 towards you ; but concessions on your side are in- 
 dispensable. It is difficult to write everything ; we 
 must meet. I will try to put off my journey, in order 
 to have a talk with you." 
 
 At that time I had as yet no reason to doubt 
 Madame Y's sympathy for me, and I explained to 
 myself her strange prayer that I should withdraw 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 197 
 
 my evidence, solely by the fact that, incited and un- 
 settled by the letters of Madame Blavatsky and 
 Madame X, she was simply unable to take account 
 of her words. I therefore wrote to her, again repeat- 
 ing that I did not anticipate anything at all, and 
 - had entirely retired from anything to do wath " theo- 
 sophising". As for concealing w^hat I knew from 
 persons who were interested in the question, I had 
 no moral right to do so. I had in my own belief 
 done my duty, and to beg me to withdraw my evi- 
 dence, and to frighten me by disseminating all sorts 
 of gossip and calumny about me, was most unseemly. 
 I regretted that Madame Y did not appreciate the 
 substance of her request, and thought that the very 
 best thing for her would be to retire likewise from 
 the matter and to leave me in peace on all this head. 
 
 In answ^er I received a new variation on the same 
 tune : On receiving your letter of yesterday I was 
 convinced that mine which follows would not be 
 taken in a spirit of meekness, as you are satisfied 
 that you are doing nothing to Helena's detriment. 
 But how am I to act, how can I not warn you, when 
 I am continually receiving letters from Paris, from 
 Germany, from England (not from Helena, but from 
 persons unconnected with her), in which they say 
 that you, you by name, are guilty of all Helena's 
 discredit and misfortunes ? So I beg you in God's 
 name to leave X entirely on one side, and not to 
 say a word about her at any time. I know how 
 many powerful and influential backers they have, 
 who will all set upon you for the virtue and honour 
 of X. Come at once." 
 
 I was then just on the eve of my final return to 
 
igS A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 Russia. A few days later, at the end of May, in St. 
 Petersburg, I saw Madame Y just on the point of 
 starting for Elberfeld to say good-bye" to Helena 
 Petrovna Blavatsky. 
 
 I assure you," I said to her, " that Helena 
 Petrovna has not the least intention of dying, and 
 only writes to you in order that you, for the sake of 
 3^our family feelings and her illness, may give the 
 theosophists some ^ crushing ' evidence about me. 
 The fact is, you are already under her influence, 
 and at her dictation you beg me in your own. name 
 to do what is utterly impossible for me, — to take back 
 my evidence, and to proclaim myself a liar and 
 slanderer." 
 
 I am going solely in order to clear you in this 
 matter, to free you from all their lying accusations, 
 and to declare the truth," she asserted warmly. 
 
 I do not know how to thank you, but the affair 
 has reached a point at which this is an insoluble 
 problem.. Helena Petrovna does not want the truth 
 at all, especially in present circumstances ; she will 
 not thank you for the truth, and you will appear 
 before her only as an ingrate. You will be brought 
 into an inextricable position, having on one side the 
 truth and the impossibility of calumniating me ; on 
 the other Helena Petrovna, her objects, her sickness, 
 and family feeling. The matter is very serious, and 
 I advise you to take pity on yourself and not to go." 
 
 But it was evident that she was much interested 
 in this foreign journey, especially as she wished to 
 give a treat to one of her daughters, whom Madame 
 Blavatsky with great foresight had also invited to 
 the hospitable house of Gebhard. 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 199 
 
 I know that I am not going to any happiness/' 
 exclaimed Madame Y. But I cannot help going, 
 for it is only by a personal interview with Helena that 
 it is possible to settle this matter ; you yourself will 
 thank me ; I shall show you my friendship in act. 
 But for God's sake be more prudent. You are 
 always soaring somewhere in the sky, and will not 
 understand realities ; I am much older than you, 
 and have seen all sorts of things in my time ; believe 
 me that you are bringing yourself into a terrible 
 position, and I tremble for you." 
 
 Pardon me," I objected, one would think I had 
 been guilty of some crime or disgraceful conduct, for 
 which I must tremble and quake before the revenge 
 of Madame Blavatsky and X." 
 
 " Oh dear, oh dear ! " — Madame Y clasped her hands 
 — ''on what planet do you live? Can't you under- 
 stand that it is not in the least necessary to be a 
 criminal or a scapegrace to have your reputation 
 damaged and all your life poisoned ? ' The good 
 report lies down, the bad one runs ! ' the saying is 
 too true. They have already organised a whole 
 campaign against you over there. Helena has 
 friends, and X has a great many — and highly re- 
 spected ones. And you may be sure that all these 
 respectable people, though knowing nothing, will, 
 first on the word of Helena and X, and then on one 
 another's word, begin to repeat the most revolting 
 scandal about you, and to pervert and distort the 
 facts of your personal intimate life. And this alone 
 will damage your future. You see, nobody will say 
 anything to your face, and you will suspect nothing ; 
 but a little time will pass, and they will be covering 
 
200 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 you with mud, bespattering you with hog-wash, and 
 no one will stand up for you, because every one is 
 more prone to believe ill than good, and any fact, by 
 care, can be set in whatever light is desired. One 
 single malignant, unprincipled and guilty slanderer 
 such as X is quite enough to poison your life for ever. 
 The more unprincipled the slanderer, the more surely 
 the slander gains its end. The worst of it is that 
 you will not know anything, and will struggle like a 
 lish on ice, not understanding why people are turning 
 their backs on you, and, far from taking your part 
 in the difficulties of life, actually doing you harm. 
 If you had been a solitary man, and well provided 
 for, you could have said to yourself, ' It is all the 
 same,' and there would have been an end of it. 
 But as it is you are not such, you cannot do without 
 other people. Can it be that all these ABC truths 
 are unknown to you ? " 
 
 Unhappily they are not," I answered, and you 
 have succeeded in thoroughly disturbing and dis- 
 tressing me. Yes, it may certainly be that all these 
 terrors really await me. But what can I do ? In 
 an unlucky moment I came into collision with your 
 Helena Petrovna ; but once this misfortune came 
 upon me, all the rest has followed inevitably, step 
 by step.'' 
 
 Why did you not fly from this fatal woman in 
 Paris in 1884, when I warned you ? Did I not tell 
 you that with her you could only come to trouble ? " 
 Madame Y interrupted. 
 
 Just so; but I could not rest on the assurance 
 of your words ; she herself, her society, the whole 
 movement started by her, the character of the move" 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 20I 
 
 ment itself, impelled me to convince myself, to as- 
 certain everything personally. It is only now that 
 I know, when I have convinced myself of everything 
 with my own eyes and ears, — it is only now that, 
 having learnt all about the phenomenon, I can deal 
 with it calmly and openly." 
 
 I do not understand you, and never shall," said 
 Madame Y with irritation ; you might have found 
 out and held your tongue instead of falling into the 
 snare. However, show me Helena's letters which 
 compromise her so deeply ; I must read them myself 
 to see what the matter is, and to have the right to 
 say that I have seen them myself, with my own 
 eyes." 
 
 I handed her the letters with which the reader is 
 already acquainted. She read them and sat all 
 livid. 
 
 Why, she is out of her mind ! " she exclaimed at 
 last ; " please give me these letters to take away ; 
 I will keep them as the apple of my eye, and return 
 them to you when I come back from Elberfeld." 
 
 ^'What you ask is entirely impossible," I said; 
 
 these letters must remain with me. You have 
 seen them and read them, you know that they are 
 in her own hand. If there is any need of the trans- 
 lation which was made by me in Paris and was 
 certified and witnessed by Baissac, the sworn inter- 
 preter of the Paris Court of Appeal, I have left it with 
 Madame de Morsier, as well as copies of the originals. 
 The matter is all in order, and any one can compare 
 the letters and the translation as much as he will." 
 
 " What then am I to take with me ? What is 
 your last word ? Can it be that, now you see how 
 
202 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 much harm they can do you, you will not consent 
 to any sort of concession by which I may be able to 
 disarm them ? Beware and do be prudent even 
 now." 
 
 This is my last word. I certainly do not mean 
 to withdraw my evidence, which I have written out 
 and left with Madame de Morsier. As for Helena 
 Petrovna's past, what was told me in the main by 
 yourself, and told me not as a secret but as a matter 
 of general knowledge, all this I have communicated 
 to my intimate circle in Paris. I was bound to do 
 this, in consideration of the fancied ' virginity,' on 
 which Madame Blavatsky based her position in the 
 Theosophical Society. But we determined there 
 that if it came to a wider dissemination of the re- 
 velations which have been made, we would leave on 
 one side her past as far as she herself has left it on one 
 side in her 'confession'. In any case she is accused, 
 and will be accused, not for her past, but for her 
 theosophical deceptions. I shall henceforth stand 
 entirely on one side." 
 
 But do you mean to write and publish against 
 her, here in Russia? " interrupted Madame Y. 
 
 " In Russia very little is known about the Theo- 
 sophical Society and its foundress, and the very best 
 thing is not to talk about it at all. I promise you 
 that so long as there does not appear in the Russian 
 press any false information about the Theosophical 
 Society and Helena Petrovna, I shall say nothing. 
 If people begin to talk about all this, and to talk 
 falsely, I shall consider it my plain duty to assert 
 the truth in print, and to say what I know. That 
 is my last word." 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 203 
 
 Madame Y remained greatly dissatisfied with my 
 obstinacy, and left for Elberfeld. 
 
 Ten days later there was fired at me a double shot, 
 aimed by the hand of Helena Petrovna ; in other 
 words, two letters inspired by her, and passed, in all 
 
 , probability, through her censorship. I could not but 
 be convinced, from these two letters, that the travel- 
 lers, as was easy to foresee, had entirely fallen into 
 Madame's " toils, and were doing their very best to 
 sit on two stools at once. 
 
 Madame Y begged me, among other things, to 
 send the attested copy of the confession," etc., and 
 at the same time declared that she was going to 
 Paris to compare the letters. Later on again she 
 tried to persuade me — calling on God to witness the 
 
 ' sincerity of her intentions — to make the concessions 
 asked of me while it was yet possible to stop the 
 scandal without publicity". Do not go to extremi- 
 ties, do not drive her (Madame Blavatsky) into the 
 law courts, and oblige her to summon you, Madame 
 de Morsier, and others on a charge of defamation. 
 She has plenty of devoted and, what is more, very 
 rich friends, who will not be ruined by a lawsuit, 
 and are begging her to begin one. She has no fear 
 of publicity. Letters from Paris have finally con- 
 vinced me that the Parisians are only awaiting an 
 opportunity for bringing you into court eit diffama- 
 tion. And if it comes to this, shall you feel better 
 for a scandal in the papers ? For God's sake do not 
 affront me ; don't think that I am terrorising you. 
 I am not terrorising, I am pitying you. I am deeply 
 sorry for you, and wish you well." 
 
 As Madame Y knew perfectly well, from my own 
 
204 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 words, that all the documents were in Paris, with 
 Madame de Morsier, and as she was going there, it 
 was no use for me to send her the copies. As the 
 whole of her " terrorism " was a falsehood, and one 
 besides which I had already experienced, I was justi- 
 fied in sending no answer to her letter. I could 
 easily imagine how Madame " was boiling over, and 
 taking refuge in her favourite device, with which the 
 reader is already acquainted, the menace of a legal 
 action set on foot by the aid of rich and influential 
 friends. 
 
 Her friends, people that is who in one way or 
 another were compromised in various theosophical " 
 abominations and deceptions, might certainly well 
 be anxious to humiliate their detectors ; they had 
 even begun to try already, as the reader may easily 
 conceive. To do this it is likely enough that they 
 were prepared to sacrifice no small amount of money. 
 But still neither the London Society for PvSychical 
 Research, nor I, nor Madame de Morsier had any 
 cause for uneasiness ; it was impossible to cite all of 
 us, her accusers, without at the same time finally 
 ruining Madame Blavatsky and her society. The 
 theosophists could hurt us only by secret, underground 
 means, by calumnies unconnected with phenomena 
 and Mahatmas. As for the phrase about ''letters 
 from Paris convincingly showing that the Parisians 
 are only awaiting," etc., this was the fault of a very 
 absurd fancy which Madame Y had got into her 
 head, for there was positively on one who could 
 write such letters then, with the exception of * * * * 
 and the sick fanatic D * * *. 
 
 Yes, I clearly imagined all the scene at Elberfeld, 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 205 
 
 all the faits et gestes of the Gebhards, of Madame 
 Blavatsky and their guests ; but still my clairvoy- 
 ance was very imperfect. Things of more interest 
 were going on there, the occult centre whereof was 
 formed by my unfortunate self. 
 
 Helena Petrovna assured Gebhard that, in view 
 of my final departure from Paris for Russia (of 
 which she knew from Madame Y), now was the favour- 
 able moment for setting Madame de Morsier against 
 me, and thus turning this lady, so useful, and indeed 
 indispensable, to the theosophical cause, and her 
 numerous friends into the way of truth. 
 
 Gebhard, incited by " Madame," wrote on 5th May, 
 1886, a circumstantial letter to Madame de Morsier. 
 He explained why it was that, after reading my 
 documents in her house in Paris, he had vanished, 
 and from that time had given no sign of existence. 
 This was all caused by domestic troubles in which 
 he had been absorbed, and not at all because he 
 admitted Madame Blavatsky's guilt. He then as- 
 serted that my translation was inaccurate and that 
 Madame Blavatsky loudly maintained this. He 
 further, as though by the way, and very clumsily, 
 maligned me, attacking my private life on Madame 
 Blavatsky's authority, and perverting facts till they 
 were unrecognisable ; he even hinted very transpar- 
 ently that I had been telling about her, Madame de 
 Morsier, my true and honoured friend, tales of the 
 most unseemly sort, tales the scandalous dissemina- 
 tion of which no honourable woman could pardon. 
 
 As Madame de Morsier knew that in translations 
 of mine attested by her old friend Baissac there could 
 be no blunders, and that they were made from genuine 
 
206 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 and not from spurious originals ; as the calumny 
 with regard to my private life was before her eyes, 
 and as no one could by any possibility prove to her 
 that I was capable of telling unseemly stories about 
 her, this amiable epistle produced no effect. 
 
 At last they made up their minds that the best 
 thing was to give it out that I was insane ! 
 
 And therefore the demand was made upon me, 
 and Madame de Morsier was charged to com- 
 municate it to me, that I should immediately send 
 to Elberfeld a formal letter in which I should de- 
 clare that all my revelations about " Madame " were 
 falsehood and calumnies on my part against her, and 
 that I withdrew them all ! If I did not comply with 
 this order, such a public scandal would in one way or 
 another be immediately set going as would destroy 
 me and my family. 
 
 In conclusion Gebhard advised Madame de Mor- 
 sier not to show any one the ''documents in the 
 Blavatsky affair" {le dossier Blavatsky), as her 
 principal accuser was a madman. Madame de 
 Morsier replied to Gebhard, refusing to listen to 
 these calumnies, and writing in a tone which 
 did not invite reply. But H. P. Blavatsky could 
 not rest, and the obedient Gebhard again sat down 
 at his desk and wrote. Moreover he considered 
 himself the aggrieved and injured party; he was 
 excited, and wanted to sting and say some caustic 
 things ; so one can pardon alike the notable foolish- 
 ness of his letter and its blunders in French grammar. 
 
 It need not be said that Gebhard's rubbish pro- 
 duced no reply from Madame de Morsier. Nor 
 could he fulfil his intention of keeping her posted up 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 207 
 
 in the course of events, as there was simply no 
 course of events at all. Helena Petrovna and Co. 
 were convinced that their game was up, that 
 Madame de Morsier was immovable, and that they 
 could not succeed in frightening either her or me. 
 _ Some months afterwards I learnt that Gebhard 
 himself was disenchanted of H. P. Blavatsky. This, 
 at least, is what he wrote to Madame de Morsier, on 
 the occasion of a certain libel which was put in print 
 by Madame Blavatsky: ''La seule chose qui me 
 surprend, c'est que connaissant si intimement le 
 caractaire tartare ou kalmouk de H. P. B. vous 
 puissiez encore etre etonne de n'importe ce qu'elle 
 ecrive He proves that it is not worth while on 
 this occasion to " relever vivement des diffamations 
 qui ne meritent pas I'honneur dune reponse ". 
 Further on he says, Je blame fortement la maniere 
 peu comme il faut de H. P. B." and again repeats 
 that the " fausse accusation" on Madame Blavat- 
 sky's part does not deserve any attention. And is 
 not this a complete disenchantment ? especially 
 when it is remembered that not so long before, this 
 very Gebhard was aiding Madame Blavatsky not 
 only with his pen and his advice, but with pecuniary 
 means as well. The originals of these curious 
 letters, from which I have given extracts, were 
 placed entirely at my disposition by Madame de 
 Morsier. 
 
 This was the last news I received of Madame 
 Blavatsky. I have lived in St. Petersburg, and from 
 that day to this it is only by report that I have heard 
 anything about the Theosophical Society. With 
 Madame Y, since her battles at Elberfeld for the 
 
2o8 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 truth and for me," I have of course broken off all 
 relations. 
 
 From time to time it has been my fate to discover 
 traces of the ''occult theosophical vengeance" w^hich 
 has not left me at peace. I have lighted upon 
 wonderful calumnies and slanders, and on tracing 
 them to their sources I have almost always found 
 the trail either of Madame X or of Madame Y or of 
 some other of Madame Blavatsky's friends. What 
 are the actual dimensions of the damage done me 
 by this vengeance, I do not know. 
 
XXV. 
 
 With the aid of herself and of her nearest friends, I 
 have sketched the portrait of H. P. Blavatsky. I 
 have been obhged, w^illy-nilly, to dw^ell on its most 
 striking Hnes and to uncover the many moral ulcers 
 of this phenomenal woman. If I intended to follow 
 hour by hour my whole acquaintance with her, and 
 to reproduce all her words and acts, all the small 
 yet always more or less characteristic facts of which 
 I was a witness, I should have to write a huge 
 book. I have been obliged to confine myself to 
 matters which in one way or another were pro- 
 minent. 
 
 I am now mentally reviewing everything, in all 
 the minutest details, in order to find something 
 which may justify her adorers' and supporters' 
 marvellous tales about her ; something which might 
 have been to me, when all was said and done, a 
 proof of the reality of her higher knowledge, in the 
 way of '^phenomena". And I can find nothing 
 whatever of the sort. And how anxious she was 
 all the time to startle me with something ! This 
 was a right calculation on her part. 
 
 There is, it is true, one thing which I cannot 
 explain : how she produced and stopped at will the 
 various raps which were heard at a great distance 
 
2IO 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 all round ^ her, and also the strange sounds like the 
 ticking of a small electrical machine, of which I 
 have spoken in their proper place. But with this 
 manifestation is exhausted everything in her phe- 
 nomena which I am unable to explain. I am 
 acquainted with the pretty piece of silver which 
 played so important a part with its melodious notes, 
 whereby the '^master'' informed his ''elect" of his 
 presence. 
 
 That Madame's" soft hands, with their supple 
 pointed fingers, were very clever in the execution of 
 rapid movements, I have many times perceived. She 
 had probably taken lessons in conjuring from some 
 '' professor of white magic/' perhaps from the very 
 conjurer whose assistant Babula had been, before he 
 entered her service, helped her to dupe the public, 
 and made fun of the '' nice muslin Mahatmas 
 
 It is easy to explain by quickness of movement 
 and sleight of hand the '' phenomenon of the portrait 
 in the locket," described in chapter vi. of this 
 narrative. She simply changed under my very eyes 
 one locket for another, an exact duplicate of the first, 
 and so rapidly that I did not remark it. But do not 
 professional conjurers perform marvels compared to 
 which all the marvels and all the ''phenomena" of 
 "Madame" are nothing? Yet this does not give 
 them any right to proclaim their " high initiation " 
 and their "uncommon psychical powers". 
 
 My testimony is this : that not only before me, 
 but, to judge from the writings of Sinnett, Madame 
 Jelihovsky, and her other panegyrists, before whom 
 
 ^ C/. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, July, 1893. 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 211 
 
 you will, H. P. Blavatsky produced nothing, except 
 the raps, which can be called a physical phenomenon, 
 and which it is not possible to explain by conjuring 
 and by the most ordinary simple deception. In the 
 investigation of the London Society for Psychical 
 Research, in Hodgson's report, examples are adduced 
 of prominent " marvels " of Madame's," as published 
 by Sinnett ; and all these marvels are analysed and 
 explained in the most plain and satisfactory manner. 
 
 When she was able to produce phenomena her- 
 self, by her own means, she used to catch the 
 favourable moment, and act. When she could not 
 manage alone, she used to call to her assistance 
 Babula, Olcott, or some other indispensable person 
 among the number of her confederates. In chapters 
 X. and xi. I have related how two phenomena were 
 produced at Elberfeld by Olcott's aid ; for the 
 second of these phenomena, the Mahatma's letter 
 received by Miss A by the ''astral route," there was 
 needed also the participation of the innocent little 
 English boy. 
 
 But perhaps she was stronger in her " psychical " 
 phenomena, in the manifestation of her exceptional 
 spiritual powers? In this region the marvels related 
 of her by her sister and her friends are still more 
 astounding. By looking at a man she could read 
 his thoughts, she could see events that were taking 
 place at a great distance, and foretold the future 
 with astonishing clearness. 
 
 But I must again bear witness that during all the 
 time of my acquaintance and my relations with her 
 I was never able to convince myself of anything of 
 the sort. It has been my lot in the course of my 
 
212 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 life more than once to meet people who surprised 
 me by their subtle insight, temporary or perma- 
 nent. I know cases, which for me are fully proved, 
 of presentiments fulfilled, presentiments not misty 
 or vague, but clearly and exactly formulated. Gener- 
 ally speaking I know that in the complicated inner 
 world of man, in the secrets of his soul, slumbering 
 in the midst of material phenomena, there are 
 hidden the most varied powers ; and that at times, 
 owing to causes which it is not easy to submit to 
 analysis, these powers reveal themselves in fugitive 
 but real and sensible manifestations. 
 
 Knowing this, I should of course not have been in 
 the least surprised if I had found something of the 
 sort in H. P. Blavatsky. Up to the last days of 
 our acquaintance, though I believed from the first, 
 and was afterwards confirmed by her in the belief, 
 that she was tricking and deceiving, I still expected 
 some sort of evidence of her subtle insight. On 
 her side, as the reader must have perceived from 
 my narrative and its confirmatory documents, heaven 
 knows what she would not have given to be able to 
 surprise me and call my attention to anything of 
 interest. 
 
 But I saw nothing with her, nothing. When she 
 was preparing any " phenomenon," I knew each time 
 just what was to happen, and saw how she directed 
 the conversation straight to the subject fixed upon. 
 For an example it is only necessary to recall the 
 scene culminating in Bavaji's Russian writing, his 
 " Blessed are they that lie 
 
 She not unfrequently asserted, now closing her eyes, 
 now wildly rolling them, that she was seeing scenes 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 213 
 
 passing at such or such a place. In these cases, 
 when I succeeded in testing her clairvoyance, it 
 invariably turned out that absolutely nothing of what 
 she professed to see had in reahty occurred. She 
 did not once divine, even ever so roughly. 
 
 Before my departure from Wiirzburg she made me, 
 as I have related in chapter xx., a whole series of 
 very detailed, definite predictions, which were to be 
 fulfilled in a very short space of time. My incredulity 
 as to the fulfilment of these predictions could not, I 
 imagine, alter the commands of Fate, as revealed by 
 the ''master"; and yet not a single prediction, how- 
 ever trifling, actually came to pass. Even professional 
 fortune-tellers, who ask you how much fortune you 
 want told, one ruble's worth or three, can foresee 
 more successfully than this. 
 
 And where, in fine, are there any facts, founded on 
 any sort of adequate evidence, to prove her clairvoy- 
 ance, or, as it is called in theosophical language, her 
 " reading in the astral light " ? In the various truths 
 about H. P. Blavatsky " it is, as the reader alread}^ 
 knows, by no means easy to find them out. 
 
 Let us take one such case at random. Madame 
 Jelihovsky {Russkoe Obozrenie, December, i8gi, p. 570) 
 writes : " Helena Petrovna often forewarned us from 
 great distances of the death of people living with us 
 in Russia. The last instance of the sort happened 
 in the spring of 1886. We were then living at 
 Peterhof, where we received a letter written from 
 Ostend, in which she informed us of the death of 
 A. M. Boutleroff before the news appeared in our 
 papers. Helena Petrovna was very fond of Professor 
 Boutleroff, and was in constant correspondence with him!' 
 
214 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 In the autumn of 1885, on my return to St. Peters- 
 burg from abroad, I met A. M. Boutleroff, and had a 
 long conversation with him about Madame Blavatsky. 
 He questioned me about her with great interest, and 
 told me what he had heard of her from others ; 
 generally speaking, it was quite impossible to suppose 
 from his words that he had any personal knowledge 
 of her whatever. Not only if he had been in constant 
 correspondence with her, but if he had even received 
 two or three letters from her, the nature of our con- 
 versation was such that he could not have failed to 
 tell me of it. 
 
 Still, it is possible that I may be mistaken. Then 
 see here : A. M. Boutleroff's closest friend and con- 
 nexion (the first cousin of his wife) A. N. Aksakoff, 
 who was in constant relations with him and went 
 through his papers after his death, allows me to 
 state as a fact that A. M. Boutleroff was not personally 
 acquainted with H, P. Blavatsky and was never in 
 correspondence with her in any way. 
 
 One part therefore of Madame Jelihovsky's story 
 proves to be a fiction. The rest does not satisfy the 
 most elementary requirement of a statement of this 
 sort ; the day of the month is not stated on which 
 Madame Blavatsky's letter from Ostend was written 
 and posted. If it were possible to ascertain exactly 
 the moment of the posting of the letter, it would in 
 all probability appear that Madame " had heard of 
 Boutleroff's death from some telegram which she had 
 just received, and that she wrote in her letter, with 
 the hand which was always ready for such phrases : 
 
 He is dead, I know it ; I have seen him ". 
 
 All the cases of the same sort which are to be 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 215 
 
 found in the neo-theosophical " literature about 
 Madame Blavatsky are neither more trustworthy nor 
 more convincing than this. 
 
 We have next to touch on the question of the 
 ''master," and the famous " Mahatmas ". There 
 have been current among the Hindus from antiquity, 
 apart from any '' Theosophical Society," legends and 
 tales of the ''great spirits" (such is the meaning of 
 the word " Mahatma," or rather " Maha-atma "), 
 sages who live in the mountains, in the inaccessible 
 depths of Thibet, and possess an unusual knowledge 
 of the hidden secrets of Nature. 
 
 We will now suppose, if only by way of a reductio 
 ad absurdum, that there is not only some portion of 
 truth contained in these legends and tales, but that 
 the whole, positively the whole, is the actual truth. 
 We will forget also what we know about Hodgson's 
 report, about Madame Blavatsky's letters to the Cou- 
 lombs, about Babula's " muslin " revelations, about 
 Netherclift the expert, about Madame Blavatsky's 
 Wiirzburg admissions, her proposal to " compose 
 Koot Hoomi's Russian letters," about her confession, 
 the Chinese paper and envelopes, etc. We will im- 
 agine a picture such as that in which the theoso- 
 phists believe ; Madame Blavatsky in one way or 
 another enters into communication with the Mahat- 
 mas, and convinces herself, as she afterwards narrates 
 in her Caves and Jungles of Hindostan, that the 
 "brethren of Thibet" enjoy the most exalted know- 
 ledge. For them space and time are but an empty 
 sound ; they can, though not without a considerable 
 expenditure of vital force, forsake their bodies, and 
 in their more or less visible and tangible astral form 
 
2i6 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 appear in the twinkling of an eye wherever they 
 will. They can, again not without expenditure of 
 vital force, transmit their letters so as to traverse 
 any distance with the speed of thought, to pass 
 through material obstacles, and to fall on your head 
 or to be written by way of postscript (as with the 
 lines to myself added by Koot Hoomi to Madame 
 Blavatsky's note) at the end of ordinary human 
 letters, lying quietly at the bottom of the post-bag 
 and travelling by railway. All this the Mahatmas 
 can do. They initiate Helena Petrovna, thanks to 
 her ''virginity," to the degree of ''adept of the 
 second order," and instruct her to establish the Theo- 
 sophical Society for the propagation of truth on this 
 earthly ball. 
 
 The " blockhead Olcott, old cat," to use Madame 
 Blavatsky's words, however bete (the opinion of him 
 expressed to me in writing by the Mahatma Koot 
 Hoomi), is under Helena Petrovna's protection de- 
 clared president, and he is presented for a token 
 with an " astral turban," which he is authorised to 
 show to everybody as a sign of his dignity and his 
 acquaintance with the Mahatmas. Mahatma Koot 
 Hoomi undertakes the literary department, and enters 
 into a friendly correspondence, first with Sinnett (see 
 the Koot Hoomi letters in The Occult World) and 
 afterwards with other theosophists, and even with 
 sceptical and suspicious folk like myself. Mahatma 
 Morya, with a request that he may be called simply 
 " M," undertakes the part of the " master" of Helena 
 Petrovna, and binds himself to show himself to her 
 constantly from Thibet, to appear daily to Countess 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 217 
 
 Wachtmeister, to Mary F. and the rest, and also to 
 ring the " silver bell 
 
 Madame Blavatsky and Olcott do what they can. 
 Koot Hoomi frequently writes ver}^ interesting letters, 
 warmly and ably expressed, and is only once detected 
 in flagrant plagiarism, wherein he very foolishly and 
 - awkwardly attempts to justify himself (see the be- 
 ginning of the report of the London Society for 
 Psychical Research). But Mahatma M., a ''severe" 
 master as H. P. B. assures us, positively ruins the 
 whole business. 
 
 ''Excuse me," I said more than once to Helena 
 Petrovna, " you are thoroughly compromising your 
 master. This mighty sage, having drunk his cup of 
 milk — his daily portion of nutriment — lies down in the 
 depth of Thibet, so to speak on the very threshold 
 of Nirvana. His marvellous intellect is directing 
 the fate of the world. Suddenly you call to him 
 from here, 'Ting-ting'. He immediately effects an 
 ' expenditure of vital force/ slips out of his coarsely 
 material body, leaves that body in Thibet to digest 
 its cup of milk, dons his astral form, and in the 
 twinkling of an eye he is suddenly before you. Ting- 
 ting. 'What are your commands, upazika (mother)?' 
 ' Oh, look here, my good man, write a letter to Miss 
 A., and drop it on her head in an hour.' ' All right.' 
 'And look here, my good man, write, "Certainly I 
 was there ; but who can open the eyes of those 
 who will not see ?" and slip this note into Olcott's 
 pocket.' 'All right.' 'And look here, my good man, 
 appear to Mary F.' ' All right.' Is all this possible ? 
 Why, it turns out that he is not your 'master' 
 after all, but a footman who runs your errands." 
 
2l8 
 
 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 Oh, how angry she used to get with me for such 
 speeches ! How she used to glare, her great eyes 
 the colour of pale turquoise ! 
 
 And all the time not one, positively not one even 
 of the apparently most sensible theosophists was 
 disturbed by this pitiful part played by the great 
 mysterious teacher, the master " who availed to 
 snatch Helena Petrovna from death. 
 
 But let us leave out of sight these private 
 domestic affairs. Let us regard our upazika as 
 really the victim of the missionaries, of Hodgson, 
 Myers and myself, of Madame de Morsier, etc., in 
 fact of every one who perceived and revealed her 
 impostures. Let us suppose that we are all either 
 erring or unprincipled accusers. How came it that 
 the Mahatmas, those holy infallible sages," 
 allowed their elect " to suffer innocently? 'It 
 only depended on them that the erring should be 
 brought into the way of truth, and the unprincipled 
 covered with shame. Meanwhile Koot Hoomi 
 turned out a convicted plagiarist, and the ''master" 
 a muslin doll, although Mashka F. saw him every 
 day. 
 
 But the ''elect" is an impostor, convicted of the 
 most various deceits ; she is brought to despair and 
 writes her " confession," and then sets about her 
 vengeance. The "holy and infallible" Mahatmas 
 are holding aloof as though they had nothing to do 
 with the business. They see the abominable filth 
 and calumny which the upazika and her friends, 
 under cover of their name, are brewing in the 
 witches' caldron for their enemies. The theo- 
 sophists see it too, and help their H. P. B. to 
 
A Modern Priestess of I sis. ^ .219 
 
 brew the filth and calumny, dreaming of Nir- 
 vana. 
 
 " Perhaps there may really be some sort of holy 
 and sage Mahatmas in Thibet, only it is to be 
 doubted if they could have anything to do with 
 Madame Blavatsky and remain holy and sage ; " 
 
 - this is what the honest members of the Theosophical 
 Society are bound to say. And that H. P. B. had 
 fallen into the hands of some secret politico-religious 
 Indian brotherhood, that she adopted Buddhism in 
 this brotherhood, and undertook the mission of 
 spreading it in regions where Christianity had fallen 
 and there was felt the yearning for some faith, 
 whatever it might be — this, perhaps, is much nearer 
 the truth than appears at first sight. At least it 
 was my lot to catch a glimpse of something of the 
 sort in hints which forced themselves from H. P. 
 Blavatsky. At some moments she positively pro- 
 duced the impression of a person enslaved and 
 bound by something or other. 
 
 \ At these moments she was very piteous and un- 
 I happy. I shall never forget how one day she 
 j exclaimed : I would gladly return, I would gladly 
 be Russian, Christian, orthodox. I yearn for it. 
 But there is no returning ; I am in chains ; I am not 
 my own." And in half an hour her maunderings 
 
 • about the " master" had begun again. 
 
 As this narrative has been in course of publication 
 in the Russky Vyestnik, I have heard from various 
 persons criticisms such as this : " Why do you say 
 that you pitied and still pity this terrible woman ? 
 She is so guilty, so repulsive — and you 3^ourself 
 prove it— that she is quite incapable of evoking any 
 
220 
 
 A Modem Priestess of Isis. 
 
 feeling of pity, especially in a man who was person- 
 ally acquainted with all her impositions, her com- 
 plete immorality, her malice and slanders. ' 
 
 I reply that I was not only a spectator of her 
 repulsive actions, but experienced in my own 
 person her vile revenge ; and yet, when I recall 
 certain moments of my conversations with her, I 
 cannot think of her without pity. I never allowed 
 this feeling to grow too strong, I always restrained 
 it, and inflexibly followed my line of action ; I observed, 
 tracked and caught her. When the time came, I 
 calmly contributed everything in my power to her 
 unmasking, I overlooked nothing, I betrayed no 
 weakness in regard to this astounding impostor. 
 Yet my pity for her still remained. Now that she is 
 no more, I again, and still without weakness, am 
 bringing into the light of day my narrative of her 
 vile actions. Yet the pity still remains. 
 
 And this pity is no sign of any magnanimity on 
 my part. It is due to Helena Petrovna herself, and 
 not to me. In her quiet and good moments she was 
 eminently sympathetic. There was within her a 
 certain fascination, a kind of magnetism, which 
 attracted to her with an irresistible force. 
 
 Sympathy ! it is a quality which you cannot 
 translate into words ; yet all men and women, old 
 and young, on whom those great strange eyes had 
 looked graciously, experienced the same thing. I 
 know, for instance, one young woman, not impulsive 
 and not in the least sentimental, who immediately 
 understood Madame Blavatsky by instinct. Having 
 come into contact^ with this lady, who was quite 
 young at the time, simple and modest, the famous 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 221 
 
 Madame," whose hands and feet used to be kissed 
 by many a blue-stocking, found herself, to her great 
 surprise, unriddled and paralysed. Still this young 
 lady said, and says : Madame Blavatsky is a terrible 
 criminal ; but why did she often produce such an 
 impression that one wanted to weep over her for 
 intolerable pity ? " 
 
 The secret of this wonderful sympathy in the 
 modern priestess of Isis" must be sought in her 
 original, peculiar, and fiery talent, and in her stormy 
 raging energy. Such talent and energy are an 
 elemental force with which it is not easy to wrestle. 
 This force, combined with a mental distortion, with 
 a certain animal ignoring " in life" of the difference 
 between right and wrong, produced one of the most 
 interesting and characteristic phenomena of the end 
 of the nineteenth century, the "Theosophical Society". 
 
XXVI. 
 
 Although the Theosophical Society was founded at 
 a comparatively recent date, in 1875, yet its real ori- 
 gin has hitherto been lost in the darkness of mystery 
 and obscurity. Its founders, Madame Blavatsky and 
 Olcott, as well as its first adherents, did all in their 
 power to raise as much fog as possible, in the thick 
 folds of which it was easy to get stifled, but impossible 
 to find the real cradle of the interesting infant which 
 was the fruit of the spiritual union of the Russian 
 '^wanderer" and the American ^'colonel". 
 
 One thing only was certain : that this interesting 
 infant saw the light in America, at New York, and 
 that circumstance put it in the power of those who 
 were responsible for its remarkable existence to 
 swathe its birth in the swaddhng clothes of secrecy. 
 On American soil it is not difficult to invent and to 
 carry out anything ; it costs nothing to spread the 
 most fabulous rumours, orally and in print, and to 
 find a multitude of people ready to believe them 
 without any sort of consideration. 
 
 According to the legends set on foot by the theo- 
 sophists " of the first call," H. P. Blavatsky had 
 from her youth up enjoyed the particular protection 
 of the ''Thibetan brethren," who took her under their 
 care and guided every step of her life in preparation 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 223 
 
 for the fulfilment of a lofty mission of world-wide 
 importance. 
 
 When the hour was ripe for revealing the highest 
 truths to mankind, bemired in errors of every sort, 
 Madame Blavatsky was called to India, and there, 
 on her reception into Buddhism, received a high 
 initiation, and was then sent to America. Here she 
 was to unite with another chosen, but far less worthy, 
 vessel, with Olcott, and with him to found the Theo- 
 sophical Society. Olcott formed, so to speak, the 
 body, and Madame Blavatsky the soul, of the insti- 
 tution. The society was guaranteed the constant 
 help of the adepts of Thibet, and two of them, Koot 
 Hoomi and Morya, undertook to inspire Madame 
 Blavatsky, and to enter into communication with 
 those theosophists who were worthy of so high an 
 honour. 
 
 Such, in general outline, is the essence of the 
 legend. On the real history it is in my power to 
 throw a considerable light, thanks to some autograph 
 letters of H. P. Blavatsky, referring particularly to 
 the very interesting period from the end of 1874 
 1879. My readers already know what Madame 
 Blavatsky's letters are like, and how they are to be 
 dealt with. In the present instance, as will be seen, 
 her writings are first-class documentary evidence ; 
 and it is easy for any one to see at once, without the 
 aid of commentaries, what in them cannot be true 
 and what cannot be false. 
 
 Eighteen hundred and seventy-three was the year 
 of a decisive transformation in Helena Petrovna's 
 life. She had now reached her forty-second year; 
 with vanished youth there vanished all for which 
 
224 
 
 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 she had hitherto Hved. If she had been a woman 
 Hke the rest she would have gone to ruin and re- 
 turned to the void, or dragged on a miserable exist- 
 ence. But there was in her a force of energy and 
 ability which was now, at the very moment when 
 youth with all its storms had passed, to develop 
 widely and freely. 
 
 The storm of life had stranded Helena Petrovna 
 in America, and there she found herself alone, with- 
 out friends or protectors, without settled means of 
 livelihood, and without the gifts she had once pos- 
 sessed for making others interested in her. She did 
 not lose her head; she looked about her and kept her 
 ears open, and decided to try her strength in the 
 character of a spiritist writer. She surrounded her- 
 self with mystery and raps, made acquaintance with 
 the editors of two or three papers, and told interest- 
 ing stories about her varied travels. 
 
 Gradually she became known to the American 
 spiritists as a warm adherent of their doctrine, and 
 as herself possessed of remarkable medianic powers. 
 At last she left New York, for the farm of the Eddy 
 brothers in Vermont, mediums who were at that 
 time making a great stir. Here she got to know 
 Colonel Olcott, who had come as a correspondent 
 charged to inquire into the marvels wrought by the 
 brothers Eddy. 
 
 She evidently thought that the energetic and at 
 the same time remarkably flexible colonel would 
 make an excellent and useful assistant, and she 
 soon made friends with him. He immediately 
 rendered her a great service ; in his letters to his 
 paper he wrote reams of wonderful stories about her, 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 225 
 
 ' and so helped her as a writer. The idea occurred 
 to her that it would be well if she did not confine 
 herself to writing English in the American papers, 
 but endeavoured to do the like work for her own 
 distant land, by translations of her articles and other 
 interesting matter. 
 
 The great point was how to get all this to Russia, 
 and through whose agency to press for publication. 
 She made the acquaintance of Andrew Jackson Davis, 
 a spiritist writer, and he told her of a man who, in 
 his opinion, might help her in Russia. This man 
 
 // was A. N. Aksakoff, the editor of the Leipzig 
 Psychische Studien, who had long taken interest in 
 every sort of psychical questions, the phenomena of 
 spiritism among them. 
 
 On 28th October, 1874, Helena Petrovna wrote 
 to A. N. Aksakoff: ^'Excuse the liberty I take in 
 addressing so unceremoniously one to whom I am 
 entirely unknown. The facts are these: I have been 
 living in America for about a year and a half, and 
 have no intention of leaving. All my life is centred 
 here, that is, of course, my inner life, as I am too old 
 to take much interest in the outer life. An attempt 
 should be made to explain at home what is now 
 going on in America, in England, and in France. 
 Spiritism here is no laughing matter. The eleven 
 millions of spiritists in the United States according 
 to the latest report have already grown to eighteen 
 millions, almost fifty per cent., since the appearance 
 of pamphlets in defence of spiritism by men such as 
 Alfred Wallace, Crookes, Varley, etc. The whole 
 press has begun to talk at once. Attempts at ridi- 
 cule, condemnation and censure are rarer and rarer. 
 
 IS 
 
226 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 Last year it was still an exception to find in a so- 
 called ' respectable newspaper ' the smallest article 
 on a fact of spiritism ; now hardly a day passes that 
 the papers are not full of hundreds of facts, proofs, 
 and so on. The papers send reporters and artists 
 to mediums in every direction. Only last week I 
 came back from the Eddy brothers, well-known 
 mediums in Rutland, Vermont, where I had passed 
 two weeks. The house and the neighbouring lodgings 
 were full of correspondents. With the Eddys the 
 spirits of the departed walk about almost in full 
 day. Several times they have already appeared 
 without the help of the mediums, and in the evening 
 at the time of the seance from fifteen to twenty 
 spirits appear as though in the flesh before the eyes 
 of the spectators. I talked for five minutes on the 
 platform in Russian with my father, my uncle and 
 other relations, as though they were alive. Seven 
 persons of my acquaintance, long dead, of different 
 nations, appeared and talked to me, each in his 
 own language, and walked away. Would it not be 
 possible for me to send you, or, rather, to keep send- 
 ing, translations of articles on the facts of spiritism, 
 not by unknown people, but by persons such as 
 Robert Dale Owen, Colonel Olcott, and the best 
 writers here ? I know them and many others, and 
 they will gladly give me the right of translating 
 their productions. Olcott is a correspondent sent 
 expressly to the Eddy brothers in Vermont by one 
 of the best illustrated journals in New York, the 
 Graphic, He has already spent more than two 
 months there, and his illustrated articles are creat- 
 ing a furore, I am also working for the Graphic 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 227 
 
 and can send my articles regularly, translated and 
 fair-copied, with copies of the illustrations drawn in 
 pen and Indian ink. You have probably heard also 
 about the posthumous work of Dickens — the second 
 part of his novel Edwin Drood, which was left un- 
 finished at his death. I have translated this second 
 part, and it is lying all ready before me. Whether 
 the spirit of Dickens wrote it, or the medium James 
 himself, this second part is accepted by the whole 
 American and European press (with few exceptions) 
 as a perfect fac-simile of Dickens's style and his inim- 
 itable humour. I again apologise for the uncere- 
 monious character of my letter. I hope you may 
 perhaps find a spare moment to send me a few words 
 in answer. I should very much like to see the com- 
 pletion of Dickens's novel, of which I speak, published 
 in Russia ; I have worked hard at it, and translated 
 it from James's manuscript, as he wrote it under the 
 dictation of Dickens's spirit." 
 
 Before this letter had reached its destination^ 
 H. P. Blavatsky sent a second after it, dated 14th 
 November. It was very eloquent, and full of instruc- 
 tion as to the woman's character. 
 
 " It is not a week since I wrote to you, and yet I 
 already bitterly repent. This morning, as usual, 
 when I was in town, I called on fny only friend, 
 Andrew Jackson Davis, who is highly respected by 
 all here; he had received your letter in French, and 
 as he does not understand the language well, he 
 asked me to read it and translate. In this letter 
 you write : 'J'aientendu parler de Madame Blavatsky 
 par un de ses parents, qui la dit un medium assez 
 fort. Malheureusement ses communications ressent- 
 
228 
 
 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 ent de son moral, qui n'a pas etd des plus severest 
 Whoever it was told you about me, they told you 
 the truth, in essence, if not in detail. God only 
 knows how I have suffered for my past. It is clearly 
 my fate to gain no absolution upon earth. This 
 past, like the brand of the curse on Cain, has pursued 
 me all my life, and pursues me even here, in America, 
 where I came to be far from it and from the people 
 who knew me in my youth. You are the innocent 
 cause of my being obliged to escape somewhere yet 
 farther away — where, I do not know. I do not 
 accuse you ; God is my witness that while I am 
 writing these lines, I have nothing against you in 
 my heart, beyond the deep sorrow which I long have 
 known for the irrevocable past. Andrew Jackson, 
 who feels and reads men more clearly than any book 
 (and this no one doubts who knows him), said to me 
 on this matter only the following significant words : 
 ' I know you as you are now, and I feel for you ; I can- 
 not and will not go into your past ; I shall write to 
 Mr. Aksakoff that he does not know you personally, 
 and that I know you These words, spoken by 
 A. J. Davis, will be sufficient for you, and I have no 
 further need to try to assure you that the Madame 
 Blavatsky of twenty years ago, and of to-day, when 
 she is over forty, are two different persons. I am a 
 ' spiritist ' and ' spiritualist ' in the full significance 
 of the two titles.^ I was a ' materialist ' till I was 
 
 1 [Compare with this Madame Blavatsky's own statement in 
 Light, nth October, 1884 (p. 418, col. 2): "I say again, I 
 never was a spirituaHst ". Reference may also be made to her 
 previous letter to the same effect in Light for gth August, 
 1884, in which she declares that Mr. Lillie's statement that 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 229 
 
 nearly thirty, and believed and did not believe in 
 spiritism. As I did not believe in God, I could not 
 believe in a future life. Morality and good deeds I 
 regarded as a social garment, for the sake of pro- 
 priety ; un masque social que Ton n'appliquait sur la 
 figure que pour ne pas choquer I'estetique de son 
 voisin, comme on mettrait du taffetas anglais sur 
 une laide blessure. I hated 'society' and the so-called 
 world, as I hated hypocrisy in whatever form it 
 showed itself ; ergo, I ran amuck against society and 
 the established proprieties. Result : three lines in 
 your letter, which have awakened all the past within 
 me and torn open all the old wounds. I have now 
 been a spiritist for more than ten years, and now all 
 my life is devoted to the doctrine. I am struggling 
 for it and trying to consecrate to it every moment of 
 my life. Were I rich, I would spend all my money 
 to the last farthing pour la propagande de cette 
 divine veritL But my means are very poor, and I 
 am obliged to live by my work, by translating and 
 writing in the papers. 
 
 This is why I have approached you with a pro- 
 position to translate into Russian everything about 
 spiritualism that comes out here. I have translated 
 Edwin Drood, and it has long been ready, and now 
 I am translating some letters (Colonel H. S. Olcott's) 
 which are creating at the present moment such a 
 revolution in the minds of the materialists. 
 
 " He investigated for eight weeks the materialisation 
 
 she had been for fourteen years (1860-1874) an avowed 
 spirituahst, is false. See also Mr. Kiddle's letter in Light 
 for nth November, 1884.— W. L.] 
 
230 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 of spirits through the Eddy brothers in Vermont, and 
 I went there and Hved two weeks at their farm, where 
 I got to know him. His letters and writings are 
 worthy rivals of the books of Robert Dale Owen, 
 Epes Sargent, and other champions. But now that 
 I know your just but harsh judgment of me, I see 
 that there is no hope for me but death. I shall have 
 to drag to the grave ce boulet de galerien social. It 
 is clear that neither repentance nor voluntary exile 
 from my country, where I have brothers and sisters 
 and beloved relations, whom I shall never see again on 
 earth, — nothing will pacify the wrath of the furious 
 wild beast whose name is Public Opinion. 
 
 " I have one request to make to you : Do not deprive 
 me of the good opinion of Andrew J. Davis. Do not 
 reveal to him that which, if he knew it and were con- 
 vinced, would force me to escape to the ends of the 
 earth. I have only one refuge left in the world, and 
 that is the respect of the spiritualists of America, 
 who despise nothing so much as 'free love '. 
 
 Can it give you any satisfaction to morally de- 
 stroy for ever a woman who has already been thus 
 destroyed by circumstances? Pardon this long letter 
 and accept the assurance of the deep respect and 
 devotion of your obedient servant, 
 
 " Helena Blavatsky. 
 
 "23 Irvin Place, New York." 
 
 Of course her correspondent, on receiving this 
 letter, hastened to reply that it would not give him 
 any satisfaction to morally destroy a woman for 
 ever". H. P. Blavatsky wrote again from Hartford, 
 13th December, 1874. 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 231 
 
 I do not know how to thank you for your infinite 
 goodness. Though you have the right, like any 
 honourable man, to despise me for my sad reputa- 
 tion in the past, you are so condescending and 
 magnanimous as to write to me. If there is any 
 hope for me in the future, it is only in the grave, 
 when bright spirits shall help me to free myself from 
 my sinful and impure envelope. Pardon me and 
 forgive me for having, in a moment of despair, 
 written you my foolish second letter. I did not 
 understand you, and thought that you, like the rest, 
 judged me only from the outside. When I had read 
 your letter, I saw how I had been mistaken in you, 
 and that you were ready to stretch out a helping 
 hand, even to a sinner like myself. I received your 
 letter by a sort of miracle, which I really do not 
 understand." (There follows a long account of how 
 the letter, sent to New York, had been received at 
 Philadelphia in what is represented as a very super- 
 natural way.) I am here in Hartford for a couple 
 of days on business. I came to confer with Colonel 
 Olcott about certain alterations in his letters and 
 supplements. He is now publishing a book on the 
 subject of his letters to the Graphic; the book is 
 so complete that it forms two parts, six hundred 
 pages. The first part will consist of original letters, 
 and the second will deal with public opinion about 
 spiritualism, and the antagonism between science, 
 ^ religion, and the phenomena of spiritualism ; the 
 latter in the form in which it appeared forty years 
 ago in the community of the Shakers. The book is 
 too lengthy to translate ; it will be better if I send a 
 translation of the letters as they were published in 
 
232 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 the Daily Graphic, All the sketches and illustra- 
 tions of the spirits I will attach to the sheets of the 
 translations — the portrait of a certain Hassan Aga 
 as he appeared to me materialised at Chittenden, in 
 the presence of forty people, and talked to me half 
 in Russian and half in Georgian, and the portrait 
 of my grandfather Gustav Alekseivitch Hahn, who 
 also appeared twice. Generally speaking I play a 
 great part in Olcott's letters, as all the seven spirits 
 which appeared to me at the farm in Vermont 
 formed a grand triumph for the cause of spiritual- 
 ism. As long as the spirits only talked English and 
 French, on avait raison de douter peut-etre, car il 
 etait possible de soupgonner un jeu de prestige 
 quelconque. Mais une fois que sept esprits materia- 
 lises, en chair et en os, tous differement habilles 
 selon leur pays et parlant six differentes langues, le 
 Russe, le Turc, le Georgien, le Tartare, le Hongrois 
 et ritalien, parurent chaque soir et que tout le 
 monde les entendit parler comme des personnes 
 vivantes, les choses changerent d' aspect. Le pays 
 est tout revolutionne. Je regois des lettres de tous 
 les pays et de tous les editeurs. Un docteur nomme 
 Beard, qui n' a passe qu' un jour a Chittenden, 
 s'est permis d'insulter tous les spirites, en les appelant 
 dans les journaux des ^weak-minded fools and 
 idiots,' et je lui ai repondu a deux reprises differ- 
 entes dans les journaux. II parait que, sans le 
 savoir, j'ai frappe juste. Les spirites les plus 
 eminents comme Robert Dale Owen, Dr. Child et 
 autres m'ont adresse des lettres, et les editeurs du 
 plus grand ' Publishing Co.' d'Amerique, ici a 
 Hartford, m'ont ecrit pour me proposer de composer 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis, 233 
 
 un volume de lettres sur differentes phases du 
 spiritisme, et des manifestations physiques des 
 esprits que j'ai vues aux Indes, en Afrique, et 
 ailleurs. lis veulent m'acheter cet ouvrage. 
 J'aurais ma fortune faite si je ne portais pas mal- 
 heureusement mon nom maudit de Blavatsky. Je 
 n'ose risquer de signer de ce nom un livre quelcon- 
 que. Cela pourrait provoquer des souvenirs trop 
 dangereux pour moi. Je prefere perdre douze mille 
 dollars que Ton m'offre, car les editeurs me 
 proposent douze cents par copie et ils garantissent de 
 vendre cent mille copies. Voici les fruits amers de 
 ma jeunesse que j'ai vouee a Satan, ses pompes et 
 ses oeuvres ! Enfin ! Je vous enverrai, monsieur, 
 a la fin de cette semaine, un paquet de faits et 
 articles decoupes des journaux les plus ' respect- 
 ables ' du pays. Je vous enverrai aussi mes deux 
 lettres imprimees, car cela vous donnera d'avance 
 Tidee de I'immense interet que doit produire un 
 livre comme celui " de Col. Olcott. Imaginez- 
 vous, monsieur, des esprits materialises de bonnes 
 Russes parlant leur langue, des gar9ons Georgiens, 
 des hommes Khourdes, de Garibaldiens Hongrois 
 et Italiens, et enfin mon oncle,^ the Russian 
 president of the civil court at Grodno with the cross 
 
 ^ H. P. B. has forgotten that only a month and a half before 
 she had already written that she had seen her " father, 
 uncle, and other relations, and spoken to them as in life ". 
 Now all mention of her father and other relations has dis- 
 appeared ; only the uncle remains. The portrait of this uncle 
 was sketched at the Eddys' farm "from nature" and published 
 in the Graphic; but it seems that the deceased had changed 
 beyond recognition since his appearance in the other world ; 
 as H. P. B. herself had subsequently to admit. 
 
234 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 of the order of Anna on his neck, paraissant a six 
 mille Heux (sic) de chez nous, en Amerique,.dans une 
 ferme isolee perdue au milieu des montagnes du 
 Vermont, avec des mediums fermiers grossiers, 
 parlant mal meme leur langue maternelle — et cela 
 d moi qu'ils ne connaissaient ni d'Adam ni d'Eve, 
 devant une reunion de quarante personnes, composee 
 de ' reporters sceptiques/ de medecins, de ' clergy- 
 men/ d'hommes distingues comme Olcott et de 
 bien d'autres. Et pour couronner le tout dans une 
 seance a part ' the dark circle ' un esprit, m'appor- 
 tant la medaille de mon pere pour la guerre de 
 1828 en Turquie et me disant ces mots devant 
 tout le monde : I bring you, Helen Blavatsky, the 
 badge of honour, received by your father for the war 
 of 1828. We took this medal through the influence of 
 your uncle who appeared to you this night-- from your 
 father s grave at Stavropol, and bring it you as a re- 
 membrance of us in whom you believe and have faith. 
 
 " I know this medal, I have seen it on my father, 
 and I know that together with his other decorations 
 it was buried with him. It is drawn in the Graphic, 
 and I have got it. Think of it as you like. My 
 father died last year at Stavropol. How could the 
 spirits know this? How could the mediums know 
 that my father was a soldier and served in the 
 campaigns against the Turks ? It is a mystery, a 
 great mystery.^ In Russia, of course, it will not 
 
 ^ A corner of this "great mystery," as the reader will see, 
 was soon exposed ; this medal, with its absolutely fantastical 
 appearance, became the occasion of a scandal, and Madame 
 Blavatsky, in spite of her quickness and daring, tripped and 
 was entangled in her evidence. 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 235 
 
 be believed. They will say that Madame Blavatsky 
 has either gone out of her mind, or perhaps some- 
 thing worse. Fortunately there were forty witnesses. 
 You cannot think what an impression this has 
 produced on every one. I will write when I send 
 the letters ; I am afraid of wearying you. Once 
 more, I remain, with sincere respect and devotion, 
 
 Yours obediently, 
 
 H. Blavatsky. 
 
 P.S. — Colonel Olcott desires to be respectfully 
 remembered to you, and will send you his photo- 
 graph. From a furious sceptic he has become a 
 great spiritualist after spending thirteen weeks with 
 the Eddy brothers at Chittenden. If you permit 
 me, I will send you my portrait lithographed as an 
 illustration in the Daily Graphic, with an account 
 of my travels in Africa and the Soudan. I do not 
 know why the}^ have done me such an honour as to 
 set me beside Ida Pfeiffer and Livingstone." 
 
 Such is the " prologue " of the interesting drama 
 in many acts, entitled The Theosophical Society". 
 The hero and heroine met at the farm of the brothers 
 Eddy, where there appeared on the platform," e7i 
 chair et en os, strange spirits of Georgians, nurse- 
 maids, and Russian officials ; they met and under- 
 stood one another. They saw at once that they had 
 a ''star" in common, that they were birds of a 
 feather, and that thus they were bound to unite in 
 the strong bonds of indissoluble friendship. Olcott 
 took every means to "boom" Madame Blavatsky; 
 he told all manner of marvels about her in his letters, 
 and he gained his end ; her articles began to be 
 
236 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 appreciated, people began to talk about her, and to 
 take an interest in her ; her portrait was to appear 
 (though in fact it never did appear) in the pages of 
 the Graphic. She did not delay repayment of the 
 debt ; she printed two articles full of triumphant 
 expressions about Olcott's book, which had not yet 
 been published, though it was already in the press. 
 
 Her notoriety in spiritist circles and her consider- 
 able earnings from her writings set Helena Petrovna 
 on her feet. Her rich gifts and her daring fancy de- 
 veloped rapidly ; she had now, thanks to Olcott's 
 advertisement, come to be a learned woman, a re- 
 markable medium, and a gifted traveller in Africa 
 and the Soudan. She now felt solid ground beneath 
 her feet. Only one thing alarmed her : if ever there 
 should come revelations about another period of her 
 life, and if they should come from Russia, from 
 people who were to be trusted, then all was lost. 
 
 At the first sound which seemed to hint at the 
 possibility of such a disaster, she began to be violently 
 agitated, and instantly resolved on the very best 
 course of action. Not foreseeing that she would soon 
 need to play the part of the ^^pure virgin, ' she pre- 
 sented herself as the penitent Magdalen She dis- 
 armed her Russian correspondent, whom she regarded 
 as so terrible, by the frankness and candour of her 
 repentance. ^' I was in deepest darkness, but I 
 have seen the light, and to this light I have given 
 myself up entirely," she declared, openly and sin- 
 cerely ; ''spiritism is a great truth, and I will serve 
 it to the grave." 
 
 But it would not be a bad thing to get some one 
 else to conhrm what she had said to her Russian 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 237 
 
 correspondent, in order to make his mind quite easy. 
 For this purpose she had recourse to Olcott himself, 
 without in the least seeing the simplicity and trans- 
 parency of the plan. She first sent a photographic 
 counterfeit of her friend, with his autograph, and 
 then Olcott himself sent to St. Petersburg a long 
 epistle about the marvels of spiritualism which had 
 excited the interest of all America. But the point 
 lay not in the spiritualism, but in the following 
 lines : — 
 
 Je m'estime tres heureux d'avoir fait la connais- 
 sance de Madame de Blavatsky, de laquelle il n'est pas 
 trop dire qu'elle possede plus de savoir occulte en 
 fait de relations mysterieuses entre les deux mondes 
 (de Mati^re et d'Esprit), que toute autre personne — 
 dans ce pays du moins. La severite de sa vie et 
 Tenthousiasme qui I'anime toujours pour tout ce 
 qui touche au Spiritisme offrent aux spiritualistes 
 americains un fort bel exemple de conduite et de 
 foi sincere." 
 
 This testimonial is actually written on Madame 
 Blavatsky's letter-paper, and, like the rest of the long 
 letter, was evidently edited by her ; for I know the 
 dreadful expressions and blunders with which Olcott 
 used to write French in 1884. It is impossible to 
 suppose that ten years before he had an incomparably 
 better knowledge of the language. 
 
XXVIL 
 
 There occurred at this time among the American 
 spiritists a grave and unexpected scandal. At the 
 seances of some mediums named Holmes there used 
 to appear the materialised spirit of a young girl 
 named Katie King. The old and respected Robert 
 Dale Owen, a well-known spiritist writer, who had 
 been propagating spiritism for some twenty years, 
 was particularly interested in this materialised 
 maiden. For several months he observed her in 
 daily seances with the Holmeses ; he used to converse 
 with her, and called her ''daughter," while she 
 spoke to him as ''father". In proof of his paternal 
 affection he presented Katie King with bracelets, 
 rings and so on, in the belief that after the seances 
 she took the presents with her into the world of 
 spirits, where they were de-materialised and entered, 
 so to speak, into the general economy of Nature. 
 Why, under these circumstances, he should have 
 given her such valuable presents, it is not easy to 
 say for one who is not in a similar position. But a 
 daughter of that sort is capable of making men 
 commit follies of many kinds. 
 
 One day a certain Leslie, also a spiritualist, came 
 to Mr. Owen, weeping and saying: "Oh, this is a 
 very ugly business 
 
 "What is the matter? " 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 239 
 
 Why, that we have all been taken in in the 
 meanest way ; Katie King is not a spirit, but a Hve 
 woman." 
 
 It cannot be exclaimed Owen indignantly ; I 
 was so fond of her, she is so charming, she cannot 
 have deceived me ; it is all some silly slander against 
 my dear daughter/' 
 
 But Leslie produced all the presents, not in the 
 least de-materialised, and gave the name of the 
 daring creature who had so successfully personated 
 the spirit. Owen was in despair, and fell ill with 
 vexation. When he had recovered somewhat and 
 come to himself, he wished to satisfy himself about 
 the fraud ; so the so-called Katie King, in the 
 presence of him and others, dressed up as a spirit 
 and went through all her part with the greatest 
 precision. The old man was convinced of the fraud, 
 and, like an honest man, without fear of ridicule, he 
 published an account of everything in the papers. 
 
 A tempest was roused, two camps were formed, 
 and the fight grew fierce. H. P. Blavatsky, with 
 native energy, upheld that there was no fraud, that 
 Katie King was a spirit, and that there was a con- 
 spiracy". She told her correspondent the whole 
 story, and went on as follows : — 
 
 All this silly story is neither more nor less than 
 a plot (now almost proved) of the Protestant Jesuit- 
 ical society called the ' Young Men's Christian 
 Association,' a huge society ramifying through all 
 the towns of America. He (R. D. Owen) has 
 morally killed himself in public opinion by his action ; 
 all the papers hold him up to ridicule. Here is a 
 specimen : ' The accomplice of Leslie (a well-known 
 
240 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 scoundrel and thief who has stolen millions in rail- 
 roads) dressed herself up in the costume of the spirit 
 Katie, and in a room and cabinet " prepared for 
 the purpose showed in the presence of Robert Owen 
 and others how she personated a spirit. The 
 very same evening at the same hour the real Katie 
 King appeared to twenty witnesses at a seance with 
 the calumniated mediums, the Holmeses.' All the 
 papers are full of pro and con. It is no good ; we 
 must console ourselves with the proverb, for the 
 vulgarity of which I must first ask pardon : ' If God 
 does not permit, the pig won't eat one I have 
 never heard of a cleverer swindle than the whole 
 story. Poor Robert Dale Owen ! If his eyes are 
 ever opened, I am afraid the poor old man will not 
 survive the shock. At the present moment I am 
 proud to say that I am making converts fast. . . . 
 For spiritism I am ready to work night and day, so 
 long as I have a morsel of bread, and that only 
 because it is hard to work when one is hungry." 
 
 She did in fact work hard ; she published article 
 after article, and at the same time she was trans- 
 lating Olcott's endless letters about the marvels of 
 the brothers Eddy. On nth February, 1875, she 
 wrote : — 
 
 " I have omitted from Olcott's letters all that con- 
 cerns myself personally, keeping only what deals 
 with the spirits and my relations to them. His 
 friendship has carried him too far in boundless 
 laudation, and I cannot get it into his head that 
 in raising me to the rank of ' countess ' he is only 
 giving occasion to the Russians who know me to 
 laugh at me. ... I have written an article pub- 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 241 
 
 lished in the Banner of Light against Dr. Child, for 
 I felt myself morally bound, as a spiritist and 
 ' crusader of the mighty Spiritual Army,' to tell the 
 truth, to defend the innocent, and to bring into the 
 light of day the guilty and criminal. All this story 
 about Katie King and the scandal have given such 
 a set back to materialisation that they have raised 
 quite a tempest in the land. It turns out that the 
 Holmeses are not the only guilty ones. The chief 
 sinner is Dr. Child, ^ who, as a speculation, hired a 
 certain Mrs. White to allow her portrait to be taken 
 as that of the spirit Katie King, who for some reason 
 or another would not poser pour son portrait a elle. 
 General Lippitt, Olcott, Roberts the lawyer and I 
 have set to work to carry out an inquiry. Olcott 
 has proved ' the real mediumship ' of Holmes, and 
 I have discovered by the admission of the photo- 
 grapher and of the mediums that Dr. Child thought 
 fit to bribe both them and this Mrs. White to take 
 in the public by the sale of these photographs. That 
 is why I wrote this article, as I knew, or rather 
 supposed, that we should not get at the truth in any 
 other way than by publicly accusing Dr. Child. I 
 hoped that if he had the least trace of conscience 
 left he would sue me and even have me arrested for 
 libel. I wanted this, because I have already sacri- 
 ficed myself for spiritualism, and in defence of my 
 faith and the truth I am ready at any moment to lay 
 my head on the block ; and in court, before the 
 grand jury, I should have shown who is right and 
 who is guilty, in this unparalleled swindle of spiritual- 
 
 1 We hear no more of Leslie and the Protestant Jesuits. 
 
 16 
 
242 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 ism, in this rascality where no one sees what is truth 
 and what is He, which is bringing the whole spiritist 
 world of America and Europe to despondency and 
 despair, and giving the sceptics the right to laugh 
 at us. Poor Robert Dale Owen is dying. He is 
 seventy-three years old, and all his life came to be 
 bound up with the spirit Katie King. The blow has 
 been too heavy for the old man ; and though after 
 this soi-disant expose he has twice seen at the Holmeses' 
 the Katie King whom he had seen more than eighty 
 evenings on end, and who proved to us at the ^ in- 
 vestigation seances ' that she was a real spirit and not 
 a mortal female substitute, and though she tried to 
 comfort Owen, yet he has fallen ill, and it appears 
 will not recover. So all his reputation as an author 
 is gone ; now people are doubting about everything 
 he wrote. And all this is through Dr. Child, a 
 swindler and speculator. By my article you will 
 see that I do not spare him. I quite expected that 
 he would send and have me arrested ; ... to my 
 surprise Dr. Child has not even answered in the 
 papers ; since that day he has simply hidden him- 
 self in his own house, and dreads more than any- 
 thing that somebody may drag him into court. He 
 was president at the ' Spiritual Hall ' here, and re- 
 signed of himself at once, because we were on the 
 point of requesting him to go. I am receiving letters 
 of gratitude from every side, from spiritists and non- 
 spiritists, among others from Prof. Draper and Prof. 
 Corson. If you hear that the sinful Blavatsky has 
 perished, not in the bloom of years and beauty, by 
 some surprising death, and that she has de- 
 materialised ^for ever,' then you will know that it 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 243 
 
 is for spiritualism. In thee, Lord, do we put our 
 trust, and we shall not be confounded for ever." 
 
 We now come to a most significant fact. Further 
 on in the same letter H. P. Blavatsky writes : — 
 
 ''John King has sent Olcott to Havanna for a few 
 days. ... I have quite ceased to get any letters from 
 my aunts and sisters ; they have evidently all for- 
 gotten me, and so much the better for them. I am 
 no credit to them, to tell the truth. I shall now 
 never go back again to Russia. My father is dead, 
 nobody wants me, and I am altogether superfluous 
 in the world. Here I am at least a human being ; 
 there, I am — Blavatsky. I know that everybody 
 respects me here, and I am needed for spiritism. 
 Now the spirits are my brothers and sisters, my 
 father and mother. My John King alone is a sufli- 
 cient recompense for all ; he is a host in himself to 
 me. And yet they call him the double of the 
 medium, him and Crookes's Katie King. What 
 sort of double can he be when the medium Williams 
 is not here at all, but John King in his own person, 
 with his own black beard and his white Chinese 
 saucer-upside-down cap, going about here in America 
 from one medium to another, and doing me the 
 honour of visiting me incessantly, though he has 
 not the least resemblance to me ? No, John King 
 is a personality, a definite, living, spiritual person- 
 ality. Whether devil or good spirit, he is at all 
 events a spirit, and not the medium's prototype. 
 But this is not the place, after all, to argue, and I 
 must have tired you already." 
 
 On the contrary, one can only regret that she did 
 not enlarge on her account of John King. How- 
 
244 
 
 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 ever, what she says is quite enough for every reader 
 of my narrative to recognise at once in this John 
 King the first appearance on the stage of our old 
 acquaintance, the famous Thibetan Mahatma Morya. 
 Only he has not yet donned his white turban, but 
 wears a Chinese white ^^saucer-upside-down" cap ; 
 he is as yet a materialised spirit who shows himself 
 through any medium, and is called John King. It 
 is not Helena Petrovna, but the medium Williams, 
 who has put him in circulation ; but he is already 
 incessantly visiting our heroine, and is to her a 
 '^host in himself". He already sends Olcott off 
 to Havanna. Soon he will be transfigured, and 
 turned into Mahatma Morya or M., the famous 
 master ". 
 
 For a while things go on well, and the morsel of 
 bread " seems to be secured. Olcott puffs Helena 
 Petrovna as much as he can. She writes about 
 this and her successes from Philadelphia on 24th 
 March, 1875. 
 
 '^Olcott's book is producing an enormous furore. . . . 
 In this book he has made many changes from his 
 letters, by additions and omissions ; but still he has 
 mixed up my biography with the Lord knows what, 
 princes, boyards, and imaginary governors-general — 
 whatever they choose to tell him at the consulate.^ 
 
 ^ So it seems that Olcott, " the most trustworthy and fore- 
 most of the witnesses to Madame Blavatsky's wonders, theo- 
 sophical and otherwise," before writing her biography, did not 
 get his materials from her, with whom he was in the closest 
 friendly relations, and whom he was constantly seeing, but went 
 to the Russian consulate, where they gave him the most fan- 
 tastic accounts — and these he published. And she could do 
 nothing to help it I 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 245 
 
 It is so annoying ; people will only laugh at me, and 
 suppose that I have been throwing dust in people's 
 eyes in America, like a fool ; and yet there is only 
 one thing that I long and struggle for — that people 
 should forget the old Blavatsky, and leave the new 
 one alone. But it seems hard. I write so much in 
 all the papers that there is no concealing my name. 
 There is not a day that some new story does not 
 come out in the papers. Blavatsky was in Africa, 
 and went up with Livingstone in a balloon. Blavat- 
 sky dined with the King of the Sandwich Islands. 
 Blavatsky converted the Pope of Rome to spiritual- 
 ism ; she predicted his death to Napoleon; she 
 cured the Queen of Spain's face of warts by aid of 
 the spirits, and so on. Lord, what will they not 
 write ! ^ It is two months now since I have left my 
 room, with my broken leg, and according to the 
 papers it appears that during this time I have sailed 
 five times round the w^orld ! They won't leave me 
 alone even with the Mormons. They say that I 
 have spent several days at Salt Lake City, and have 
 induced Brigham Young to renounce polygamy. 
 One good thing, I have frightened them so with my 
 ' thundering articles,' as they call them, that all 
 the papers are beginning to treat me with more 
 respect. It is clear they are cowards. In London 
 they extol me, if you please, as the only champion 
 of spiritualism in America." 
 
 Things were going well, but meanwhile a thunder- 
 storm was brewing. The finst clap came from 
 
 ^ And she, poor woman, has nothing at all to do with these 
 stories, and decides to complain of them only to one single 
 person, who lives in Russia, but — takes in the American papers. 
 
246 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 Colby, the editor of the Banner of Light. I am 
 fighting a severe battle with him at this moment, 
 because he will not publish my second article against 
 Dr. Child about Katie King," writes Madame Bla- 
 vatsky. There is a spiritualist for you ! Whatever 
 sort of religious fanatic an American may be, the 
 pure-blooded Yankee always peeps out in him. So 
 now it is war." 
 
 This first clap was followed by others. The 
 scandal about Katie King, and the honest statements 
 in print by old Mr. Owen, had brought about very 
 serious consequences ; the public began to cool down 
 about spiritualism. In these circumstances Madame 
 Blavatsky, who had just come into fashion as a 
 spiritist, felt that she might easily go out of fashion ; 
 both processes are particularly rapid in America. 
 It was consequently essential in one way or another 
 to keep up the interest in herself. It was essential 
 to invent something new, fresh and unexpected. 
 Accordingly, after having hitherto been, as is clear 
 from her letters, the most orthodox of spiritists, she 
 began little by little, of course with the aid of Olcott 
 himself, to start a heresy in spiritualism, and invented 
 her occult past. In the first place Olcott included 
 in his book an account of the Katie King scandal, 
 and thereon, once more and in a new fashion, 
 
 boomed" Madame Blavatsky. She writes as 
 follows to her correspondent on 12th April, 1875 : — 
 
 " In a detailed account of the story of Katie King, 
 Olcott makes out of me something mysteriously 
 terrible, and almost leads the public to suspect that 
 I have either sold my soul to the devil or am the 
 direct heiress of Count Germain and Cagliostro. Do 
 
A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 247 
 
 not believe it ; I have merely learnt in Egypt and 
 Africa, in India and in the East generally, a great 
 deal of what other people do not know. I have 
 made friends with dervishes, and I do indeed belong 
 to one mystic society, but it does not follow that I 
 have become an ApoUonius of Tyana in petticoats. 
 Moreover the spirit John King is very fond of me, 
 and I am fonder of him than of anything on earth. 
 He is my only friend, and if I am indebted to any 
 one for the radical change in my ideas of life, my 
 efforts and so on, it is to him alone. He has trans- 
 formed me, and I shall be indebted to him, when I 
 ' go to the upper story,' for not having to dwell for 
 centuries it may be in darkness and gloom. John 
 and I are acquainted from old times, long before he 
 began to materialise in London and take walks in 
 the medium's house with a lamp in his hand. But 
 all this does not interest you, I imagine." 
 
 Here are the first traces, of the gradual transfor- 
 mation of John King into Mahatma Morya. The 
 
 master" is not invented yet, as it will only grow 
 clear in the course of a couple of years in India, 
 into whom the familiar spirit " is to be turned. 
 But this spirit is already turning out to be an old 
 acquaintance". As for the new-fangled heresy in 
 spiritism, H. P. Blavatsky tries to get out of the 
 inconsistency with her own words in her previous 
 letters by explaining her heresy as a mere transition 
 from practice to theory, and writes : — 
 
 ''Since I have been in America I have entirely de- 
 voted myself to spiritualism. Not to the phenomenal, 
 material side of it, but to spiritual spiritualism and 
 the propaganda of its sacred truths. All my efforts 
 
248 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 tend to one thing, to purify the new rehgion from all 
 its filthy weeds, which grow up so fast that they 
 threaten to stifle utterly with their dead letters the 
 spirit of truth. In this desire and effort I have been 
 hitherto alone. I am only now beginning to collect 
 adepts : I have collected half a dozen, and, I say 
 boldly, the best and brightest minds in America. 
 Later on I wall count them up for you. Every day I 
 grow more and more convinced that so long as people, 
 even the most Crookes of Crookeses himself, will 
 stand up for nothing but the mere facts, i.e., the phe- 
 nomenal side of spiritual manifestations, so long will 
 furious opponents appear, beginning with Tyndall 
 and ending with the miserable Dr. Beard ; and that 
 the public, who have hitherto been treated only to 
 stories and facts about the materialised bust of some- 
 body's great-grandmother, and the legs in top-boots 
 of an only imperfectly materialised Washington, or 
 the appearance of your baker's deceased cook, will in 
 the end always prefer to take the side of science ' for 
 respectability's sake,' rather than to take up with 
 us, whom they regard as half-witted and idiots. I 
 have learnt that there is no convincing people with 
 suspicious facts only, and also that every genuine fact 
 always shows some weak side or other on which it 
 is easy for opponents to fasten. This is why I have 
 laid it down as a rule never in any case to permit 
 outsiders to get anything from my mediumistic 
 powers. Except Olcott and two or three very inti- 
 mate friends, no one has seen what happens with me, 
 and when my John or the other devils go too far, I 
 immediately put an end to everything. I have de- 
 cided to devote myself to spiritualism from the point 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 249 
 
 of view of Andrew J. Davis or Allan Kardec (though 
 I do not believe in reincarnation in the same sense 
 as the French spiritists) : and though I always stand 
 up for real phenomena such as the Eddys', no one 
 can more violently attack the rogueries of the 
 mediums and the credulity of some of the spiritists, 
 and accordingly I have conceived the idea of setting 
 about a serious business." 
 
 This ''serious business" consisted of her attacks 
 on Dr. Child, and of the articles which she directed 
 against the ''conspiracy" of certain "Protestant 
 Jesuits". But the Banner of Light refused to publish 
 her articles, so she writes thus : — 
 
 " I have lost no time in setting about work in an- 
 other direction. I have prepared the minds of the 
 most influential spiritists and brought them over to 
 my side, and now, as I am convinced that there is no 
 getting at the truth through the Banner, we have 
 all joined forces, and exalted a small paper, the 
 Spiritual Scientist, into our special and peculiar 
 organ. In it I have published my last article in 
 answer to the feeble and idiotic defence of Dr. Child 
 in the Banner. I am sending you this number of 
 the paper, and two others which have reprinted an 
 article about me from the London Spiritualist, 
 This paper, the Spiritual Scientist, was coming 
 to extinction, though the management of it was al- 
 ways more honourable and truthful than the Banner, 
 which is always one-sided, and gives nothing but the 
 facts, without explaining the causes of the manifesta- 
 tions. I have got as many as a hundred subscribers 
 for it in these three weeks ; I have urged others to 
 spend a little money, and I have myself given fifty 
 
250 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 dollars (my last, God knows), in order only to shame 
 the rich spiritists, and to force them to open their 
 pockets. I have persuaded Olcott, Epes Sargent, 
 Prof. Corson, Lippitt, Mrs. Andrews the authoress, 
 Owen (who has gone into hiding and cannot bring him- 
 self to believe in the criminality of his friend Child) 
 and others to write exclusively for the Scientist. 
 I am printing circulars at my own expense." 
 
 In fact, as she had written, it was necessary for 
 her to get a morsel of bread," and this idea of the 
 Scientist might be her salvation. Once it was 
 settled that a heresy was indispensable, an organ 
 must be established to disseminate it. H. P. Blavat- 
 sky wrote : — 
 
 ^' I am ready to give my life for the spread of the 
 sacred truth. Olcott is helping me as much as he 
 can, both with his pen and with pecuniary sacrifices 
 for the cause. He is as passionately devoted to 
 spiritism as I am. But he is far from rich and has 
 nothing to live on but his literary labours, and he 
 has to keep a wife and a whole lot of children." ^ 
 
 But the Scientist never got under way. Spirit- 
 ism, even when dressed with the sauce of the new 
 heresy, could not excite the slumbering attention of 
 the public, and the question of the " morsel of bread " 
 became urgent. Dejection breathes in Helena Pet- 
 rovna's letter of May 24, 1875. 
 
 Have you received the numbers of the Spiritual 
 Scientist, which contain my last article, ' Who Fab- 
 
 1 1 imagine that many theosophists will be extremely sur- 
 prised by this news about Olcott's wife and " lot of children"; 
 for this numerous family which had to be supported soon 
 vanished somewhere without leaving a trace, 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 ricates ' ? I have sent you several numbers, faute 
 de mieux, as in the soi-disant respectable newspapers 
 there is nothing whatever about spirituahsm, and 
 after the Katie King scandal, the Banner of Light, 
 the Religio-philosophical Journal, and the Spiritual 
 Scientist are foundering, and are crying for help 
 - from sheer starvation. Disaster has come upon us. 
 Dr. Child has appeared in the character of the 
 spiritist Antichrist, and, as the Judas of the seven 
 councils (?), has destroyed spiritualism. Even the 
 most advanced spiritualists begin to be afraid of 
 public opinion, and their ' high respectability ' in- 
 duces many to continue to believe in spirits in secret 
 only, and privately. Of trusty soldiers ready to die 
 for the truth, there remains only my own little army. 
 Like sentinels unrelieved we stand at our posts, we 
 fight and struggle, we write and spend our last coins ; 
 but it seems as though we were petrified in our 
 places like so many spiritist mummies, quite use- 
 lessly. In order to keep up the sinking Spiritual 
 Scientist, the only conscientious, honest and fearless 
 paper (and that, thanks to our efforts), I have spent 
 my last two hundred dollars. I am the poorest, except 
 Professor Brittan, and I have spent more than all. La 
 plus jolie fille du monde ne peut donner que ce qu'elle 
 a ! Ask Olcott whether I shall spare my very life for 
 the sake of spiritualism, in other words of the Divine 
 Truth which is the only consolation of humanity and 
 our last hope. This year I earned as much as 6000 
 dollars by my articles and other work, and all, all 
 has gone for spiritualism. And now, in the present 
 humour of infidelity, doubt and blindness, after the 
 Katie King business, it seems to be all over. 
 
252 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 Once when I had written a sensational article, I 
 used to reprint it in the form of a pamphlet, and sell 
 several thousands at ten cents a sheet (a copy), but 
 what can one reprint now ? And one cannot even 
 get into a quarrel with any one. Previously oppon- 
 ents used to appear by the hundred and write against 
 one. Then I used to attack them directly and smash 
 them to dust and ashes. You can judge from my 
 article, ' Reply to Dr. Beard'. My portraits used to 
 be printed, and the Graphic was to have published a 
 picture of my martial person. Katie King appeared, 
 and in an instant it was good-bye. Look at poor A. 
 J. Davis ; he can barely keep body and soul together, 
 his books are not selling at all. The Banner has 
 fallen from 25,000 subscribers to 12,000. Olcott is 
 sitting on heaps of his People from the Other Worlds 
 like Marius on the ruins of Carthage, and think- 
 ing bitter things. Not a thousand copies of his 
 book have been sold in five months. Epes Sargent, 
 the favourite and most learned of the American 
 authors, the only spiritist whom every one respects 
 and who has hitherto been regarded as an authority, 
 is lighting his stove with his Proof Palpable of Im- 
 mortality, his last work. Robert Dale Owen has 
 hidden himself and vanished from the face of the 
 earth, and so on and so on. A shock of earthquake 
 is essential in order to rouse the American public 
 from this apathy. And the financial position here 
 has fallen frightfully low into the bargain. Failure 
 succeeds failure, there is a terrible panic ; those who 
 have got money hide it, and those who have not are 
 dying of hunger. Still Olcott does not lose heart. 
 With the thoroughbred sense of a Yankee he has 
 
A Modern Priestess of I sis. 253 
 
 invented a ' Miracle Club ' ; we shall see what will 
 come of that. I can answer for myself ; so long as 
 my soul remains in my body I shall stand and fight 
 for the truth." 
 
 This letter is remarkable for its honesty and vera- 
 city. Madame Blavatsky may get into a mess first 
 with her fifty and then with her two hundred last 
 dollars," which she spent on the Scientist, but the gene- 
 ral picture which she draws of the situation must be 
 true beyond a doubt, for otherwise there would be 
 no object in drawing it. She wrote in trouble, with 
 hunger in sight ; she wrote because she w^as in dread 
 for the morrow, and felt the necessity of lamenting 
 and complaining to her distant fellow-countryman. 
 She did not stop to think ; it all flowed out of itself : 
 
 Here, you see, is my trouble, to-morrow there will 
 be nothing to eat. Something quite out of the way 
 must be invented. It is doubtful if Olcott's ' Miracle 
 Club ' will help ; I will fight to the last." Only she 
 ought to have ended, not ''for the truth," but ''for 
 existence " ; that would have been more exact. 
 
 Almost two months passed, and things had not 
 mended. She wrote from Boston, July 18, 1875 • 
 " I am ready to sell my soul for spiritualism, but 
 nobody will buy it, and I am living from hand to 
 mouth and working for ten or fifteen dollars when 
 necessity comes 
 
 And now the autumn came ; the business of the 
 " Miracle Club " had evidently not caught on, for the 
 letter of September 10 is still in the same minor 
 key. H. P. Blavatsky goes to Boston and to Chicago, 
 but nowhere can she hit on anything. Even John 
 King, the future "master," fails to cheer her heart. 
 
254 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 She complains about him : ''John is distinguishing 
 himself by wise silence. He is in a bad humour 
 with me, and for the last three weeks and more he 
 only appears to me to talk nonsense and even un- 
 kindness. Tout n'est pas parfait a ce que je vois 
 dans le Summer Land. . . . There are such attacks 
 upon us that we do not know what it will come to. 
 The spiritualists are furious because we do not share 
 many of their opinions [it will be seen that the 
 heresy is gaining strength] and do not regard all 
 their mediums' lies as Gospel truth. The mediums 
 are wild because we (that is Olcott and I) observe 
 them too severely and do not believe in their honesty. 
 The anti-spiritualists deride us as usual, and the 
 Church members fill the clerical papers with abuse, 
 and seriously assure the public that we have sold our 
 souls to the devil. ' You can't say '' God bless you " 
 to every one's sneeze,' as they say. In any case the 
 Banner of Light and the Religio-philosophical Journal 
 are full of insinuations and malignities about us." 
 
 Things were weary and sad for Helena Petrovna, 
 and it seems that she had attacks of home sickness, 
 as she writes from Ithaca, September 20, 1875 : 
 ''Oh, if only no one knew me at Petersburg! We 
 would have shown your professors,^ I and John 
 King, how pots are made with us in the ' Summer 
 Land '. John promises that he would come to St. 
 Petersburg, but perhaps he is only lying and de- 
 ceiving ; it is hard to rely on him." It will be seen 
 
 ^ The well-known committee of professors was at this time 
 sitting in St. Petersburg, for the investigation of spiritual 
 phenomena. 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 255 
 
 that he has not yet succeeded in contracting his 
 Thibetan quaHties of wisdom and infalHbihty. 
 
 But this letter of September 20, 1875, is import- 
 ant not on account of John, but because it contains 
 the first information about the birth of that interest- 
 ing infant, the Theosophical Society". 
 
XXVIII. 
 
 The failure which overtook the spiritist paper and 
 the Miracle Club/' of the programme and proceed- 
 ings of which we have unfortunately no trace, did 
 not make Olcott lose heart. A brave man, who 
 charged straight ahead, and at the same time a very 
 practical Yankee, he hit at last upon a real trouvaille. 
 Whether it was to him or Madame Blavatsky that 
 the happy thought first occurred we do not know ; 
 but from her letters one thing is clear. Though she 
 had prepared alike herself and others for her new 
 character, she was none the less dejected and sick at 
 heart. He abandoned his unsold copies of People 
 from the Other World, and went on puffing his Russian 
 "countess" with an obstinate and well-founded belief 
 in her cleverness and ability. Everything was done 
 at high speed, in the true American style. Madame 
 Blavatsky wrote : — 
 
 Olcott is now organising the Theosophical 
 Society in New York. It will be composed of learned 
 occultists and cabbalists, of philosophes Hermetiques 
 of the nineteenth century, and of passionate anti- 
 quaries and Egyptologists generally. We want to 
 make an experimental comparison between spiritual- 
 ism and the magic of the ancients by following liter- 
 ally the instructions of the old Cabbalas, both Jewish 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 257 
 
 and Egyptian. I have for many years ^ been study- 
 ing la philosophie Hermetique in theory and practice, . 
 and am every day coming to the conclusion that 
 spirituaHsm in its physical manifestations is no- 
 thing but the Python of the ancients or la lumiere 
 astrale on siderale de Paracelsus^ i,e., the intangible 
 ether w^hich Reichenbach calls Od. The Pythonesses 
 of the ancients used to magnetise themselves — read 
 Plutarch and his account of the oracular currents, 
 read Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, the Magia 
 Adamica of Eugenius Philalethes, and others.^ You 
 w^ill always see better, and can communicate with 
 the spirits by this means — self-magnetisation. 
 
 " I am now writing a big book, which I call, by 
 John's advice. Skeleton Key to Mysterious Gates. I 
 will say nice things there about your European and 
 American men of science, Papists, Jesuits, and that 
 race of the half-learned, les chdtres de la science, 
 who destroy everything without creating anything, 
 and are incapable of creating." 
 
 This book, which, in spite of John's advice, did 
 not appear under the title which he had conceived 
 
 ^ These "many years" must have caused considerable sur- 
 prise to her correspondent and to all who knew her ; for up to 
 the last moment — that of the spiritist failures, and want of 
 food — not a word has been heard of any studies of the sort ; 
 the only talk has been about the " mighty truths " of spiritism. 
 
 ^ In order to write all this it was more than sufficient that 
 she should have read one of the works of Eliphas Levi (Abbe 
 Constans), one of the most interesting and ablest of the popu- 
 larisers of occultism. Later on she makes direct quotations 
 from his books, but of course without any indication of their 
 source, and ostensibly as her own. 
 
 17 
 
258 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 for it, was the famous Isis Unveiled, which it was 
 attempted to puff in America as something extraor- 
 dinary and miraculous. The theosophists have spread 
 and are still spreading stories to the effect that the 
 book was written by H. P. Blavatsky with the help 
 of her master"; that she herself did not know 
 what she was doing, but wrote under his dictation, 
 or transcribed directly from ''unique copies" from 
 the Vatican, unknown to any one, which appeared 
 before her, and then when they were no longer 
 needed returned by the same astral route to the 
 shelves of the secret bookcases of the Vatican. 
 
 Olcott went so far as seriously and mysteriously 
 to announce that for certain chapters of Isis Unveiled 
 there were required not only ''uniques" from the 
 Vatican, but " uniques" which had been consumed in 
 the burning of the library of Alexandria. So, when- 
 ever necessary, the material atoms of these precious 
 copies, scattered through space, were re-assembled 
 and materialised, like the nurse-maids and uncles at 
 the Eddys' ; and Helena Petrovna, in her rapid, 
 legible hand, quietly transcribed the great truths to 
 be found in them. 
 
 These legends are evidently of later origin, as in 
 the letter written by Madame Blavatsky to her 
 Russian correspondent, just at the time when she 
 was writing Isis, the assertions are of a different and 
 less mysterious kind. No " master" is so much as 
 hinted at, but there is John King, a materialised 
 spirit, the one friend whom Helena Petrovna loved 
 more than any one on earth, though she does not 
 particularly respect him, as he " often deceives and 
 talks twaddle, and it is impossible to rely on him". 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 259 
 
 She is gathering round her a few persons who are 
 engaged, as dilettanti, in the study of occultism on 
 the one hand and archaeology on the other. These 
 gentlemen have no small store of books on the sub- 
 jects which occupy them, books which are neither 
 rarities nor " uniques," but are mostly quite unknown 
 to the public, who till recently held occultism and 
 cabbalism in the greatest contempt. Madame Bla- 
 vatsky flings herself eagerly among these books, and 
 with the help of her friends determines to write a 
 book herself. 
 
 Her Isis, though not sold by booksellers in Russia, 
 is no secret ; it is easy to get it on order, and any 
 one who likes can find out for himself what sort of 
 a book it is. It is an American book, striving for 
 effect, and useful as a publication of speculation. It 
 is a compilation of various mystic and cabbalistic 
 writings, interspersed with occasional acute remarks 
 and polemical sallies, and sometimes also with fairly 
 violent abuse. There is no system in it, and on the 
 whole it is nothing but complete disorder, a real 
 hodge-podge. Any one, no doubt, who is entirely or 
 partially unacquainted with the subject will probably, 
 almost inevitably, think that the author possesses in 
 any case immense knowledge and learning. But 
 disenchantment soon follows on increasing ac- 
 quaintance with the literature of the subject and 
 the really learned students of occultism and 
 cabbalism. 
 
 None the less Isis remains the most surprising 
 and miraculous of Madame Blavatsky's "phenomena"; 
 for her power of grasping, compiling and writing 
 with giddy rapidity is amazing. She transformed 
 
26o 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 herself into a sort of automatic writing machine. 
 The letters from her which are in my possession 
 would themselves form a tolerably bulky volume, 
 and she corresponded with many others too. For 
 example, she would finish a chapter of Isis, put the 
 full stop, and then instantly set about a letter to St. 
 Petersburg, repeating with variations what she was 
 writing about. I give a short extract from her letter 
 of December i, 1875 : — 
 
 All phenomena are produced by currents of the 
 astral world or ether of the chemics. Think of 
 Plutarch's high priest of the Temple of Apollo, and 
 his oracular subterranean exhalations, under the in- 
 toxication of which the priestesses prophesied. All 
 the atmosphere about us is full of spirits of differ- 
 ent sorts. There is not a single vacant spot in the 
 world, for nature abhors a vacuum and nonentity, as 
 Hermes says.^ It is only possible to understand the 
 phenomena of our own time by studying the ancient 
 theurgists such as lamblichus. Porphyry, Plotinus 
 and others." 
 
 And in this style, without connexion or order, with 
 obvious blunders, skipping from one subject to another, 
 she fills an immense letter, nearly as much as a whole 
 sheet of print. Those who will may find exactly 
 the same in Isis, No ; though John dictated with 
 amazing rapidity, he easily got confused, for he was 
 
 ^ These last lines are taken straight out of Eliphas Levi, an 
 author whom she generally follows in preference to others. 
 This is quite intelligible ; he is the easiest of all, he is a popu- 
 lariser and writes in simple language. 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 261 
 
 not yet converted into the master," and had not 
 acquired his Thibetan wisdom.^ 
 
 Ten years later it would seem that the ''master" 
 refused his assistance in obtaining "uniques'". In 
 September, 1885, when H. P. Blavatsky was beginning 
 to write at Wiirzburg her Secret Doctrine, the supple- 
 ment to Isis which the theosophists rate even 
 higher, she was moving heaven and earth to obtain 
 the many volumes of J. E. de Mirville's work, then 
 out of print, Des esprits et de lenrs manifestations 
 diverses. She at length got the books, but by no 
 astral route ; they were brought from Russia by Miss 
 X. H. P. plunged headlong into them, and would on 
 no account allow me to see them. This puzzled me. 
 Before my return to Russia I obtained from the 
 bouquinistes of Paris the whole of Mirville, and satis- 
 fied myself that he had in fact rendered Madame 
 Blavatsky most important services. 
 
 But from what I have said it must not be con- 
 cluded that Madame Blavatsky did not at times hit 
 upon very profound and interesting thoughts, especi- 
 ally in her later works. The occult literature of all 
 times and nations, amid all sorts of rubbish and the 
 most extraordinary nonsense, indisputably contains 
 
 ^ It was natural, and indeed inevitable, that I, like many 
 others, should in the summer of 1884 be amazed at the amount 
 of knowledge and variety of subject to be found in Isis. At 
 that time I had but little acquaintance with the literature 
 which served as Madame Blavatsky's material. Since then I 
 have studied the works of various occultists and cabbalists, and 
 I see clearly, what any one may see, that the " learned " works 
 of Helena Petrovna are compilations, without any system, 
 chiefly from French sources. [See Appendix C. — W. L.] 
 
262 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 no little human wisdom. Helena Petrovna's splendid 
 memory retained everything, and if a truth expressed 
 by any one occurred to her, she knew sometimes how 
 to reproduce it with great clearness and simplicity, 
 and develop it with her real innate ability. 
 
 All depended on the subject and the moment. I 
 have alluded, in chapter xvii. of my narrative, to 
 the thoughts and aphorisms which were occasion- 
 ally uttered by Madame Blavatsky. Such thoughts, 
 even if one does not agree with them, cannot but in- 
 terest, not only the man in the street," but really 
 thoughtful people. Unfortunately it was but rarely 
 that she talked in this way ; for circumstances and 
 her character impelled her in private intercourse 
 to be almost always agitating herself, exclaiming, 
 wriggling and struggling with all her might. 
 
 Thus, after long and attentive observation, I came 
 to the conclusion that in its intellectual aspect her 
 powerful mind was of a passive and not of an active 
 kind. On this side she showed herself quite incapable 
 of independent creation, even in her most inspired 
 moments ; she only grasped and developed rapidly 
 the ideas of others. 
 
 And finally we must turn our attention to one 
 other circumstance. We may talk as much as we 
 like of woman's rights, we may make women into 
 judges, ministers or members of Parliament ; but 
 none the less woman remains as yet, by force of old 
 habit, in a privileged position, and men make much 
 smaller demands upon her than they do upon those 
 of their own sex. Only think. It is wonderful ! 
 Why, she is a woman ! Oh, she is a marvellous 
 woman for intellect and learning ! " While this 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 263 
 
 involuntary and unconscious attitude lasts, a really 
 impartial criticism is impossible. Even her male 
 competitors bow^ courteously before a lady, without 
 any sort of professional jealousy. 
 
 It is only thus that one can explain certain ex- 
 travagant eulogies of the theosophical w^ritings of 
 H. P. Blavatsky, w^hich appeared in the press of 
 Western Europe, from outsiders, and not from mem- 
 bers of her society. Unconscious courtesy to a ''lady 
 philosopher " is so pow^erful, that the authors of 
 these eulogies never thought how^ they were com- 
 promising their own learning in the eyes of sub- 
 sequent scholars, who would judge of Blavatsky's 
 writings without caring whether they were written by 
 a man, or by a woman inspired by the problematical 
 Mahatmas ". At best the panegyrists of Helena 
 Petrovna's ''learning" prove their imperfect ac- 
 quaintance with the literature of occultism, and with 
 the authors from whose writings the " modern 
 priestess of Isis " compiled without acknowledging 
 her indebtedness. 
 
 The more original and brilliant writings of H. P. 
 Blavatsky are those of another sort, where her ability 
 and rich fancy can display themselves in all their 
 force. I allude to the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan 
 and the Blue Mountains^ published under the pseu- 
 donym of Radda Bay, They were written in Russian 
 and have not been translated,^ and H. P. was in her 
 life-time very anxious that the English should not 
 
 ^ [An English translation of the Caves and Jungles was 
 published in 1892 and has been duly followed by the Blue 
 Mountains. — W. L.] 
 
264 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 learn their contents, as she wrote for Russian readers, 
 and was not sparing of ridicule and censure against 
 the Anglo-Indian Government and its representatives. 
 
 Both the Caves and the Blue Mountains have a right 
 to a respectable place in Russian literature, and it is 
 unfortunate that the separate edition published by 
 Mr. Katkoff is out of print and but little known. 
 Only, of course, the reader of the interesting narrative 
 of Radda Bay must look on them as romance and 
 fancy, and must on no account take on trust the 
 facts and statements given by the author. The most 
 bitter disenchantment awaits the too trustful reader. 
 
 But we must return to the new-born Theosophical 
 Society. H. P. Blavatsky wrote, as we have seen, 
 that it was founded '^for experimental comparison 
 between spiritualism and the magic of the ancients, 
 following literally the instructions of the old cabbalas, 
 Jewish and Egyptian". Now, two months later, 
 while speaking of a young medium of unusual power, 
 she says : As soon as he is better — the spirits have 
 been knocking him about — he will come to us and 
 we will try to test him at our meetings of the Theo- 
 sophical Society. Our society is a touchstone. That 
 is what it was founded for/' 
 
 This is something quite different ! It is easy to see 
 that theaimof the society wasnot yet revealed and that 
 it would only be revealed by further circumstances ; 
 in other words, by the requirements of the public. 
 Whatever there is a demand for will be supplied. 
 
 Still there is one misfortune : try to get out of it 
 as you may, it is impossible to conceal the com- 
 plete breach which has actually come about with 
 ''spiritism" or ''spiritualism". All apologies and 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 265 
 
 explanations are insufficient. The orthodox American 
 spiritists perceived at once that Blavatsky and Olcott 
 had ''deserted the cause," and started something 
 which was at present unexplained ; but which in any 
 case was new and even hostile. There followed 
 accordingly attacks on both of them, especially on 
 Madame Blavatsky, in the spiritist papers. On 
 December 6, 1875, H. P. wrote: — 
 
 All the spiritists even in England are disturbed 
 now about this Theosophical Society, because they 
 know that I hatched it ; but, if we had not hatched 
 it, we should never in our lives have thought of 
 interesting ourselves in spiritism or studying it. 
 And we have already got two learned professors as 
 members, from Boston ; several reverend clergymen 
 of divers colours, and many notabilities. It is the 
 same spiritualism, but under another name. Now 
 you will see if we shall not start the most learned 
 investigations. Our vice-treasurer, Newton, is a 
 millionaire, and president of the New York spiritual- 
 ists. But the spiritists do not understand their own 
 good. I have talked to them as much as I could — 
 but nothing of the sort ; it is heresy. And there is 
 another thing for which the public bears us a grudge : 
 the rules of the society are so strict that it is impos- 
 sible for a man who has been in the least mixed up 
 in any dirty matter to become a member. No free 
 lovers or atheists or positivists are admitted to the 
 society." 
 
 On this one really is inclined to exclaim : ^' Quand 
 le diable devient vieux, il se fait hermite ! " And 
 then, on the other hand, how often she used to de- 
 clare, both orally and in her letters, that a great 
 
266 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 multitude of rakes, libertines, swindlers, and all but 
 murderers had become members of the Theosophical 
 Society, and been turned into saints by the influence 
 of its foundress. It was her misfortune that, though 
 she possessed a remarkable memory, she always 
 used to forget what she had written even the day 
 before ; so that it is impossible to find two of her 
 letters in which one does not come across the most 
 curious contradictions at every step. 
 
 If the spiritists persecuted with ridicule the new 
 society founded by the schismatics, it was no more 
 than was to be expected in the nature of things. 
 But on the top of this came another trouble, which 
 drove into the background all similar vexations 
 and supplied material for several lengthy letters from 
 H. P. Blavatsky to her Russian correspondent. The 
 medium Home, now deceased, who was well known 
 even to us in Russia, accused Madame Blavatsky, 
 first in letters to various persons and then in print, 
 of being a fraudulent medium, on the ground of 
 Olcott's letters and books, and attacked her private 
 life, about which he had obtained information from 
 first-hand sources. All this was brought about 
 chiefly by the appearance in the Graphic and in Olcott's 
 book of the drawing of the medal and clasp brought 
 by the spirits to Helena Petrovna from the tomb of 
 her father, M. Hahn. Home showed with good 
 reason that it is not customary in Russia to put 
 orders of merit in the grave, and further that the 
 medal and clasp seemed to be creations of pure 
 fancy. 
 
 H. P. Blavatsky fell into just the same state of 
 mind as when ten years later she sent me her con- 
 
A Modern Priestess of I sis. 267 
 
 fession from Wiirzburg. She began to assure her 
 correspondent that this was another conspiracy," 
 and that Home was led to his calumnies " by his 
 vile jealousy of her medianic powers. While con- 
 tradicting herself in every line, and entangling her- 
 self in her own words, she tried to defend herself 
 about the medal, as well as about the clasp in the 
 form of a heart," and wrote : — 
 
 I was not at my father's funeral. But at this 
 moment the medal and clasp which were brought 
 me are hanging on my neck ; and at the stake, on 
 my death-bed, on the rack, I could say only one 
 thing : It is my father's clasp. The medal I do not 
 remember. Of the clasp I myself broke the end in 
 Rugodevo, and I have seen it a hundred times in my 
 father's hands. If it is not his clasp, then it must 
 be that the spirits are really devils, and can material- 
 ise what they like, and drive people out of their 
 senses. But I know that even if my father's prin- 
 cipal decorations were not buried with him, still, as 
 he always wore this medal, which he had received 
 for twenty-five years of service, and the one he had 
 for the Turkish War, even when he was retired and in 
 half-dress, it is likely that they would not take them 
 off him. After his death there were stories about 
 some money which he bequeathed to me, and of 
 which I never got half, and my younger sister never 
 writes to me at all. But I shall write to Markoff, 
 who was present at the funeral, and to my brother 
 at Stavropol, because I wish to know the truth. . . . 
 Every one heard the spirit's speech, forty persons 
 besides myself. So, then, it would seem that I had 
 laid some plot or other with the mediums ! Very 
 
268 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 well, let them think so. How on earth do I interfere 
 with Home ? I am not a medium, I never was and 
 never will be a professional one. I have devoted 
 my whole life to the study of the ancient cabbala 
 [no longer to spiritism, as she declared a short time 
 before] and occultism, the 'occult sciences'. I 
 really cannot, just because the devil got me into 
 trouble in my youth, go and rip up my stomach 
 now like a Japanese suicide in order to please the 
 mediums. My position is very cheerless.; simply 
 helpless. There is nothing left but to start for 
 Australia and change my name for ever." 
 
 And so on, and so on, through seven immense 
 letters, about forty closely-written pages of large- 
 sized paper. She repents and jeers blasphemously, 
 she tells such stories as any one else would have 
 kept secret, she drags in her friends and relations, 
 and declares that she has no ill-will and forgives 
 every one, and then suddenly tears off the mask of 
 kindness and good-nature, and shows the devil's 
 hoof. She declares that if Home does not hold his 
 tongue she will take every means to publish and 
 spread the most frightful and revolting stories about 
 him — and she explains moreover what they will be — 
 for she is bound to defend herself". 
 
 She wishes to frighten not only Home but those 
 who could influence him ; as her correspondent is 
 acquainted with them, she begs him to induce them 
 to stop Home and make him hold his tongue, else it 
 will be the worse for them too. In one word, it is 
 all exactly the same as in 1886; on the occasion of 
 my exposure of her, the same as what my readers 
 already know from her confession " ; only in those 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 269 
 
 days there were no Mahatmas and no theosophical 
 miracles on the stage. The rest is almost identical, 
 but even more magnificent. Her letters contain, too, 
 a touch of the comic ; thus, among fiery phrases of 
 despair, she quite unexpectedly honours Olcott with 
 the title not merely of ''ass," but of ''ass's grand- 
 father". 
 
 By the end of the summer of 1876 all these fumes 
 had at last subsided, and the atmosphere had grown 
 somewhat clearer. In her July letter is the follow- 
 ing curious passage : " I send you some cuttings 
 about the funeral (pagan, almost antique pagan) of 
 our member Baron de Palma. He has left all his 
 property to our society. Read what the papers say. 
 Before the funeral they laughed and joked at us, but 
 as soon as they saw it they quieted down. There 
 was nothing to laugh at, and they looked very silly." 
 
 The estate of this "pagan" baron, as appears 
 from statements enclosed in the letter of October 5, 
 1876, consisted of effects, "a good many rich silver 
 mines," and "17,000 acres of land". Madame 
 Blavatsky, however, hastens to explain that though 
 the mines may be rich there is no money to work 
 them, and that the land is good for nothing. None 
 the less we find the following information • " Eight 
 of us are preparing to set off for Thibet, Siam and 
 Cambodia ; but half of us are archaeologists, and 
 want to go first to Yucatan and Central America 
 generally to compare the Egyptian ruins with the 
 American ". In other words there is at any rate 
 enough on which to undertake this complicated and 
 immense journey. The bequest of the pagan baron 
 decided the further fate of the Theosophical Society. 
 
XXIX. 
 
 After Home's exposures Madame Blavatsky evi- 
 dently thought that nothing made any difference 
 now, and that it was useless to conceal the complete 
 change of front which had been executed by the 
 colonel and herself. The heresy rapidly passed into 
 complete contempt and hostility to spiritism. The 
 aim of the Theosophical Society was once more 
 changed, and there is no longer so much as a hint 
 of the comparative study of the phenomena of spirit- 
 ualism by the aid of the ''instructions of the Jewish 
 cabbala," or of any ''testing" of mediums. 
 
 Helena Petrovna had completely forgotten that 
 " all her life had been for many years wholly devoted 
 to spiritualism, and that to her last breath she would 
 preach the doctrine of Allan Kardec ". She now 
 wrote to her correspondent that " all her life had 
 been for many years devoted to the study of cabbal- 
 ism," etc., etc. The aim of the foundation of the 
 Theosophical Society was now declared to be archaeo- 
 logical investigation and the proof of the unity of 
 the oldest civilisation and religious beliefs in all 
 lands. 
 
 Feeling beneath her feet some solid ground, the 
 firmest stratum of which was, of course, the bequest 
 of the pagan baron, and going by the experience of 
 her life, Madame Blavatsky made up her mind that 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 271 
 
 the more assurance, impudence, and contempt for 
 men were shown, the more probable was success. 
 She at once declared herself erudite, an expert in 
 antiquities of all sorts, and versed in the very depths 
 of occultism. 
 
 She sends her correspondent a whole extempore 
 lecture, dazzling with the fireworks of her suddenly- 
 red-hot erudition. She continually abandons her 
 incorrect Russian in favour of English or Fjrench, 
 according to the sources from which she is making 
 her hasty translation. Here is a specimen of this 
 lecture : — 
 
 "... Last year when I wrote an essay on the 
 identity of the ancient symbols and religion of Egypt 
 and Assyria with the cults of the Aztecs and Quiches 
 as described by Brasseur de Bourbourg and Herrera 
 the Spanish historian, all the archaeologists attacked 
 me and accused me of fancifulness. But I have 
 myself seen in Palanca and Uxman vaults with 
 triangular arches sans clef de voute (excuse my for- 
 getting the Russian phrase) ; this sort of architec- 
 ture is to be found only in the oldest ancient temples 
 of Egypt, and in Nagkon Wat and Angkor, in Siam 
 and Cambodia ; the ruins of the latter country puzzle 
 all the learned societies, who have all racked their 
 brains with every sort of hypothesis but the right 
 one, which is that dans les ages archaiques, how many 
 thousands of years ago we do not know, but certainly 
 before the Mosaic epoch, both the Aryan and Semitic 
 tribes (in short, before the separation of these 
 nations) belonged to one and the same religion, the 
 same which still survives only amid the adepts des 
 Sciences Occultes, And now it is turning out as I 
 
272 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 said. Lord Dufferin, Gouverneur- General de Canada, 
 discovered in British Columbia an Indian tribe 
 hitherto almost unknown, which lives in a village, 
 vieille de plusieurs siecles, and all built of the remains 
 of the most magnificent temples, columns, porticoes, 
 etc. Well then ? The sculpture is precisely the 
 same as in the temples of Egypt, sphinxes, winged 
 bulls as in Assyria, snakes, and finally the god Thoth 
 or Tot (Hermes), with the hawk's head ! I long ago 
 pointed out the strange fact that the descendants of 
 the Quiches in Mexico call themselves snakes. ^ We 
 are snakes, sons of the wise serpents,' they say. And 
 thus too other tribes called themselves, the Canaan- 
 ites and Medians, i.e,, those of them who were con- 
 secrated to the mysteries of the temples, les inities de 
 la toute [sic ; haute ?] Theurgie, as the father of Moses' 
 wife for instance, Reuel, or Jethro the Midianite, 
 who instructed him in magic. ' Snakes' holes ' was 
 the name given to the underground passages which 
 served as the home of the mysteries of the temple, 
 and were known only to the consecrated adepts ; 
 cryptes des couleiivres, as Champollion Figeac calls 
 them. Hieroglyphs, pyramids, les Cenocephales, 
 sacred apes, crocodiles, rites, adoration of the sun as 
 the visible symbol of the invisible Godhead, all this 
 Egyptian and Chaldean antiquity you will find in 
 Central and North America, and much of it also in 
 the esoteric rites of the Buddhist mystics. When 
 Wrangel shov/ed the world of science the possibility 
 — or rather probability — that the Indians and 
 Mexicans found by Cortes in America are the de- 
 scendants of emigrants from Europe and Asia, and 
 of the Tartar tribes of Siberia who had crossed from 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 273 
 
 one continent to the other by Behring Straits, 
 they actually laughed at him ; but now it turns out 
 that he was partially right. All popular legends 
 point to this. But the Indians of British Columbia, 
 the owners of the Egyptian sphinxes and other 
 symbols, have yet another tradition. They positively 
 say that their ancestors flew over the ocean on 
 birds with wings (ships with sails, as I under- 
 stand it) and that each of these birds had on its 
 breast the face of the wife of the ' Great Spirit,' 
 Dida, as they call her. Now can we help recognis- 
 ing in this Dida Dido, whose name was in different 
 nations Astarte or Venus or Dido or Elissa or 
 Anaitis or Artemis or Al-iza, the goddess of the 
 now Mahometan Mecca ? Dido was as you know 
 not a living queen, but a mere myth, the idol of the 
 goddess Astarte, the unfailing attribute of every 
 Phenician ship ; they usually fixed her head sur la 
 proue du vaisseau. And the Phenicians were them- 
 selves the ancestors of the Jews of Palestine in 
 the opinion of Herodotus and more modern his- 
 torians. Finally the Phenicians are the same as 
 the Canaanites who fled before the warrior Joshua, 
 son of Nun, and passed through the Columns of 
 Hercules, on which according to the historians 
 there was an inscription saying : ' Nous sommes les 
 fils de ceux qui fuirent devant le brigand Jesus, fils 
 de Nave '. This is stated by Procopius the historian 
 and St. Augustine (de Bello Vandalo). That is, 
 they who fled and escaped to America are the 
 Hivites or les Heveens, descendants de Heth, fils 
 de Chanoon, However, all this is my own particular 
 speculation, and archaeologists are of a different 
 
 18 
 
274 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 opinion. I am writing you all this without knowing 
 if it interests you. But you wish to know how we 
 are employed at our sittings. You see it is in 
 archgeological investigations, which explain the 
 identity of symbols of all ancient peoples. From 
 symbols it is not far to the ' medicine men ' of all 
 Indian tribes, i.e., the same adepts in magic — 
 quoique degeneres — as in ancient Egypt and modern 
 India, with its Lamas and fakirs, whom Jaccoliot 
 describes, and the ' Art Magic We are getting 
 at the roots of everything. A given symbol for ex- 
 ample means so and so, and belongs to such and 
 such a divinity, Jupiter for example ; Jupiter in 
 each of his transformations, as the ' Descender ' in 
 the form of rain, undoubtedly typifies some one 
 force of Nature, whether known to the science 
 of to-day, or still unknown (the latter is much the 
 most usual). Each such force, ' a cosmic force or 
 power,' if it was once raised to a symbol by the 
 ancients, shows that its nature or quality was known 
 to them. The symbol dans le sens exoterique etait 
 livre a la masse ignorente et se trouve traits dans 
 notre siecle (si savant mon Dieu !) de superstition : 
 mais les inities les pretres de I'odyte et de sanctuaire 
 connaissaient bien sa valeur reelle ; ils savaient ce 
 que cette force naturelle et physique contenait de 
 mysterieux et d'occulte dans ses diverses combinai- 
 sons, ce que les savants de nos jours ignorent et 
 regrettent par consequence." ^ 
 
 ^ [In this, as in some other cases, I have followed the some- 
 what eccentric French orthography and accentuation of the 
 printed text. Whether Madame Blavatsky is responsible for 
 it or not I do not know. — W. L.] 
 
A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 275 
 
 Further on H. P. Blavatsky declares that she has 
 fathomed the secret of Simon the Magian, and that 
 it is not at all hard to rise from the earth and fly. 
 
 Good gracious, are you now wondering if I have 
 gone entirely out of my mind ? Yet so it is. I an- 
 nounced this law — a purely physical one— to our mem- 
 bers, and proved to them besides, by facts, that it is 
 so. With an electrical battery and a powerful current 
 we first ascertained by a well-known process what 
 sort of magnetism there was in the carpet of the 
 room ; we electrified a cat, and it rose up several 
 inches. It was then, in spite of my warnings, elec- 
 trified more powerfully, and of course the poor cat 
 suddenly expired." 
 
 Though I have not myself carried out any experi- 
 ments of the sort, I venture to think that it was quite 
 needless to begin by first ascertaining by a well- 
 known process what sort of magnetism there was in 
 the carpet of the room," and that the only cause for 
 wonder is that the unfortunate cat only rose a few 
 inches, and did not jump right up to the ceiling, be- 
 fore expiring. I do not know; perhaps Helena Pet- 
 rovna did at one time rise into the air like Simon the 
 Magian ; but I can bear witness that ten years later, 
 in the " Wiirzburg period," she had completely lost 
 the power and forgotten her secret. In the tortures 
 of her terrible rheumatism, poor woman, she often 
 could not raise so much as her hand. 
 
 After this letter there was a long pause of some 
 nine months, but the interesting journey had not yet 
 been undertaken. Evidently Madame Blavatsky and 
 the colonel were living at their ease in New York, 
 and they had business on hand. Before weighing 
 
276 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 anchor and quitting America for a long time, perhaps 
 for ever, it was of course essential to realise the estate 
 of the ''pagan baron," and to turn his silver mines and 
 land into money. The theosophists little by little 
 grew interested in Buddhism, and turned their hands 
 to soul-saving". On June 15, 1877, Madame Bla- 
 vatsky writes from New York : — 
 
 '' Our theosophists (the local ones) are bound in 
 general not only not to take a drop of drink, but to fast 
 continually as well. I am teaching them not to eat 
 anything ; if they do not die, they will learn ; but 
 they cannot hold out, so much the better for them. 
 They are setting off straight for Nirvana, and we 
 shall cremate them solemnly with pagan ceremony. 
 There is Judge, who has simply become a holy Ar- 
 hat. He sees visions and he flies ; and he asserts 
 that he passes out of the body every night and roams 
 in infinite space. I ring a bell in Forty-seventh Street, 
 in my room, and he hears it at Brooklyn, eight miles 
 off ; he starts off at once, and in two hours he ap- 
 pears at my call." 
 
 Here she is herself laughing at it all, and unable 
 to refrain from ridicule in a letter to her compatriot : 
 '' See what fools they are, and how I lead them by 
 the nose ! " 
 
 On October 2, 1877, she announces the appearance 
 of her Isis. Well, my book has appeared at last. 
 My darling was born last Saturday, September 
 29, but a week before my publisher had sent early 
 copies to all the papers, and I enclose herewith the 
 review of the A^. Y. Herald, When I read it I al- 
 most fainted. I was prepared for abuse of every 
 sort, and lo, here is such praise, and that from one 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 277 
 
 of the most conservative and catholic of papers. 
 Look at the last paragraph, w^here it says that ' Isis 
 Unveiled is one of the remarkable productions of the 
 century '.^ Perhaps they will abuse it yet, but all the 
 same the w^hole first edition (1000 copies) has been 
 sold in tw^o days, and the subscribers are obliged to 
 wait another week, till the second edition appears. 
 And the book is handsomely got up, two huge volumes 
 with a beautiful gilt back, on which Lsis unveiled 
 sits astride. And I am quite proud of the index. It 
 was made for me by Professor Wilder, our vice- 
 president and a famous American archaeologist. . . . 
 We have now a multitude of corresponding fellows 
 in India, and we are proposing next year to set off 
 for Ceylon and to settle there, as the head-quarters 
 of our society. I have received the rank of ' Arch 
 Auditor' from the principal masonic lodge in India. 
 It is the most ancient of the masonic lodges, and is 
 said to have been in existence B.C." 
 
 But it was not all laurels. In her letter of 
 November 6, 1877, H. P. Blavatsky complains that 
 many papers, judging, it would seem, only by the 
 binding and table of contents, accused her of " dis- 
 seminating transcendental nonsense, and some of 
 them, in the American fashion, call her a fool out- 
 
 ^ This extraordinary opinion of the Herald is perhaps ex- 
 plained by the fact that in America everything is sold, press 
 puffs more than anything. There is actually said to be a 
 regular tariff for them. Or how could a Catholic paper praise 
 a book which contains the most desperate attacks and abuse 
 against the Catholic religion ? [But it is to be supposed that 
 Madame Blavatsky used the word "catholic" in a general, 
 not in a religious sense. — W, L.j 
 
278 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 right To one of the editors she writes : Olcott 
 all but gave a smack in the face ; but what good 
 would that do ? " 
 
 She was terribly agitated also by another matter ; 
 Home's book had appeared, in which he did not 
 stand on any ceremony, but related some extremely 
 eloquent facts about her various frauds. She writes: 
 " It is for this that I am going for ever to India,^ and 
 for very shame and vexation I want to go where no 
 one will know my name. Home's malignity has 
 ruined me for ever in Europe. He must have 
 written some nice things, when his wife was obliged 
 to write to Mr. Martheze in London not to pay any 
 attention to her husband's letters, as he was otct of 
 his mind!'^ As for Home's book, Olcott and I, far 
 from having read it, have never so much as set eyes 
 on it. Before it appeared Olcott vowed never to 
 open it, and he has kept his vow. He has had 
 several proposals to answer it, and one of the 
 publishers of the London Athenceum has written to 
 him suggesting that he should reply to it point by 
 point in his review. But Olcott has refused." ^ 
 
 ^ So she goes to India for ever not for the sake of the Theo- 
 sophical Society, but on account of Home's stories ! 
 
 -Of course Home's wife never wrote anything of the sort, 
 and Madame Blavatsky invented it on the spot. It thus 
 appears that the habit of declaring those who exposed her to 
 be out of their minds was an old one with Helena Petrovna 
 (see chapter xxiv.). 
 
 ^ Of course when it is impossible to refute a direct and 
 detailed accusation, it is best to stop one's ears and hold one's 
 tongue, even when the papers offer their columns for a reply. 
 But the inimitable Helena Petrovna could talk about it so 
 innocently ! 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 279 
 
 After this H. P. Blavatsky's letters cease for more 
 than eighteen months. Then took place the migra- 
 tion of the theosophists to India. Olcott, the man 
 of business, had evidently succeeded in turning into 
 money the silver mines and land of Baron de Palma. 
 Helena Petrovna turned up in Bombay, where she 
 - established for a time the ''head-quarters of the 
 Theosophical Society". But this v^as not enough; 
 she decided to publish the Theosophist, and writes 
 from Bombay on July 16, 1879, enclosing a printed 
 announcement of it in big capitals. 
 
 Have you forgotten us ? Permit me to remind 
 you of the orphans who are now happily settled in 
 Bombay, amid the wonder-working sunnyas and 
 fakirs, yogis and cobras. As for psychology, our 
 paper knocks all the spiritual journals into a cocked 
 hat. Am I never to have one little line more from 
 you ? Colonel Olcott sends his most respectful com- 
 pliments. Be so good as to let me know if I can send 
 the paper to you in Russia without an envelope, in 
 a simple wrapper. As you see, there is not a word 
 of politics in it, it is all about philosophy, psychology 
 and metaphysics. Lord ! What a land of wonders 
 this is ! If you only knew ! Is there not by any 
 chance one of your papers in St. Petersburg that 
 wants articles from India ? I could write them off 
 so as to give satisfaction. Be so generous as to let 
 me know. Surely I read in the Russky Vyestnik that 
 they want some information about the Indian 
 religions ? And here I am, as you see by the 
 prospectus, surrounded by representatives of every 
 conceivable religion. We have now 74,000 members 
 of the Theosophical Society and the Arya Somaj. I 
 
28o 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 am just back from Rajputana and the North-west 
 Provinces ; I have travelled on elephants, penetrated 
 
 into secret pagodas, and But there are no 
 
 words adequately to express my emotions/' 
 
 In her letter of October i8, 1879, she is in the 
 same bold self-confident humour: ''Here we are 
 with four months of monsoon, in rain and hot steam 
 with it. The rain pours from above, and the steam 
 rises from below, so the dampness and moisture are 
 inconceivable. Scorpions and centipedes in particular 
 have got the upper hand, and we have a tolerable 
 quantity of cobras in the garden. And so you must 
 continually read 'mantras' as an exorcism, and it is 
 impossible to live here without magic. It is only 
 the astrologists, alchemists and magi of our society 
 that save us from destruction. Still we are living 
 and even thriving. Shall I not send you a ' mantra ' 
 against fever and all other sicknesses and misfor- 
 tunes ? But then you are orthodox ; it would not 
 take with you. All the famous Sanskritists and 
 pandits of India are writing for our paper, as you 
 see." 
 
 Further on H. P. Blavatsky announces that she 
 has sent Katkoff " a huge article " (the first five 
 chapters) of notes on India. This " huge article " 
 turned out to be the beginning of her From the 
 Caves and Jungles of Hindostan, The manuscript 
 was corrected, so far as mistakes and inaccuracy of 
 language were concerned, and put in order, and soon 
 appeared in the pages of the Russky Vyestnik. 
 
 What followed presents no particular points of 
 interest, and the correspondence soon ceased alto- 
 gether. But the real history of the rise of the 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 281 
 
 Theosophical Society is now established by docu- 
 ments in the face of which all the propagandists and 
 supporters of the theosophical legend must needs 
 " set the seal of silence on their lips ". It is Helena 
 Petrovna Blavatsky who has herself involuntarily 
 and ingenuously set before us the actual truth. 
 Without reference to any secondary evidence, we 
 have heard from herself how, "from the year 1863, 
 she had given her whole life to spiritism," and how 
 in America she was the most zealous of its defenders; 
 and how too, when the question of the morsel of 
 bread " arose, she deserted the doctrine which she 
 had proclaimed the " only truth," and set about 
 inventing something new, by which she could attract 
 the interest of the public. We have followed all the 
 early phases of the Theosophical Society. 
 
 Later on all is perfectly clear, even from printed 
 sources. When in 1884 Madame Blavatsky, Olcott 
 and Mohini came, or were sent, to Europe, they 
 appeared with cunning, and declared that their 
 society was purely scientific, and occupied only 
 with the investigation of Oriental learning" ; that 
 it not only did not wound, but profoundly respected 
 the beliefs of its members, to whatever religion they 
 belonged. This they declared in print, in their 
 regulations. 
 
 But, apart from the fraudulent phenomena pro- 
 duced by Madame Blavatsky, the Theosophical 
 Society shockingly deceived those who joined it as 
 members, in reliance on the regulations. It gradu- 
 ally grew evident that it was no universal scientific 
 brotherhood, to which the followers of all religions 
 might with a clear conscience belong, but a group 
 
282 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 of persons who had begun to preach in their organ, 
 the Theosophist, and in their other pubHcations, a 
 mixed rehgious doctrine. Finally, in the last years 
 of Madame Blavatsky's life, even this doctrine gave 
 place to a direct and open propaganda of the most 
 orthodox exoteric Buddhism, under the motto of 
 
 Our Lord Buddha," combined with incessant 
 attacks on Christianity. 
 
 All this was brought about by degrees, amid dense 
 folds of mist, under the fireworks of Madame Bla- 
 vatsky's fraudulent marvels, surrounded by various 
 scandalous histories and the mysterious whispers of 
 duped and hysterical ladies and gentlemen. 
 
 In 1875 Olcott, an American spiritist, was sitting 
 on the heaps of unsold copies" of his work on the 
 marvels of the Eddy brothers, and the world-wide 
 impostor Madame Blavatsky, in her own words, 
 
 could not find any one to quarrel with, and could 
 not do without a morsel of bread". Now, in 1893, 
 as the direct effect of this cause, we see an entire 
 religious movement, we see a prosperous and grow- 
 ing plantation of Buddhism in Western Europe. 
 
 Whence then came the possibility of success for 
 such a cause, founded on fancy, falsehood and 
 deceit ? Olcott might have been a hundred times 
 more energetic, Madame Blavatsky a hundred times 
 more able and more sympathetic in her manners to 
 her friends : yet, sow as they might, they would 
 have seen no rich harvest, had the seed not fallen 
 on fruitful ground prepared to receive it. It follows 
 that the gist of the matter lies in the soil, and no- 
 thing but analysis of the soil can solve the riddle and 
 give the answer to every question, 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 283 
 
 There was published not long ago a new book by 
 the well-known Max Nordau, entitled Entartung 
 (Degeneration). In this book the able author ex- 
 amines many of the abnormalities of modern society, 
 dissolute, nervous, psychopathic and hysterical as it 
 is. Among other things he says that there is no 
 conviction attained by health}/ mental labour which 
 can dominate the whole being of man with the same 
 force as mania. One who suffers from mania or 
 delirium can be convinced by nothing. He charges 
 straight ahead, forgetting even the instinct of self- 
 preservation. , He thus becomes a powerful force to 
 which persons of weak and unbalanced mind submit 
 against their will. This idea of Nordau's is con- 
 firmed by various long-known observations of col- 
 lective mania, which is especially striking among 
 persons of nervous habit, particularly women, in 
 convents and close educational establishments. 
 
 The same author goes on to adduce a remarkable 
 case which he quotes from Goncourt's JonrnaL It 
 appears that in Paris in 1870 a crowd of ten thousand 
 persons " saw and read with their own eyes " a tele- 
 gram announcing a victory of the French over the 
 Germans. This telegram, at which all fingers 
 pointed, was, as all were convinced, posted on one 
 of the columns of a hall in the Paris Bourse. There 
 was in fact no telegram whatever ; it was only an 
 hallucination. There are not a few cases where 
 crowds have been inspired with such false ideas. 
 
 Hysterical persons are very apt to yield to a con- 
 viction of the unusual merits of any chance book, 
 and even to see in it beauties which were not sus- 
 pected either by the author or by those who have 
 
284 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 laboured for his glorification. If a new sect has 
 any success, it gathers adherents chiefly among the 
 hysterical who are susceptible of suggestion. Young 
 people seeking a path swell the crowd, supposing 
 that the true path is there. The weak-minded who 
 fear more than anything that they may be considered 
 behind the age, join the ranks, and loudly extol the 
 new celebrity. Would-be youthful age, anxious to 
 conceal its years, crawls to the new temple, and 
 chants with quavering voice the hymn of the faithful, 
 hoping to renew its youth amid the young. All the 
 crowd, united by its common sickness, its vanity and 
 its cupidity, shouts and thunders far more powerfully 
 than an incomparably larger number of healthy men, 
 who enjoy calmly and without selfish ends the crea- 
 tions of healthy genius. 
 
 This view of Max Nordau's seems very applicable 
 to the problem of the great success of the Theo- 
 sophical Society. Such a success for such a cause 
 can flourish only on soil watered by morbid exhala- 
 tions, among people truly degenerate and at the same 
 time unconsciously exhausted by profound and tor- 
 turing unbelief. When faith vanishes from among 
 men, its place is inevitably taken by superstitions of 
 every sort. The weariness of unbelief, working on 
 the degenerate organism, leads on fatally to the 
 fanaticism of superstition, of all fanaticism the most 
 cruel, the most senseless and the most gloomy ; for 
 it indicates the existence in society of a serious and 
 quickly spreading infection. 
 
APPENDIX A, 
 
 ABSTRACT OF PAMPHLET ENTITLED: 
 
 ^^H. P. BLAVATSKY AND A MODERN 
 PRIEST OF TRUTH. 
 
 "Reply of Madame Y to Mr. Vs. Solovyoff." 
 
 By MADAME VERA JELIHOVSKY.^ 
 1. 
 
 [Madame Jelihovsky announces at once that she is the 
 Madame Y of the Modern Priestess of Isis, and that she 
 sees no reason why the fact should be concealed.] 
 
 In the first place Mr. Solovyoff has no right to write 
 about Madame Blavatsky at all, for he knew very little of 
 her. His whole acquaintance with her covered only six 
 weeks in Paris, as much at Wurzburg, and a few days at 
 Elberfeld. And further, his ignorance of English made 
 him incapable of studying her theosophical writings, the 
 whole of which were, with the exception of Isis Unveiled, 
 at that time untranslated. 
 
 His admission that he purposely "exaggerated his ignor- 
 ance of Enghsh " is in itself a proof of his Jesuitical char- 
 acter. 
 
 ^ [In the"following abridgment I have, for clearness' sake, generally 
 retained the first person used by Madame Jelihovsky ; but it will of 
 course be understood that I do not reproduce her style, much less her 
 exact words. — W. L.] 
 
286 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 II. 
 
 Mr. Solovyoff's statement that the phenomena are indis- 
 solubly bound up with theosophy " is quite untrue. I my- 
 self have never laid any weight on these phenomena, though 
 I have always admitted my sister's high gifts in the way of 
 psychical powers, such as clairvoyance, psychometry, thought- 
 reading, and so on. Indeed, most of those who are now 
 the chief supporters of theosophy, Mrs. Besant, Professor 
 Bockh, Fullerton, Eyton, etc., have never seen any pheno- 
 mena. Hartmann's Talki?ig Image of Urrur^ which 
 Madame Blavatsky reprinted in Lucifer, is a satire on those 
 who think that phenomena are of the essence of theosophy. 
 The best of the theosophical workers and writers hold that 
 the indiscreet stories of Olcott, Sinnett, Juds^e to some 
 extent, and other adherents of the phenomenal side of 
 theosophy, have done much to hurt the cause. Indeed^ 
 Madame Blavatsky herself used to speak of the phenomena 
 learnt from Indian fakirs as " psychological tricks 
 
 Mr. Solovyoff expressly attributes to me opinions which 
 I do not hold. For instance, he represents me as declaring 
 that Madame Blavatsky's writings were dictated to her by 
 her mysterious master. A.ny one who will take the trouble 
 to refer to my articles in the Russkoe Odozrenie ior 1891 will 
 see that I did not believe in this dictation ; I stood out 
 against the idea, in serious fear for my sister's reason, and 
 expressed my disbelief openly to herself. She wrote me a 
 letter beginning with the words : " I know you do not 
 believe that I tell you the real truth about my masters. 
 You think they are myths," and so on. 
 
 III. 
 
 Why does the author of this fin de siecle epic not give the 
 least hint to his readers that I was not the only person who 
 wrote to the papers about phenomena, but that he too did 
 
Appendix. 
 
 287 
 
 some correspondence — and how eloquently ! Those who 
 will may convince themselves of this by turning to the 
 July I, 1884 number of the Rebus, where they will find an 
 article by Mr. Solovyofif under the title of "An Interesting 
 Phenomenon This is one of the forgotten facts which I 
 can recall to his memory by an extract from a letter of his 
 to my sister in London, in 1884 : — 
 
 [A.]^ 
 
 " Paris, Rue Pergolese, August 6-18, 1884. 
 
 "... Alea jada est — my letter in the Rebus has already 
 raised a considerable storm, and I am beginning to be over- 
 whelmed with questions : ' What ? How ? Can it be ? ' 
 . . . Ma ligne de conduite est trade — and you must know 
 it. I am not afraid of ridicule, I am indifferent to the 
 titles of fool, madman, etc. But why do you renounce 
 me? ... I cannot think that any 'master' (Mahatma) 
 has told you that you have made a mistake, and that I am 
 not necessary to you." 
 
 So Mr. Solovyoff used to be afraid that Madame Blavat- 
 sky would listen to her " masters " when they began to say 
 that he was not necessary to the society. Curious ! But 
 in the course of time he seems to have forgotten the cir- 
 cumstance ; though when he hkes he is able to give verbal 
 reports of conversations of the same date. 
 
 On p. 30 ff. he gives a list of every one who, in his idea, 
 visited H. P. Blavatsky in Paris, and gives the exact number 
 as thirty-one. But why does he think that everybody must 
 take on trust his statistical lists ? Did he act as my sister's 
 concierge^ and take the names of those who went in and 
 out? 
 
 I lived in my sister's house all the time she was in Paris, 
 
 ^[I have thus distinguished the different letters for the sake of 
 subsequent reference. — W. L.] 
 
288 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 and wrote a diary every day ; but I know that I did not 
 put in it all the names of her visitors, and could not under- 
 take to count them up. I only know for certain that there 
 was a continual stream of visitors. How can an outsider — 
 who, though he called, it is true, almost every day, still did 
 not sit whole days in our sitting-room — keep an account and 
 sum up the total ? 
 
 Mr. Solovyoff quotes on p. 33 a letter from Charles 
 Richet (written evidently after the trouble brought about 
 among the handful of Paris theosophists by Madame 
 de Morsier in consequence of her belief in some false 
 information given her by Mr. Solovyoff), in which he 
 expresses his disbeUef in Madame Blavatsky and her cause, 
 or rather her phenomena. But this is what Mr. Solovyoff 
 himself says about Richet, in one of his letters to her. 
 
 [The following letter is given by Madame Jelihovsky in 
 separate parts, only the middle portion being quoted here. 
 I have thought it better to give the whole letter at once in 
 its entirety. — W. L.] 
 
 [B.] 
 
 " Paris, Oct. 8, 1885. 
 
 Dear Helena Petrovna, 
 
 " Which is the better, to write at random, or to hold 
 one's tongue and work for the good of one's correspondent? 
 ... I have made friends with Madame Adam, and talked a 
 great deal to her about you ; I have greatly interested her, and 
 she has told me that her Revue is open not only to theo- 
 sophy but to a defence of yourself personally if necessary. 
 I praised up Madame de Morsier to her, and at the same 
 time there was another gentleman there who spoke on your 
 behalf in the same tone, and Madame Adam wished to 
 make acquaintance with Madame de Morsier, who will 
 remain in Paris as the official means of communication 
 between me and the Nouvelle Revue. Yesterday the meet- 
 
Appendix. 
 
 289 
 
 ing of the two ladies took place ; our Emilie was quite in 
 raptures. ... In any case this is very good. To-day I 
 passed the morning with Richet, and again talked a great 
 deal about you, in connexion with Myers and the Psychical 
 Society. I can say positively that I convinced Richet of the 
 reality of your personal power and of the phenomena which 
 proceed fr 0771 you. He put me three questions categorically. 
 To the first two I answered affirmatively ; with respect to 
 the third I said that I should be in a position to answer 
 affirmatively, without any trouble, in two or three months. 
 But I do not doubt that I shall answer affirmatively, and 
 then, you will see ! there will be such a triumph that all 
 the psychists will be wiped out. . . . Yes, so it will be ; 
 for you did not treat me as a doll? ... I start the day 
 after to-morrow for St. Petersburg. . . . What will happen ? 
 
 ^'Your cordially devoted 
 
 Vs. SOLOVYOFF.'' 
 
 This letter was written on October 8, 1885 ; that is to 
 say, at a time when Mr. Solovyoff knew as well as he does 
 now all the frauds and malice of the thief of souls," whom 
 he had long been trying to convict and disarm, so as to 
 appear as the self-denying saviour of the innocent souls of 
 the Parisians, on which she had seized. But how does it 
 happen that he tries to corrupt the innocent soul of Profes- 
 sor Richet by confirming him in the deadly errors against 
 which, by his own account, he had already, in the autumn 
 of 1884, arrayed himself with the breastplate and helmet 
 of Don Quixote ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 In chapter v. Mr. Solovyoff enters a region of pure im- 
 agmation. But it is true that when Mr. Solovyoff began 
 to tell me of his sorrows and the injustice of the world 
 towards him, I sympathised with him, and more than once 
 
 19 
 
A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 tried to prevent his losing his head ; trusting to his 
 honour (?) I even allowed riiyself to make statements 
 which, perhaps, I had no right to make. 
 
 I never concealed my mistrust of the miraculous side of 
 my sister's work ; I told her so openly, and at this time, 
 ignorant of much which I afterwards learnt, I was in many 
 ways unjust to her and those who were about her. I should, 
 of course, have been more reticent in my admissions, had 
 I foreseen that he would make use of my friendly confi- 
 dence, not for his own profit only, but as a weapon against 
 myself and my family, and endeavour to sow discord between 
 us by revealing it. 
 
 Of the falsifications in the accounts of the two pheno- 
 mena in chapters v. and vi. I shall dwell on one phrase 
 only. Speaking of the phenomenon of the letter he says : 
 The letter was then handed to Miss X through the open 
 door". This is untrue. And Mr. Solovyoff must know it; 
 else he would not have been the first to describe the pheno- 
 menon in the Rebus (July i, 1884), oi" to sign the minutes, 
 which were drawn up on the spot by Madame de Morsier, 
 and which I still have, signed by himself and others. If the 
 letter had been for an instant taken from the table in the 
 parlour, to which it was brought not by Babula but by the 
 postman^ Mr. Solovyoff would have had a right to express 
 his doubts ; the strength of the case lies in the fact that the 
 letter was not passed through the door, but that Miss X 
 came into the room and there opened the letter in the 
 presence of us all. Mr. Solovyoff himself wrote in the Rebus : 
 "The circumstances under which the phenomenon took 
 place, and the small details which I observed, do not admit 
 
 1 [This statement, italicised by Madame Jelihovsky, is directly 
 contradicted by the minutes, as given in Sinnett's Incidents in the 
 Life of Madame Blavatsky, p. 269 : "The servant who answered the 
 bell was seen to take the letter from the postman and bring it to 
 us ". The minutes do not say how Miss X received the letter. — W. L.] 
 
Appendix. 
 
 2gi 
 
 of the least doubt as to its genuineness and reality. There 
 can be no question of deceit or trickery/' 
 
 As for the phenomenon of the locket, I transcribe the 
 following from my diary : " When I told Vsevolod 
 Sergyeevich of the wonderful disappearance of my feuilleton 
 from Helena's scrap-book [a third phenomenon of which he 
 - has now nothing to say], he declared to me that he could 
 not understand what I was so suri)rised at. 'If,' he said, 
 ' w^hat we saw yesterday evening was possible — the trans- 
 ference, disappearance and reappearance of the portraits — 
 then anything is possible, and 1 shall never be surprised at 
 anything more. Are you not ashamed of thus mistrusting 
 your sister and your own eyes? You will see that you will 
 be punished for your want of faith.' " 
 
 I had left before Olcott's return, and thus did not see the 
 end of the phenomenon of the portraits. I did not know 
 that he buried the portrait in his garden, and I much 
 doubt if he really did ; for I find that he says at the same 
 time that I tried to persuade him to write about the pheno- 
 menon, and this I know I never did. How could I have 
 done so, when I had great doubts myself as to the marvel- 
 lousness of the phenomena? But what I did hear with 
 my own ears, what I recorded in the Odessa Vyestmk, of 
 which I sent him a copy at the time, was his own exclama- 
 tions of admiration at the " floating balls of fire". All these 
 wonderful appearances may be the fruit of his creative 
 fancy" ; but they are none of mine. 
 
 It is true that he recently sent me the portrait of my 
 sister; it was accompanied with a proposal that I should 
 return him all his letters to me and to my sister, and a pro- 
 mise that if I did so he would not mention my name in the 
 articles he was then writing for the Russky Vyestnik. 
 
 What a multitude of superfluous words Mr. Solovyoff has 
 put in my mouth, when describing in chap. vi. our walk in 
 Paris, yet what a multitude of details he has forg(jtten to men- 
 
292 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 tion when speaking of himself ! I could not have complained 
 that my sister was urging me to write about the phenomena, 
 for nothing of the sort was ever true. I wrote and shall 
 write about her and her cause, not so much about the phe- 
 nomena as about theosophy in general, only of my own 
 good pleasure, and not from any external influences. 
 
 I find from my diary that no one was so urgent for secret 
 audiences" with my sister as Mr. Solovyoff. Of this he does 
 not say one word. He used to besiege her with requests to 
 admit him to her knowledge of particularly convincing phe- 
 nomena. My sister used to complain that she did not know 
 what to do with him. It was in consequence of what she 
 said that I tried to make him give up his vain attempts, 
 while honestly admitting that I was far from believing in 
 everything, and that I considered that my sister was 
 damaging both the cause and herself in permitting her 
 ardent admirers to proclaim aloud her wonder-working " 
 power. 
 
 What he says in chap. viii. about Babula is evidently a 
 later invention, founded on the untrustworthy statements 
 of Hodgson in the Report of the Society for Psychical 
 Research. Babula was never either the attendant on a 
 French conjurer or the linguist that Hodgson makes him 
 out. Had he been, it is to be supposed that he would 
 have found some more lucrative employment than cleaning 
 boots and washing plates, his present occupation at Adyar. 
 There was no sort of scandal with regard to Babula such as 
 Solovyoff imagines; his early return to India was due solely 
 to his wife's illness, as was well known to everybody, 
 including Solovyoff. 
 
 I was fond of questioning this far from stupid fellow 
 about their daily life at Adyar ; I remember that I often 
 laughed at his stories ; but I faithfully declare on my con- 
 science that there never was a word said about " muslin 
 Mahatmas Had he ever used such a phrase, I should 
 
Appendix, 
 
 293 
 
 never, in my then state of incredulity as to the existence of 
 these Hindu sages, have left it unnoticed, but should have 
 questioned both Babula and his mistress, with whom I 
 never hesitated to enter on a sparring match. 
 
 V. 
 
 I PASS to chapter ix., and am dumtbunded at the manner in 
 which Solovyoff speaks of Isis Unveiled. He complains of the 
 way in which I pubUshed a phrase of his, to the effect that 
 this book is " a phenomenon " ; a phrase which he says was 
 *'only thrown off in conversation The following letter is 
 my justification : — 
 
 [C] 
 
 " Paris, 48 Rue Pergolese, July 7-19, 1884. 
 
 Dear Vera Petrovna, 
 
 " Your letter has given me the very greatest pleasure ; 
 and besides, I thought that you would not forget your 
 promises. ... As my pressing work is now done, and we 
 have time to breathe, there is now plenty of room for gloomy 
 thoughts. I must think of some fresh work. . . . Raps 
 and voices and all sorts of ' uncanny ' things are getting 
 the upper hand. For instance, an invisible voice says to 
 
 A : ' See, there will be raps on the window-pane 
 
 directly,' and in a moment the raps begin. ... I almost 
 constantly perceive breathings around me, and the presence 
 of some one, to such a degree that it is growing loath- 
 some. ... I have read the letters of Koot Hoomi, the 
 Mahatma, and their contents please me much. I am 
 reading the second part of Isis, and I am quite convinced 
 that it is a phenomenon . . . and so on. 
 
 Here is another letter from Paris to my sister in 
 London : — 
 
294 ^ Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 [D.] 
 
 " October 22, 1884. 
 
 " Dear Helena Petrovna, 
 
 " On Friday, though I could hardly stand on my 
 legs, I passed the whole day with Olcott. On Saturday he 
 and R. Gebhard, who is back from the Comtesse d'Adhemar, 
 dined with me ; after dinner I went to bed, and there I 
 have stayed ever since. I had neglected a cold, and it got 
 very bad. . . . The second part of Jsis. I think you nmst 
 send the first part too to Paris, tor the book must be pub- 
 lished here, without fail, for the benefit of the French. 
 Madame de Morsier is very useful for correcting mistakes, 
 and she is ready for work. It seems to me that if they 
 keep the duchess as honorary president, then, if she is a 
 woman of the least sense of honour and self-respect, she 
 must do something for the society. Let her publish your 
 Isis. Send Oakley to her; he will tell her that the Paris 
 society greatly needs the publication of the book, and trusts 
 
 that the respected duchess will fulfil this plain duty 
 
 " Perhaps it would be well for Madame de Morsier to 
 write to her in the name of the society about the need 
 for the publication of Isis ? . . . Think this over and let 
 me know. Meanwhile, au revoir. 
 
 Yours with all my heart, 
 
 "Vs. SOLOVYOFF." 
 
 To pass on to the visit at Elberfeld ; what right has 
 Solovyoff, in view of the prophetical visions described on 
 p. 75, to doubt the reality of the appearance of Mahatma 
 Morya ? If we are to admit that his conversation with 
 this astral body was due to suggestion on the part of 
 Madame Blavatsky, why does he not tell us whose sugges- 
 tion it was that produced the visions of natural scenery 
 with which he became acquainted only on the following 
 
Appendix, 
 
 295 
 
 day ? It must have been some magician of no less power 
 than Madame Blavatsky. 
 
 What shall we say of Solovyoff's account of the visit of 
 the *'demi-god " whose inspiration he will not admit in my 
 sister's case ? The present version shows the mixture of 
 truth and falsehood which is the worst of lies. I am sure 
 that in a letter to me, which I will look for, he did not 
 express the least doubt, but related everything as a certain 
 fact. It is true that he afterwards raised the question 
 whether his vision was not due to suggestion, and partly to 
 the length of time for which he had looked at the portrait 
 of the Mahatma ; but none the less he declared that for 
 him it was a most real fact. Visual suggestions are, as is 
 well know^n, only an exact reproduction of the object seen ; 
 but he first saw the Mahatma standing, then sitting on a 
 chair, and talked with him a whole hour on his private 
 affairs. What a reproduction of the object seen is this ! 
 
 Here are some extracts from his letter of October 18-30, 
 1884, in Paris : — 
 
 [E.] 
 
 I send you with this a copy of my account of my ex- 
 periences at Elberfeld, which I have sent to the London 
 Society for Psychical Research. From this you will learn 
 all that interests you, and you will be convinced of my 
 courage in the face of public opinion. However, this 
 courage has its limits, and I decidedly do not wish my ad- 
 ventures to get into the Russian papers. I have written to 
 Pribytkoff^ about this. A time comes for everything, and 
 in one way or another all will be explained ; for there is 
 nothing hidden that shall not be revealed." 
 
 Compare Solovyofif s account now given with that in the 
 
 ^ [Editor of the Rebus, the Russian spiritist paper, and an associ- 
 ate of the Society for Psychical Research.] 
 
296 
 
 A Modem Priestess of Isis. 
 
 Report of the Society for Psychical Research. In the former 
 we have : " I Ht a candle, and it appeared to me that it was 
 two o'clock by my watch In the latter it is simply said : 
 I saw by my watch that it was two o'clock". In the 
 former : He began to shake his head, smiled, and said, 
 still in the voiceless imaginary language of dreams," etc. 
 But in the earlier account it is : " He shook his head, 
 and said to me with a smile, ' Be sure that I am not an 
 hallucination,"' and so on, without any mention of the 
 language in which the Mahatma spoke. It will be admitted 
 that the two narratives produce very different impressions. 
 
 So with the account of the letter subsequently received ; 
 the scene in which my sister sends upstairs lor Olcott, asks 
 him ''on which side" he felt the presence of the "teacher," 
 and tells him to empty out his pockets, in which is found 
 the '' fabricated letter of Morya " (he forgets that he has 
 just said that it is Koot Hoomi, not Morya) ; all this is a 
 subsequent invention ; at the time there is not a word 
 about Olcott's pocket, Solovyoff boasted that he had him- 
 self received the letter of the "teacher". See the following 
 letter, November 9-21, 1884 : — 
 
 "... Now to another matter. Your reproaches are 
 undeserved, my soul lies open before you, and I trust you 
 entirely. I will begin with the least important. You want 
 to know what was the private matter about which Morya 
 spoke to me. But who spoke ? was it Morya ? I have grave 
 doubts about it. . . . In my account I hope you feel no 
 doubt on this point, I described everything as it happened. 
 I told Mr. Myers, and had to agree to send my communica- 
 tion to the London Society for Psychical Research." Then 
 follows a lengthy exposition of the possibihty of hypnotic 
 suggestion, and then a fresh account to illustrate once more 
 
Appendix. 
 
 297 
 
 the wonderful powers and capacities of my sister. This is 
 the incident for which he has now substituted the " note 
 found in Olcott's pocket, between a button and a tooth- 
 pick Here is the first version of the story, in the same 
 letter :— 
 
 [G.] 
 
 "... Now here is a fact. It was also at Elberfeld that 
 I received, to the great envy of the theosophists, an 
 autograph letter of Koot Hoomi, and in Russian into the 
 bargain. That it appeared in a manuscript which I was 
 holding in my hand did not surprise me in the least ; I had 
 a presentiment of it beforehand, almost a knowledge. But 
 what did surprise me was that the note spoke clearly and in 
 detail about what we had been discussing a minute before. 
 It contained an answer to my words ; and during this 
 minute I had been standing alone, no one had come near 
 me ; and if it is to be supposed that some one had previously 
 put the note in the book, then this some one must have 
 had command of my thoughts, and forced me to say the 
 words, the direct answer to which was contained in the 
 letter. . . . This amazing phenomenon I have distinctly 
 observed myself several times, both in my own case and in 
 that of others. What power ! And beside this power, at 
 times what powerlessness ! 
 
 To myself : — 
 
 [H.] 
 
 " August 2%-Scptember 9, 1884. 
 
 Dear Vera Petrovna, 
 
 I have just received your letter and hasten to 
 communicate with you. . . . 
 
 " I got back a few days ago from Elberfeld, where I 
 passed a week at poor Helena Petrovna's bedside. I must 
 tell you that in the eyes of European doctors she is in a 
 
298 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 very, very bad way ; yet she, like those who are about her, 
 beheves more than ever in the power of her Mahatmas, 
 and that her sickness is not unto death. In any case she 
 will have to keep her bed at Elberfeld for a long time. 
 The doctors have diagnosed fatty heart, diabetes, and 
 acute rheumatism, from which her left hand is swollen, 
 and which is not far from the heart. She suffers terribly, 
 but is wonderfully brave-spirited. As for wonders, there is 
 no end of them. So after all she may recover, and with 
 my whole heart I hope she may, for I love her." 
 
 Observe that this letter was written under the immediate 
 impression of the return from Elberfeld, where Solovyoff 
 had condemned Helena Petrovna Blavatsky as guilty with- 
 out appeal. Here are a few more lines from the same time, 
 when, if we are to believe his own words, he regarded the 
 Mahatmas as fictitious creations of Madame Blavatsky's 
 imagination : — 
 
 " October 30, 1884. 
 
 " Helena Petrovna leaves Liverpool to-morrow, for Egypt 
 first, and then on to India. How she is still alive, how she 
 can travel, travel such a distance and at this time of 
 year, all this is a marvel to me. Or, rather, it is one of the 
 proofs of the existence of the Mahatmas.'' 
 
 The following extract is from a letter of November 9-21, 
 1884 :- 
 
 . . . And when she (H. P. B.) comes to the end of 
 her life, which I cannot but think is now only artificially 
 prolonged by some magic power, I shall always grieve for 
 this most unhappy and remarkable woman." 
 
 VI. 
 
 I GIVE some more letters, all referring, as will be seen, to 
 the period of which he speaks with such righteous indigna- 
 tion in his chapter xii. 
 
Appendix. 
 
 299 
 
 [K.] 
 
 ''September 26, 1884. 
 
 Dear Helena Petrovna, 
 
 ^'As I am not in possession of magic powers, I 
 cannot know how you are getting on if I receive no news, 
 and if my letters remain unanswered. But why do you not 
 know and see what is going on here ? As you have heard, 
 the Duchess de Pomar has resigned the presidency. She 
 is deeply offended with the colonel. The defender of 
 the American negroes has actually shown want of tact in 
 dealing with a European grande dame. 
 
 " Of the various gossip, rumours and scandals it is un- 
 pleasant and not worth while to talk. Dramar and Baissac 
 might have been useful, but they have lost heart now. 
 Madame de Morsier is fretting and fuming, and is only 
 held in by her love for Koot Hoomi and partly by myself. 
 What I can do I am doing. I care nothing for the Theo- 
 sophical Society, the significance of which escapes me, 
 thanks to your distrust of me ; but I care a great deal for 
 your reputation. If I cannot do anything for it here, I 
 could in Russia. So it is essential that I should meet * * * 
 I might, with his help, clip * * * 's wings; I might encourage 
 him, for after the Elberfeld visit every one wants encourage- 
 ment, for there were many blunders at Elberfeld — not of 
 your making, but for some reason perhaps you do not 
 know of them. I have nothing to do with the rest, but I 
 must bring you out clear. I cannot write in full detail. If 
 you wish — it will be clear to you. Do speak out. 
 
 Yours with all my heart, 
 
 " Vs. SOLOVYOFF." 
 
 Unfortunately most of my sister's Russian correspondence 
 was, at my own wish, burnt after her death. There survives 
 only what she herself gave me, and what was sent to me 
 later from Adyar. I am thus not able to say what it was 
 
300 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 on which Mr. Solovyoff could not write in full. The 
 following letters refer to pp. 93 ff. : — 
 
 [L.] 
 
 Monday."" (No day or month.) 
 
 Dear Helena Petrovna, 
 
 " I have just received your letter. Believe it or not 
 as you like, neither it nor the Koot Hoomi postscript caused 
 me the least surprise. I shall produce a sensation through 
 Madame de Morsier. Mohini's coming, if he is well and 
 steadily directed, is very opportune. . . . What a disgrace, 
 that I should not talk English ! 
 
 " It is positively essential that you and I should meet ; it 
 is impossible for me to write at length ; how happy I should 
 be if you would come to see me. . . . And not I alone, but 
 we. And you would like it too, I hope. Paris is not far 
 out of the way from Elberfeld to London. 
 
 Perhaps we could come to an understanding in Russian. 
 . . . And I would escort you to London. . . . 
 
 I do not know how to beg you not to be in a hurry to 
 resign. Let us talk it over first, and if it is inevitable, then 
 I will leave it to you to say what must be done and where 
 you will go. 
 
 ''What can one do by correspondence? I wait for further 
 news. 
 
 " Yours with all my heart, 
 
 "Vs. Solovyoff. 
 " P.S. — Do not get agitated, in the name of all the saints." 
 
 Why is it that he was so anxious to persuade my sister 
 not to resign ? About what was he so anxious to "come 
 to an understanding " ? And is there not a curious con- 
 tradiction ? He has stated in print that he would have 
 left her at peace if she would have listened to his advice ; 
 
Appendix, 
 
 301 
 
 if she would have devoted herself solely to literary work, 
 and abandoned theosophy ; and yet, when she wishes to 
 resign the presidency of the "dark society, so deadly to 
 human souls," he himself " does not know how to beg her 
 not to resign He evidently expected to get something 
 from her; this is why he postponed his resignation from 
 the Theosophical Society till the beginning of 1886, and 
 did not publish anything about her till after her death. It 
 is only the ignorant whom he can deceive by pretending that 
 so long as I held my tongue about theosophy he would 
 hold his. This is a falsehood. I have been constantly 
 writing and publishing all these years, and he well knew it, 
 but he did not raise his voice, because he was afraid of my 
 sister. He was obliged to wait for her death to speak 
 freely. 
 
 Meanwhile he w^as deceiving not only her, but me, against 
 whom he had no cause of complaint. He was continually 
 writing me affectionate letters, apparently from pure love of 
 deceit. And in these he never omitted to insert reassuring 
 sentences about Helena, such as the following (dated Nov. 9, 
 1884) :— 
 
 [M.] 
 
 " I never play a double game with any one, and in 
 proof of it I may quote some phrases from her letters : ' You 
 write that you do not care about the society, but I have 
 devoted to it life, health, soul, honour, career ^ If you, 
 my true friend, actually suspect me of making a fraudulent 
 phenomenon when a real one does not succeed, what will 
 my enemies say ? ' But she knows that I really love her, 
 and that I am her friend." 
 
 When some unfavourable rumours came to my ears, I 
 hastened to accuse every one but the real offender, and 
 allowed myself to be deluded by his virtuous words. 
 
302 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 [N.] 
 
 Dp:ar Vera Petrovna," he wrote at that tune, 
 
 I cannot fear for our friendship, however calumnies 
 may threaten it ; but what sadness all this causes ! . . . It is 
 all clear to me, and indeed one may say that Helena Petrovna 
 has devoted her whole soul to the society. To the society 
 and the cause. She is afraid of your influence on me to the 
 prejudice of the society, and the society has great need of 
 me now. My soul lies open before you," and so on. 
 
 VII. 
 
 [Madame Jelihovsky gives various reasons which make 
 it needless for her to refute the Report of the Committee of 
 the Society for Psychical Research. The last of these she 
 finds in the protests raised against the ''intrigues of the 
 Coulombs, Patterson, Hodgson and Co.".] All impartial 
 people immediately revolted against these calumnies, as did 
 Mr. Solovyoff himself, who at that time regarded things 
 with a just and healthy eye. This is what he wrote him- 
 self to my sister : — 
 
 [o.] 
 
 " Paris, 4 Rue Balzac, Friday, jftcne 12, 1885. 
 
 Dear Helena Petrovna, 
 
 ''The last two weeks have not passed in vain. 
 Crookes and Sinnett have been here. I have made their 
 acquaintance ; but the thing is that all is now arranged and 
 prepared to overwhelm, here at least — that is in the Paris 
 press — all this rabble of Coulombs and all the asses, to 
 what learned society soever they may belong, who could 
 for a moment pay attention to her abominable pamphlet. 
 The pamphlet has produced universal indignation here, and 
 I have not even had to defend you to anybody — so that 
 
Appendix. 
 
 303 
 
 after this dirty intrigue, they have only increased the 
 sympathy felt for you. . . . Ah, if I could only see you ! 
 "Your sincerely devoted and affectionate 
 
 ''Vs. SOLOVYOFF." 
 
 But I have to deal only with Mr. Solovyoff ; and besides 
 I well know that evidence of trickery, of what she herself 
 used to call '' psychological tricks," will not shake her 
 authority, and will not injure either her or her cause in the 
 eyes of those who do not make her whole work depend on 
 the fact that while in India she learnt certain manifesta- 
 tions of forces still unknown in Europe. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 [This chapter continues the discussion of the Report of the 
 Committee of the Society for Psychical Research, and of 
 Mr. Solovyoff's comments. We need give here only the 
 following : — ] 
 
 Helena Petrovna Blavatsky did not give herself out" as 
 a widow (see p. 116), but was recognised as one by the 
 authorities of Tiflis, who in 1884 sent her a testimonial in 
 which she was described as '' widow of Councillor of State 
 N. V. Blavatsky". As she held no relations with him for 
 more than twenty-five years, she had completely lost sight 
 of him, and did not know, any more than we, whether he 
 was alive or dead. The fault lies with the police of Tiflis, 
 not with her. 
 
 Mr. Solovyoff quotes ^ the evidence of the London ex- 
 perts as to the handwriting of the Koot Hoomi letters ; 
 why does he not quote the opposite opinion of the Berlin 
 experts? I would put two other questions: When does he 
 suppose that my sister, among her incessant labours, had 
 
 ^ [In his abstract of the Report of the Committee on Theosophical 
 Phenomena, omitted from chaps, xiii.-xv. — W. L.] 
 
304 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 time to write the letters? And who writes them now? 
 For I have official proof from the headquarters of the 
 society that they still continue to arrive in the same 
 ^'Thibetan" envelopes.^ 
 
 My reader must not think that I say this in order to 
 prove the existence of the Mahatmas or the reality of their 
 correspondence. That is another question. I only wish 
 to point out that it is unjust to make of my sister a scape- 
 goat, responsible for all the intrigues and offences of the 
 society — if they exist. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Mr. Solovyoff says that he heard nothing of Helena all 
 the winter of her absence in India. But if he was in- 
 terested in her doings, why did he let her go on that 
 memorable December evening when she appeared to him ? 
 Why did he not chng to the hem of her "black sacque " 
 and question her, instead of letting her astral body escape 
 back to India ? You think I am joking. Then read the 
 following extract from his letter to me of December 22, 
 1884 :— 
 
 ^ [The opinion given by the BerHn expert has been dealt with by 
 Mr. Hodgson in Proceedings, ix., p. 148, and it is sufficient here to 
 refer to his paper. 
 
 For an answer to the question "who writes them now?" Madame 
 JeHhovsky cannot do better than to refer to no less an authority than 
 Mrs. Besant herself. From statements which have been published 
 in the press, it appears that Mrs. Besant has recently denounced as 
 fabrications, proceeding from a very exalted official of the Theosophi- 
 cal Society, the letters here spoken of. Those whose memory goes 
 back a very few years will not have forgotten the lofty indignation 
 with which these very letters, appearing after Madame Blavatsky's 
 death, were adduced by Mrs. Besant as a complete refutation of the 
 attacks made upon those received during her life. See Mr. Garrett's 
 articles in the Westminster Gazette, Oct. 2g-Nov. 8, 1894. — L.] 
 
Appendix. 305 
 
 "... Three weeks ago I dined in the green dining-room, 
 
 which you know, with V . I ate with a good appetite. 
 
 I drank very httle, as always — in a word I was quite myself. 
 When dinner was over I went up to my room to have a 
 cigar. I opened the door, lit a match, lighted the candle, 
 and there was Helena Petrovna standing before me in her 
 black sacque. She greeted me, smiled, ' Here I am,' and 
 vanished ! What does this mean ? Here is your question 
 once more, hallucination or not ? How am 1 to tell ? That 
 it is enough to make one go out of orje's mind, is certain ; but 
 I shall try not to do that." And so on to the signature, 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 "Vs. SOLOVVOFF." 
 
 Now here he fiad not been dazzled by any portrait of H. 
 P. Blavatsky, and I imagine that she could hardly have 
 hypnotised him from beyond the sea. In other words she 
 actually paid him a visit. And this noteworthy fact he has 
 forgotten to mention in his reminiscences of his acquaint- 
 ance with her. How fortunate that this letter enables me 
 to fill the blank ! 
 
 He wrote to me again on March 7, 1885 : — 
 
 [Q-] 
 
 "Young Gebhard has been here lately, on his return 
 from India. He says that Helena Petrovna is very ill. We 
 have since received Olcott's circular announcing the miracle 
 that has been wrought on her (her recovery). But in any 
 case, in my belief, her days are numbered. It is terribly 
 soon. Her years are not many, and the chief thing is that 
 her mind is clear, and her literary talent in full vigour. But 
 what of all this now ? ..." 
 
 20 
 
3o6 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 When my sister came back to Europe in the spring, and 
 wrote to him from Naples (see p. ti8), he answered her 
 with a welcome of unfeigned delight : — 
 
 [R-] 
 
 " Sunday, May 3. 
 
 Dear Helena Petrovna, 
 
 I do not know how to express to you my delight 
 that you are in Europe. At all events it seems that you 
 are nearer, and that a meeting is more possible. Moreover 
 your departure from India did not strike me as strange ; 
 
 on the first news of our movements in Asia,^ A began to 
 
 assure me that the English would infallibly begin to make 
 themselves disagreeable to you, and that you would leave. 
 
 ''Remember, I told you that the time is rapidly approach- 
 ing when the Russian and the Hindu will join ? You 
 thought it was not so soon. But you see ! and apart from 
 human wishes and plans, the inevitable destinies of history 
 do their work. ... I cannot get the Russky Vyestnik 
 here, but I heard some time ago from Moscow that your 
 Blue Mountains was to begin. Probably it is already 
 in print. Now, you see, it is the very time to write about 
 India. Do get well! Scribble me a line. I will write to 
 you when I am free from work, and that often. 
 
 " Your sincerely devoted 
 
 "Vs. SOLOVYOFF." 
 
 At this time Mr. Solovyoff, as he used to tell me in 
 every letter, was going through a very troublous, busy, and, 
 in many ways, difficult period. I mention this because he 
 allows his readers to suppose that he was the ''unknown 
 friend " who had the generosity to send Madame Blavatsky 
 
 ^ [Mr. Solovyoff is making reference to the collision between 
 General Komaroff and the Afghans at Penjdeh on March 30, 1885. 
 ^W. L.] 
 
Appendix. 
 
 307 
 
 a sum of money for her immediate needs. If she had 
 suspected anythhig of the sort, the money would doubtless 
 have been returned ; but it was impossible to suspect it, 
 for his letters at that time were full of accounts of his own 
 impoverishment. He used to tell me all the details of how 
 he was being swindled, though he was already, in his own 
 words, tout a fait a sec. But it would seem that these 
 generous deeds were not rare with him ; here is a letter to 
 my sister, at a period when he was (for the tenth time) fully 
 convinced of her guilt (see the passage about the " two 
 fishwives," p. 131): — 
 
 [S.] 
 
 " Paris, 48 Rue Pergolese, Monday, May 18, 1885. 
 
 " Dear Helena Petrovna, 
 
 " What does this mean ? I have written to you twice, 
 and posted the letters myself. I have had from you one 
 letter in which you announced your arrival at Torre del 
 Greco. To-day Madame de Morsier tells me that you 
 have not got my letters. I telegraphed to you at once, 
 and I am sending this letter registered. Where our letters 
 disappear I cannot conceive. . . . But in any case you have 
 no right to doubt my sincere feeUng for you. I do not 
 change; that is not in my character. — I, too, am very ill, 
 dear H. P., I am suffering seriously from my liver, and no 
 one here has done me any good. There is no getting 
 away from ill-luck and annoyances. . . . Believe me that I 
 am doing everything in my power to come to see you, if 
 I can only get strength enough and a spare week. But in 
 my position this is so extremely difficult, and I am so tied 
 in every way, that I much fear it will remain a dream. . . . 
 What am I to do ? . . . I have no right to live my own 
 life. ... I had an idea of passing this spring in Italy, — 
 then I would have met you accidentally, so to speak. . . 
 
3o8 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 (Here follow details of how he was being deceived and 
 swindled. He goes on.) — Generally speaking 1 have been 
 greatly disenchanted with the people here. Relations which 
 began by being friendly have invariably ended in every sort 
 of exploitation, and rude demands upon my purse. . . . 
 
 " Your enemies' trick about the investigation of the phe- 
 nomena may be all nonsense too. But force must be met 
 with force. 1 must see you ; but I have only one head, two 
 hands, two feet, a very sickly body, and Karma binds me 
 in every direction. . . . What is to be done ? Please write 
 something. Do recover ! this is my heartfelt wish. 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 ''Vs. SOLOVYOFF." 
 
 Can these be the letters of which he speaks at the end of 
 chapter xvi. — the letters in which he told her that he had no 
 belief in her Mahatmas and phenomena ? Where is the 
 occasion for Helena Petrovna to beg him "for friendship's 
 sake not to abandon the society," which he expresses no inten- 
 tion of abandoning? Yet, to judge from the dates, these are 
 the only letters she received from him at that time. 
 
 As for the humorous account of Bavaji's Russian writing, 
 I must express my conviction that if he ever wrote "Blessed 
 are they that lie," it was at her own wish. Some of her letters 
 of this period show that she had already observed in Mr. 
 Solovyoff a certain " weakness of tongue " ; for she com- 
 plains of the annoyances caused her by his incorrect 
 statements and fondness for talking (for she still regarded 
 these evidences of hypocrisy as no more than thoughtless 
 chattering). When she pointed this hint on the "blessing 
 of them that lie " straight at Mr. Solovyoff, she probably 
 meant to have a little laugh at him. 
 
 X. 
 
 Chapter xviii. opens with the scene of the " little silver 
 bell" which Mr. Solovyoff picked up; how he handed it 
 
Appendix, 
 
 309 
 
 back with a significant cough, and turned the conversation. 
 In order to give him another opportunity of coughing signi- 
 ficantly and turning the conversation, I quote an extract 
 from a letter of his : — 
 
 [T.] 
 
 " Paris, Rue Pergolese, August 6-18, 1884.. >■ 
 
 ^' Dear Helena Petrovna, 
 
 " I have not written to you because there has been 
 trouble in the little house with the little garden. Now 
 things are somewhat easier. Cruel Karma! . . . At a certain 
 sorrowful moment there was a clear and loud sound of a 
 non-existent bell on a table, and a sudden thought of you 
 came into my head and heart, and so on. 
 
 Can this bell, which came to comfort Mr. Solovyoff at a 
 sad moment, have been a distant relation of the little bit 
 of silver which he picked up at Wiirzburg ? 
 
 When we come to the story of the essence of roses, one 
 cannot but be sorry that poor Helena Petrovna should 
 have been such an idiot. To think that she, a stout and 
 anything but agile woman, at that time hardly able to move 
 hand or foot for rheumatism, as he himself says, should 
 have tried to act like a professional pick-pocket ! Poor 
 woman ! One should be more careful with these eagle- 
 eyed, keen-scented folk ; and, by the way, one should not 
 trust them with the keys of one's private drawers. 
 
 But if in this chapter xix. Mr. Solovyoff has presented 
 my sister in the light of an impostor and a fool, one must 
 do him justice, and admit that he has not treated himself 
 much better. I feel sure that on most honourable people 
 
 ^ [Mr. Solovyoff draws attention to the fact that this letter was 
 written more than a year before the incident with the little bit of 
 silver and during a period of nervous derangement. — W. L.j 
 
310 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 who read the account of his cunning, his wheedling, his 
 flattery and deceit, intended to convict another of offences 
 no worse than his own, Mr. Solovyoff himself, in spite of 
 the brilliance of his intellect, his inventiveness, and his high 
 aims, will have produced a far more disagreeable impression 
 than she whom he wished to hand over to punishment. 
 
 I must here once more call the reader's attention to the 
 letter of October 8, 1885, already given,^ and ask: Is it 
 possible that Mr. Solovyoff wrote this letter to my sister on 
 his return from Wiirzburg, if there had passed between them 
 there what he now says ? " It is hard indeed to suppose that 
 after a complete breach, and after all of which he had con- 
 victed her, he would have been so scandalously audacious 
 as to try to convince on her behalf people like Richet 
 and Madame Adam ; people of European reputation, who 
 might at any time through the press call upon him to 
 explain how he dared to deceive them. On the other hand, 
 if it is not true that he had endeavoured to convince them 
 of the honesty and real power of Madame Blavatsky, how 
 could she receive such a letter from a man who had humili- 
 ated and exposed her, who had just laughed her to scorn, 
 and then says, to please her, that he had converted to 
 friendship and behef in her two of the prominent person- 
 ages of Europe ? Does not this letter incontestably prove 
 that all which he has related in these pages is nothing but a 
 subsequent invention for the amusement and deception of 
 the pubHc ? I know for certain that when he came that 
 winter to St. Petersburg he not only still believed in the 
 possibility of the existence of the Mahatmas, but was ex- 
 pecting some sign of favour from them. This he told us 
 all on his arrival, and the last words of his letter confirm it. 
 
 I must beg the reader to look at Mr. Solovyoff 's letter to 
 my sister of May 3, 1885,^ and say if the words he there uses 
 
 1 [See Letter [B], p. 288.] 2 [Letter [R], p. 306.] 
 
Appendix, 
 
 311 
 
 (that she would not believe him when he predicted that the 
 Russian and Hindu would soon join hands) agree with 
 those which he now puts into her mouth : " I could easily 
 organise a gigantic rebellion. I guarantee that in a year's 
 time all India will be in Russian hands." 
 
 But let my sister speak from the grave for herself. The 
 following is a letter she wrote me in the spring of 1886, 
 when she was so anxious that I should go to see her at 
 Elberfeld, and Mr. Solovyoff was so anxious that I should 
 not. 
 
 [u.] 
 
 " Elberfeld, May 16. 
 
 . . . Solovyoff now accuses me of offering myself to 
 him as a spy of the Russian Government in India. . . . 
 If a man in his ri^ht reason thinks seriously of such an 
 accusation, he will see the absurdity of it. I am publicly 
 accused of being a Russian spy, and this is made the motive 
 of all the (supposed) fraudulent phenomena and of my 
 ' invention of the Mahatmas ' ! I, a dying woman, am 
 turned out of India just on account of such a silly accusa- 
 tion, which, in spite of its silliness, might have ended in 
 prison and exile, solely because I am a Russian ; and 
 though I have already suffered from this calumny, and do 
 not understand the A B C of politics, I am made to offer 
 myself as a spy ! And to whom? To Solovyoff! ... To 
 him whom I know for an incorrigible gossip and tale- 
 bearer. . . . And so, I want to be hanged, do I ? But by this 
 means I should cut off all return to India, for ever. And 
 so, by spreading these reports, he is playing right into the 
 hands of England, and ruining me without cause or reason. 
 Why, for five weeks, beginning his hints even in Paris, he 
 himself used every day to try to persuade me (as N. 
 and T. know) to become a Russian subject again, and to 
 use all my influence on the Hindus against England and 
 
312 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 for Russia. He said that this was a lofty and noble task, 
 and would show my patriotism. He begged and prayed 
 me to put down on paper everything that I could do in this 
 way for Russia in India, and this paper or 'Project' he 
 would himself present in St. Petersburg. ... To all this I 
 replied that I was ready to die, to lay down life and soul 
 for Russia ; that there was not a subject in Russia more 
 attached to emperor and country than I, a citizen of 
 America ; but that I was incapable of this task, I knew 
 nothing of politics, and should only risk my neck, and the 
 necks of hundreds of Hindus, if I attempted it. 
 
 *'ThereJ Vera, is the holy truth, which I will repeat on 
 my death-bed. Even if I have ceased to be orthodox, or 
 Christian at all, I have' a deep faith in the life beyond the 
 grave, in punishment and reward. I swear by all the 
 powers of heaven that I am telling the simple truth. . . . 
 And he has the brazen face to ascribe his own words 
 to me ! . . . 
 
 It is repulsive even to speak of him, and to think how 
 sincerely I loved and trusted him. . . . Vera, beware! He 
 will attack you too, and will morally kill you." 
 
 XI. 
 
 When Mr. Solovyoff came to St. Petersburg in the 
 autumn of 1885, we received him as a devoted friend and 
 he came to us every day. His constant correspondence 
 with myself and my two eldest daughters had been most 
 interesting ; his lively conversation, his original views, and 
 his sincerity greatly interested us. The latter quality he 
 had assumed so well that we were really charmed by his 
 frankness. We pitied him moreover for his misfortunes; we 
 were attracted by the unjust (as w^e then thought) attitude 
 of his family towards him, and the romantic circumstances 
 of his hfe at the time. It was then that we first hearci 
 
Appendix, 
 
 3^3 
 
 unfriendly expressions about my sister and her cause. The 
 letters of Helena Petrovna show that this volte face was 
 entirely unexpected by her, and therefore that the remark- 
 able "scenes" at Wiirzburg were only the result of his 
 latest romantic labours. Here is an extract from one of 
 these letters, February 2, 1886 : — 
 
 [v.] 
 
 " In your short note there flashes out as it were the new 
 and unfavourable Hght in which theosophy and I and 
 Mohini, and even some good Christians, have now been 
 presented to you. Now listen to my song, and do not be 
 guilty of the sin of judging people by scandal without 
 trying to investigate it. . . . 
 
 " We bade one another farewell as though we were 
 dearest friends, almost-with tears. . . . Not a word, except 
 vows that he, would stand up for me in Russia, and help 
 me in every way, did I hear. And then he suddenly 
 goes, and holds his tongue. Without cause or reason he is 
 in quite a different mood in St. Petersburg. You do not 
 know, in the innocence of your soul, but I know ; he is 
 simply frightened of the abuse of the Psychical Society. . . . 
 You see, they have declared of a Gentilhomme de la 
 Chambre that he is either a liar or suffers from hallucina- 
 tions. . . . But do read the letter, which I enclose, written 
 just before he left Paris : ' I am sure that it will succeed ; 
 surely you did not treat me as a doll,' he writes. . . . 
 It is evident that be is quite furious because he did not 
 succeed in getting from me what he expected, and he has 
 invented the excuse of anti-Christianity. ... As for my 
 anti-Christianity, you know what it is ; I am an enemy of 
 the ecclesiastical excesses of Protestants and Catholics ; 
 the ideal of Christ crucified shines for me every day 
 clearer and purer, and as for the orthodox Church, they 
 
314 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 may hang me, but I will not attack it. Russia is so dear to 
 me, my heart so yearns for my country, that I would sell 
 my soul into slavery for ten thousand years for its sake. 
 But be a hyjDocrite I will not. There you have the whole 
 truth, all that has encrusted and saddened ray heart. I 
 have suffered and worn myself out these ten years. I have 
 atoned for my past sins by good, as far as I knew how ; I 
 hope that I shall present myself with a clean sheet, if my 
 torments are taken into account. Yet, though a sinful 
 creature, I should not like to be condemned here without 
 appeal. I should not like to die and leave behind me a 
 name bespattered with filth." 
 
 Mr. Solovyoff informs the reader that I was at this time 
 on bad terms with Helena Petrovna. Whose fault was this? 
 Who was it who went so far as to declare that my sister 
 and another near relation had accused me of concealing 
 the money of my dead father ? And I was so deluded that 
 I never considered that it was impossible for my sister to 
 say this, for when my father died he was living far from 
 me, with his other children in Stavropol, while I always 
 lived in Tiflis, more than a thousand versts away. And 
 Mr. Solovyoff kept up this difference ; he took notes of 
 what I told him about my sister and sent it on to her, as 
 he sent on to me what was said about me at Elberfeld. 
 This is proved by the following extracts from a letter of 
 my sister, March 28, 1886 : — 
 
 [W.] 
 
 " It is wrong. Vera, and for me it is simply terrible. . . . 
 I must tell the truth ; it was my fault that they were 
 angry with you. I have done a foolish act. In vexation 
 and anger at you, I sent off to them a letter of Solovyoff's 
 to me, which begins in the most mysterious style : ' After 
 what has happened, I can have no further communication 
 
Appendix, 
 
 315 
 
 with you'. And it ends with all sorts of allusions to 
 matters twenty and thirty years old. . . . And where can 
 he have heard all this ? I suppose there are people in St. 
 Petersburg who know it; they might have told him, but 
 not in such detail, Vera ! I am not angry with you ; I 
 understand your irritation ; but she is more to me than a 
 relation ; she ^ is the friend of all my life, and she is in- 
 dignant to know that all these nightmares of my youth, 
 which have worn me out, are now the property of Madame 
 M.'s salon, and were written down by Solovyoff in your 
 house. ... It is useless to hide the truth : neither the 
 Coulombs nor the psychists, no one, has ever done me so 
 much damage as this gossip of Solovyoff's. . . . For fifteen 
 years I have worked unweariedly for the good of men; I have 
 helped whom I could ; I have tried by my actions to expiate 
 my sins. How many I have saved, both men and women, 
 from debauchery, drunkenness and all sorts of sins, and 
 converted them to belief in immortaUty and the spiritual 
 side of life! and now I myself stand bespattered— nay, 
 covered with a thick layer of filth, and by whom? Solovyoff, 
 he — with his own heavy sin on his soul — he is the first to 
 cast a stone at me ! . . . You call it hastiness. A pretty 
 hastiness ! He has destroyed me, betrayed me like Judas, 
 because ' on halt toujours ceux a qui Ton fait du mal sans 
 raison ' — there is no other reason for his hatred to me. 
 He has slandered and destroyed me and hates me all the 
 more." 
 
 If I, an incomparably cooler woman than my sister, could 
 be thus deluded into losing my head for a time, what 
 wonder that she, who all her life was remarkable for her 
 sincerity and thoughtless outspokenness, should have written 
 him frantic letters? In the letter which he gives in chapter 
 xxii. I recognise her vehemence, passing in moments of 
 
 ^ An aunt,. Madame Fadeieff, 
 
3i6 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 excitement into frenzy. I recognise her; and at the same 
 time I recognise the letter. It is the same which caused 
 such commotion in Paris, and turned from her many of 
 the theosophists, such as the fiery Madame de Morsier, 
 who beheved in the French translation ; a translation 
 which has never been shown me by Mr. Solovyoff or any 
 one else, but the sense of which was told me by many who 
 had read it, when I was staying with my sister in the 
 following year. The chief point of this translation, I was 
 told (1 may observe that I cannot guarantee the exact truth 
 of the statement, for I repeat that no one would ever show 
 me the letter in French), lay in the fact that "in it Madame 
 Blavatsky denied the Mahatmas, and admitted that she had 
 invented their existence 
 
 This is what specially turned the Parisians against 
 Madame Blavatsky ; but, as the reader knows, in the 
 Russian letter there is nothing of the sort. How did it 
 get into the translation? I shall return to this point ; mean- 
 while I must quote one more of Mr. Solovyoff's letters ; the 
 last. It is written in answer to the one which he gives 
 on p. 176. 
 
 Lx.] 
 
 (No date.) 
 
 Helena Petrovna, 
 
 "You are too wise a woman to yield to the 
 furious madness in which you wrote the letter of yester- 
 day, headed ' Confession If I were really your personal 
 enemy, I should now have awaited with triumph your 
 appearance in Paris and London, and should coolly have 
 looked on at your fall, which can in no way do me any 
 harm ; for ever since I have known you I have acted with 
 knowledge. Every step of mine with regard to you, every 
 word which I have either spoken or written to you, points 
 
Appendix. 
 
 317 
 
 straight to my goal, in which there is no discredit to me, 
 as a Russian or a Christian. 
 
 This goal, as you know, I have reached ; it was not for 
 nothing that I passed six weeks in fetid Wiirzburg. Can 
 you really imagine that it is possible to scare nie by im- 
 pudent slanders and falsehood, and that I have not ready 
 - for you in any event — for I have always expected anything 
 of you - a tolerable collection of surprises of all sorts ? It 
 is you who are yourself your worst enemy, and you do not 
 know what you are doing, and on what you are rushing ; 
 I know perfectly what I am doing, and what will happen, 
 though I have none of your Mahatmas to incite me. . . . 
 You see I have a cool head, as you yourself said ; while 
 yours is hot beyond belief, and when it is once fired, you 
 simply see nothing. . . . 
 
 " Do you want a scandal ? You have had little enough 
 already ? Very well, if you please, you are welcome. And 
 so we will set to work. . . . 
 
 " I have nothing more to say to you. I am far, very far, 
 from being your enemy, and I give you my best wishes, 
 especially for your tranquillity, far away from all these 
 agitations. 
 
 " If you compare yourself to a wild boar, and want to 
 bite, — very well; the traps are ready. Pardon this tone. 
 It is yours, not mine. 
 
 "Vs. SOLOVYOFF." 
 
 XII. 
 
 When the plan of driving Helena Petrovna Blavatsky out 
 of the Theosophical Society, and restricting her to literary 
 work, failed, and he was convinced that he had nothing to 
 expect in the way of favours from the Mahatmas, he at 
 last, in February, 1 886, definitely broke with tlie society and its 
 foundress. The chief point by which he showed the change 
 
31 8 A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 of front was the dissemination among the Paris theosophists 
 of the behef that she had herself denied the existence of the 
 Mahatmas, and admitted that they were an invention of 
 her own. 
 
 When we heard of this, we were at our wits' end. Know- 
 ing how my sister had been worried by Mr. Solovyoff's 
 prayers for the aid of the Mahatmas, where it seems they 
 found it impossible to give it (1 cannot say why, as I 
 have no clear proofs), I thought she had taken this extreme 
 measure in order to get rid of his importunity. I wrote to 
 my sister to ask how she could have been so outspoken, 
 without exacting a promise that he would keep her confes- 
 sion secret. My sister replied that she was sure that she 
 had never made any admission of the sort. But I did not 
 believe this, and thought that in a moment of passion she 
 must have falsely accused herself, and then forgotten. 
 This had happened more than once ; in moments of ex- 
 citement she sometimes had calumniated herself, in order 
 to escape a temporary annoyance ; her friends were aware 
 of this trait of thoughtlessness in her, and used to reprove 
 her for her want of foresight. 
 
 Knowing that Mr. Solovyoff was soon to come back to 
 Russia, my sister begged me to see him, and read her 
 Russian letter ; this I easily did. as he and his wife again 
 came to stay with me for a few days.^ When I had read 
 it, I was astonished, and at once expressed my perplexity ; 
 there was in the letter no admission that the Mahatmas 
 were an invention. How then had the Parisians come to 
 believe it? Mr. Solovyofif himself answered that he did not 
 know how. I was also surprised to see that the Russian 
 letter was all covered with the stamps of M. Jules Baissac. 
 Mr. Solovyoff explained that this was done for the sake 
 of attestation, to show that the translation was correct. I 
 
 ^ [Mr. Solovyoff denies this.] 
 
Appendix. 
 
 319 
 
 answered : " Then where is the translation ? Let me see 
 it." But Mr. Solovyoff explained that he had neither the 
 original nor a copy; it was in the hands of Madame M. in 
 Paris. I could only conclude that there was some error 
 in the translation, and so I said, begging him to give me a 
 copy of the Russian letter, if not the original, in order 
 - that I might prove to every one that there was no admission 
 of guilt, but only the frenzy of an angry and excited woman. 
 This he refused. Why? 
 
 When I got to Elberfeld, and heard the accounts of 
 those who had read the letter, what I supposed was this : 
 that the sentence, I will say, and publish in the Times^ that 
 the Master and K. H. are the products of my own imagina- 
 tion," njust have been translated in a categorical instead 
 of a conditional sense, in which form I remembered it.^ 
 But now that I have seen the letter in print, I think that 
 the denial of the Mahatmas " may have been more simply 
 arrived at. I suppose that all the later phrases of the 
 Russian letter were simply translated without the first and 
 fundamental one ; that there were (probably) omitted the 
 words, " I will even take to lies, the greatest of lies, and 
 therefore the hkeliest to be believed". If this phrase was 
 omitted, all the true sense of what follows is lost, and there 
 is a real and convincing admission of guilt and of the 
 fabrication of the Mahatmas. 
 
 I know that this accusation is a vital one, and therefore 
 I do not assert it positively. I say it only by way of sup- 
 position ; and this I have a right to do on the following 
 grounds : (i) If the translation was correct, Mr. Solovyoff 
 had no reason to refuse me a copy of the Russian letter; (2) 
 he would certainly have sent this copy when the theo- 
 sophists asked for it from Elberfeld and Paris, in order to 
 
 [The Russian sentence is in act categorical and not conditional.— 
 W. L.] 
 
320 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Ists. 
 
 justify himself ; (3) the translation, if correct, could not 
 have caused Madame M. and others to say, as they still do, 
 that Madame Elavatsky a renie les Mahatmas'' ; (4) it 
 cannot have been without intention that Mr. Solovyoft" says 
 nothing in his book about the fact that the primary cause 
 of my journey to Elberfeld was to assure every one that in 
 my sister's letter there was no admission that she had 
 invented the Mahatmas ; (5) finally, I have not been able, 
 even now, after eight years, when in Paris, to get a sight of 
 this famous translation. 
 
 Mr. Solovyoff declares that the translation is in Madame 
 M.'s hands, and that she would show it to any one who wished 
 to compare it. This is a falsehood. Last summer I saw 
 Baissac myself, and asked him to let me see the French text. 
 I also asked if he attested my sister's letter and the text. 
 He rephed that he had never to this day been able to 
 understand why the French theosophists took fright, as in 
 my sister's Russian letter there was nothing to compromise 
 her, and though he found some inaccuracies in the attested 
 translation, he insisted on their being corrected. But after 
 waiting some three weeks I received a letter to say that the 
 translation was not in iMadame M.'s possession, and therefore 
 he could not obtain it for me. At the same time he said 
 positively that it agreed exactly with the Russian original ; 
 and that there was only one ambiguous phrase which might 
 have caused doubts as to Madame Blavatsky's honesty, 
 but that this might be taken in a conditional sense, and so 
 he had himself understood it. But thus much is certain, 
 that I was refused a sight of the translation. 
 
 Where is it? 
 
 [The rest of Madame Jelihovsky's pamphlet contains the 
 following : — 
 
 A letter to Mr. Brusiloff, a common friend of Mr. 
 Solovyoff and herself, who had been asked to bring about 
 
Appendix. 
 
 321 
 
 a meeting, in order that Mr. Solovyoff might put some 
 questions as to the agreement which he asserted had been 
 entered into, that so long as Madame Jehhovsky pubHshed 
 nothing in Russia about her sister he would also refrain 
 from publishing. This agreement Madame Jehhovsky 
 positively denies. She also states that he proposed to her 
 that if she would return him his correspondence with her- 
 self and her family, he would abstain from introducing her 
 into his narrative. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Madame Jelihovsky states that she has the letter from 
 Ostend in which Madame Blavatsky announced Professor 
 Butleroff's death at the same time that it was announced in 
 the papers ; and also says that she has seen a letter and 
 portrait of this gentleman in Madame Blavatsky's hands. 
 
 A letter from Mr. Gebhard is given, in which he speaks 
 of his high veneration for, and gratitude to, Madame Bla- 
 vatsky, and in very disparaging terms of Mr. Solovyoff's 
 character. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 This chapter contains various laudatory articles on Madame 
 Blavatsky, an account of her funeral, extracts from some 
 of the speeches delivered at it, and so on ; but nothing 
 bearing on Mr. Solovyoff 's narrative.] 
 
 21 
 
APPENDIX B. 
 
 REPLY TO MADAME JELIHOVSKY'S 
 PAMPHLET 
 
 ENTITLED 
 
 ''H. P. Blavatsky and a Modern Priest of 
 Truth 
 
 By v. S. SOLOVYOFF. 
 
 I. 
 
 MY LETTERS. 
 
 Madame Jelihovsky, trusting that her readers will not 
 be acquainted with my Priestess of Isis, relies chiefly on 
 letters of mine written in 1884 and the early part of 1885, a 
 period when I felt the most sincere sympathy and great 
 pity for Madame Blavatsky personally, and hesitated as to a 
 final decision with regard to all her phenomena. I have 
 most frankly admitted in Isis that I was at first carried away, 
 thanks to the state of my nerves ; I have said that I was 
 searching to see what was true and what was false in 
 Madame Blavatsky and her phenomena ; I have spoken of 
 my double feeling towards this extraordinary woman, now 
 of intense attraction and pity, and now of still more violent 
 repulsion. Every impartial reader of Isis will feel the 
 psychological truth of my narrative. Why does Madame 
 Jelihovsky try to break through the door which I have 
 myself opened wide } 
 
 It was only after the meeting at Wiirzburg that I got over 
 
Appendix. 323 
 
 my feeling of pity for Madame Blavatsky. It was only in 
 St. Petersburg, at the end of 1885, on hearing the state- 
 ments of Madame Jelihovsky herself and her nearest re- 
 lations as to the past of the " priestess of Isis," that I ceased 
 to waver. Madame Jehhovsky herself does not deny the fact 
 and the nature of these communications. But now, in con- 
 tradiction to her own letters, she says that I got them out 
 of her, that she made them in insanity, and that they are 
 untrue. But as I had no reason to suppose that Madame 
 Jelihovsky and the witnesses to whom she referred were 
 insane, I could hardly suppose that a sister would tell the 
 most frightful stories of a sister if they were untrue. 
 
 After this I decided that no considerations of personal 
 friendship, based on admiracion for her talent and on the 
 fact of her being a Russian, ought to induce me to spare 
 Madame Blavatsky. Four months had passed. I was now 
 free from the promise of silence which I had given her.-^ I 
 could no longer keep up the playful tone of my letters to 
 her. Her " confession " revolted me. Thus the very un- 
 ceremonious tone of my answer to the " confession " is per- 
 fectly natural. And yet Madame Jelihovsky quotes this 
 letter of mine,"^ every word of which confirms my narrative in 
 Isis. I am much obliged to her, but why she should have 
 thought it necessary to quote it I cannot understand. 
 
 So also the other letters which she gives confirm my 
 narrative. I will give the necessary explanations which will 
 enable any careful reader to see that this is so. 
 
 The curious ''phenomenon" of which I speak in letter [G] 
 was one of several which took place at Elberfeld. I was 
 unable to give an account of it in my narrative because the 
 "Russian letter of Koot Hoomi" has unfortunately been 
 lost, and I have brought forward in the Modern Priestess 
 of Isis only the letters of which the originals are still in 
 
 ^ [See Isis^ p. 167.] 
 
 2 [Letter [X], p. 316.] 
 
324 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 my possession. But what can prove my scepticism better 
 than the words, " It . . . did not surprise me in the least: 
 I had a presentiment of it beforehand, almost a knowledge "? 
 What can this mean but that I had already observed that 
 Madame Blavatsky was getting ready for a phenomenon, 
 and almost foresaw what it was to consist of? What 
 surprised me was not the hnding of Koot Hoomi's note in 
 the book I was holding (the MS. of the B/ue Mountains 
 which I was correcting at the time), but the fact that it 
 referred to our conversation of a minute before. At that 
 time, with my imperfect knowledge of Madame Blavatsky, 
 I was inclined to explain this by mental suggestion " on 
 her part, and thus had every right to say, " What power ! " 
 while adding at the same time : But beside this power 
 what powerlessness at times " ; which, I think, is sufficiently 
 clear. 
 
 But in the end, viz.^ a year later at Wiirzburg, I convinced 
 myself that Madame Blavatsky had no such power ; but that, 
 if every word, every movement, and every expression of her 
 face was not carefully observed, she had extraordinary skill 
 in guiding the conversation to any desired theme, and so 
 leading up to the words required for the effect of her pheno- 
 mena. 
 
 I need hardly add that "autograph letter of Koot 
 Hoomi " was the only expression which I could use at the 
 time. I did not then know who had written the lines 
 which I received, for it was long before the opinion of 
 Netherclift, which showed that the Koot Hoomi script was 
 a development of Madame Blavatsky's. At this date I was 
 inclined to believe that Olcott was the writer, and it was 
 only the postscript to Madame Blavatsky's letter which I 
 subsequently received (see Isis^ p. 96) which obliged me 
 to give up this opinion, and to recognise in the writing 
 Madame Blavatsky's own hand disguised. 
 
 It is, therefore, not I, but Madame JeKhovsky who is put 
 
Appendix. 
 
 325 
 
 to shame, when she says that I have " substituted for this 
 scene of the Koot Hoomi letter in the MS. book that of 
 the finding of the Morya letter in Olcott's pocket. The 
 fact is that these were two distinct phenomena which 
 occurred at an interval of three days, and had nothing 
 whatever to do with one another. It is Madame Jeli- 
 hovsky who has confused them, not I ; and she cannot 
 claim that she has done it in ignorance, for she states that 
 she has in her possession, and quotes from, my narrative 
 in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. 
 Now in this narrative, dated October i, 1884, I say that 
 
 Le soir du meme jour M. Olcott a trouve dans sa poche un 
 petit billet, que tous les theosophes ont reconnu pour etre 
 de Tecriture de M. (Morya)," etc. It is further clear that I 
 had no intention of pei;suading the Society for Psychical 
 Research of the reah'ty of my vision of Morya, not 
 only from the remark which they themselves published, 
 but from the concluding words of my narrative: "Je 
 dois dire qu'a peine revenu a Paris, 011 je suis actuelle- 
 ment, mes hallucinations et les faits etranges qui m'en- 
 touraient, se sont completement dissipes". And finally I 
 may quote my own words in letter [F] : But who spoke? 
 Was it Morya ? I have great doubts.'' 
 
 After my return from Elberfeld I was better for a time, 
 but at the end of 1884 I was again suffering from my 
 nerves. So it is not odd that, at a time when my eyes 
 were greatly fatigued with reading MSS., Madame Blavatsky 
 should have appeared in her black sacque, or that I should 
 have written a playful and honest account of it to Madame 
 Jelihovsky (see letter [P]). Does she quote this letter as a 
 proof of my nervous state? But I had already related this 
 in the Priestess of Isis. So with the sound of the bell, and 
 the whisperings which I very plainly heard about me. 
 Once — Madame Jelihovsky does not even know this — for 
 a couple of minutes, I also heard the rustle of a silk dress. 
 
326 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 But the cold water cure, careful diet, a temporary remission 
 of my overwork, and, more than all, distraction from all 
 the " marvels of theosophy," soon put an end to these 
 symptoms. Why, knowing their origin, should I have 
 given a detailed account of them? 
 
 My letter [B] to Madame Blavatsky about Richet, and 
 how I made friends with Madame Adam, is written in an 
 obviously bantering tone, and is completely explained by 
 the circumstances of the time. I called on Madame Adam 
 with respect to my story, " The Magnet," which was then 
 appearing in her Noiroelle Revue. It was only the second 
 time I had met this lady, well known alike in literature 
 and politics ; and yet, supposing doubtless that I should 
 publish in Russia my " interview " with her, she began 
 to tell me, just as if I were an old friend, all sorts of 
 details about her friendship with Skobeleff and Gambetta, 
 and about all sorts of wonders, and ended by confiding to 
 me the fact that she was a pagan. Yes, she was at that 
 time a pagan, and practised pagan worship, with sacrifices 
 to the ancient gods and goddesses ! On hearing this I 
 tried to appear serious, and advised her that it would be 
 better if she turned to theosophy, and took Madame 
 Blavatsky under her care. She begged me to continue to 
 write for her paper and to correspond with her ; she 
 promised to be careful to answer me, and, in short, was 
 most amiable, like a true Parisienne. And I, naughty 
 man, went off to Russia and never published my interview 
 or wrote her a word ! Thus ended our mutual friendship. 
 
 To Charles Richet's new^ questions —for we had already 
 talked about Madame Blavatsky, and he knew that I was 
 trying to get at the truth — I replied that she was no ordin- 
 ary adventuress, but an able and extraordinary woman, 
 and that she was clearly a so-called medium, though with 
 failing powers. This is what I meant by her "personal 
 power and the phenomena proceeding from her ". x\s for 
 
Appendix. 
 
 327 
 
 the third and most important question, concerning the 
 theosophical phenomena and her Mahatmas, I repHed that 
 I would let him have full, and if possible documentary, 
 evidence in two or at most three months. I explained to 
 him why this was (see Isis^ p. 167). 
 
 I wrote 10 Madame Blavatsky about my conversation 
 with Richet, as about Madame Adam, in a bantering tone 
 such as was quite usual in my letters to her; and in this 
 particular case, after all the wonders of Wiirzburg, I wished 
 to lay stress on the fact that I should wait only two or three 
 months, and that I was revolted by the aplomb with 
 which she had delivered her prophecies. So I wrote teas- 
 ing her and asking: ''And so all will be fulfilled, all will 
 happen as you said — is it not true ? For surely you did not 
 treat me as a doll ? So all will end in your triumph and 
 the confusion of the psychists ; will it not ? " On this 
 letter it is endeavoured to found an accusation that I 
 deceived Richet. But no attention is called to the letter 
 from him which I have given on p. 33, though the words 
 '* peut-etre reussira-t-elle. En tout cas ce ne sera ni votre 
 faute ni la mienne" are clear enough. However, Richet's 
 last letter, written by him for the purpose, and given below, 
 finally settles the question of how far I "deceived" him, 
 and gives decisive evidence as to Madame Jelihovsky's 
 " honesty 
 
 Letter [H] is equally pointless, and contains besides the 
 mocking phrase " there is no end of wonders As I say 
 in Isis^ in the autumn of 1884 I was so impressed by the 
 perfectly acted sincerity and sorrow of Madame Blavatsky 
 that I began to waver, and dared not think that she could 
 deceive to that extent. I began to ask myself : " May not 
 my suspicions be going too far? Suppose there is some 
 truth after all! " The two extracts [I] only confirm this. 
 
 Letter [M] is w^orse than useless to Madame Jelihovsky ; 
 the phrases used about my having nothing to do with the 
 
328 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 society, and my suspicions, in spite of my affection for her 
 personally, that Madame Blavatsky produced fraudulent 
 phenomena, are the most explicit confirmation of what I 
 have said in Jsis. Madame Jelihovsky does not quote the 
 entire letter but only scattered fragments. In its entirety 
 the letter would have thrown still more light on my attitude 
 at the time. 
 
 Letter [O] only shows that, as I say in Isis, I did not 
 then know the truth, and could not yet believe, in spite of 
 my suspicions on many points, that Madame Blavatsky w^as 
 capable of such detestable frauds as those of which the 
 Coulombs accused her. The report of the Society for 
 Psychical Research did not then exist ; I knew nothing, 
 only I was not convinced, and wanted to get at the truth. 
 I was in fact profoundly vexed by this abominable scandal 
 against Madame Blavatsky, as a Russian. Though I sus- 
 pected her, I had as yet no clear proofs, but thought that, 
 apart from fraud, she possessed real psychical powers ; so 
 I said: ''Abominations like these cannot be true, this is 
 surely a libel ; in any case we must inquire before we 
 beheve 
 
 The Society for Psychical Research thought exactly as I 
 did, and appointed its committee, and sent Hodgson out 
 to India. He himself says that he started convinced that 
 it was a calumny, and changed his opinion only when he 
 had clear proofs to the contrary. I wanted to see her in 
 order to clear the matter up, and convmce myself of the 
 real extent of her guilt. If she could have proved to me 
 that she was innocent, I should have been delighted. 
 
 Letter [Q]. I regret the probabiHty of Madame Blavatsky's 
 death. What of that ? 
 
 Letter [R]. In connexion with Komaroff s affair at Kushka 
 I write that the time is approaching when Russian and 
 Hindu will join hands. What of that ? 
 
 [S]. I wish to meet Madame Blavatsky, and write to say 
 
Appendix. 
 
 329 
 
 that if I had gone to Italy in the spring, as I had meant, I 
 should have seen her there. This may serve as a supple- 
 ment to my narrative of this time. Once more I ask, 
 What of all this ? 
 
 On letter [K] Madame Jelihovsky wants to know what 
 the matter is about which I cannot write in full. The 
 words refer to what I mentioned on p. 63 of Isis. At that 
 time (1884) I was foolish enough to think that I might 
 divert Madame Blavatsky, by degrees at all events, from her 
 pernicious career, and direct her energies and abilities to 
 honest and useful ends. I did not yet know what I learnt 
 at the end of 1885 from Madame Jelihovsky's own state- 
 ments and the narratives of many persons in Russia ; I did 
 not know how hopeless a case she was, and I had not yet 
 received her famous ^'confession". The scene at Elberfeld 
 had so rekindled my pity for her that I could not at this 
 time but waver, first to one side then to the other. I 
 calculated that my words, by showing her that personally 
 I was fond of her, while at the same time I saw through 
 her game and was convinced of the fraud of many of her 
 phenomena, would untie her tongue, in personal intercourse 
 if not on paper, and give me the possibihty to act to her 
 own advantage. All this time I did not conceal my attitude 
 towards her from people at Paris, while to herself I wrote on 
 this very point: Though I am known here as a sceptic at 
 daggers drawn with all occultism, and even with you, still, 
 as it is also known that I am your countryman, and devoted 
 to you as Helena Petrovna," etc. 
 
 I dissuaded her from immediate resignation, because this 
 would have brought about a great scandal. I was anxious 
 that there should be no scandal against her among strangers, 
 because she was my countrywoman, gifted and ill. I 
 wanted a scandal just as litde in 1886; I was only forced 
 to take action by facts and things of her own doing, after 
 which there could be no question, for a self-respecting man, 
 
330 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 of a countrywoman This is a clear and simple explana- 
 tion of my words, when compared with Isis. 
 
 Well knowing that my letters do not contradict, but only 
 confirm, my narrative, Madame Jelihovsky, if she can only 
 deal me a blow, is ready once again to betray her sister, as 
 she did during her life. She declares, on her own mere 
 assertion, that I had certain "secret audiences" of Madame 
 Blavatsky, and clearly hints that I was either her con- 
 federate or was endeavouring, by her aid, to gain some 
 concealed and wicked end. 
 
 Surely every one will say that if she makes such an 
 accusation she is bound to bring forward some sort of clear 
 evidence. But no. Madame Jelihovsky is not the woman 
 to acknowledge such a duty. She simply declares that 
 ''she could tell a great deal, but she has no proofs". She 
 then says that I am " very cautious, and wrote no letters to 
 compromise myself". Finally she appears to forget my 
 cautiousness, and asserts that there were letters, but that 
 she herself, with unpardonable precipitancy, had given 
 orders for them to be burnt. 
 
 Are not Madame Jelihovsky's words beyond belief? 
 Take the following: " Knowing how my sister had been 
 worried by Mr. Solovyofif's prayers for the aid of the 
 Mahatmas" (the very Morya and Koot Hoomi in whose ex- 
 istence I did not believe, as I wrote repeatedly to Mesdames 
 Blavatsky and Jelihovsky, and for which Madame Blavatsky 
 herself wrote caUing me a "suspecter" and "unbelieving 
 Thomas ") "where it seems they could not give it, I cannot 
 say why, as I have no clear proofs," etc. 
 
 " It is only the ignorant he can deceive by pretending 
 that so long as I held my tongue about theosophy he would 
 hold his. This is a falsehood." But I give below the 
 written testimony of Colonel Brusiloff, whom Madame 
 Jehhovsky herself selected as the witness of my meeting 
 with her in December, 1891 ; this will prove if my statement 
 
Appendix. 
 
 331 
 
 is a falsehood. "I have been constantly writing and 
 publishing all these years, from time to time, and he well 
 knew it." Where and what did she write ? If she wrote, I 
 did not know ; it is impossible to keep up with the whole 
 press, but no one has ever spoken to me of her writings. 
 "He did not raise his voice, because he was afraid of my 
 sister. He was obliged to wait for her death to speak 
 freely.^' The documents I have given show how little I 
 was afraid of her, and that it was not after her death, but 
 during her Ufe, while she was surrounded by friends, that 
 I exposed her at Paris in the early part of 1886. 
 
 One thing at least is clearly true, that some of my letters 
 have been suppressed by Madame Jelihovsky ; precisely 
 those which, even in her opinion, would have too plainly 
 convicted Madame Blavatsky, and have brought to light, 
 not any fraud on my part, b^it something else. Where, for 
 instance, are my "foolish sayings about the Mahatmas"? 
 Where do I show myself an " unbelieving Thomas " ? 
 Where is my ''suspiciousness," my "conviction that the 
 phenomena are fraudulent " ? In a word, where is all that 
 about which Madame Blavatsky herself writes in her pub- 
 lished correspondence ? Where ? 
 
 11. 
 
 [This chapter deals w^ith the replies from persons attacked 
 in Mr. Solovyoff's narrative, quoted by Madame Jelihovsky. 
 These have been omitted from the translation, for reasons 
 already given, and there is therefore no reason for giving 
 the replies, which in no case deal with any but secondary 
 matters.] 
 
 III. 
 
 (i) Madame Jelihovsky accuses me of having concealed 
 from my readers the fact that I published in the Reims an 
 account of the reading of a sealed letter by Madame 
 
332 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 Blavatsky. This is false, as in the text of my resignation 
 this fact is given as one of the reasons which induced me 
 to resign.^ 
 
 (2) On p. 128 I quote a letter of Madame Blavatsky to 
 Madame M., in which she describes her sad position, and says 
 that I " talk nonsense about the Mahatmas, and am an un- 
 believing Thomas ". To explain this letter I mentioned 
 that at a very critical moment Madame Blavatsky had 
 received from an unknown friend a certain sum of money, 
 and had endeavoured to find out through Madame M. who 
 had sent it. T/iaf is all. Now Madame Jelihovsky asserts 
 that I thus allow my readers to suppose that it was I who 
 had sent her the money. Nothing of the sort ever entered 
 my mind; why should Madame Jelihovsky imagine it } 
 Only to found on it a dark insinuation. Madame Blavat- 
 sky was at that time often in need, and more than once 
 people were found to help her. Some did so openly, others, 
 owing to circumstances, in private. In this there was 
 nothing humiliating for her ; Madame Jelihovsky ought to 
 be well aware that poverty is no crime, and that it is some- 
 times impossible to live without the help of others. But I 
 wish to give no support to the supposition that 1 helped 
 Madame Blavatsky. There were never any pecuniary 
 relations between us, on the one side or the other. I 
 never gave Madame Blavatsky money, whether by way of 
 loan or present ; this I declare. 
 
 (3) Madame Jelihovsky, anxious as usual to dispute the 
 indisputable, declares, in connexion with the widely-known 
 and curious fact that Madame Blavatsky gave herself out as 
 a widow in spi^e of the fact that her husband is alive and 
 
 ^ [In the original this letter of resignation is given in full. The 
 sentence referred to is this : " 2. Qu'elle a voulu profiter de mon nom 
 et m'a fait signer et pubher le recit de (d'un ?) phenomene obtenu 
 par fraude (le ' phenomene de la lettre ') au mois de mai, 1884." — 
 W. L.] 
 
A ppendix. 
 
 333 
 
 well to this day, that she had a right to do so. She was, it 
 appears, "declared to be a widow by the authorities of 
 Tiflis, in the certificate which they sent her in 1884. She 
 is there spoken of as ' the widow of the actual Councillor 
 of State, N. V. Blavatsky '. As she held no relations with 
 him for more than twenty-five years, she had lost sight of 
 him, and like the rest of us did not know if he were alive 
 or dead. The fault lies with the Tiflis pohce, not with 
 her." 
 
 But I have in my hands a lithographed a?id attested copy 
 of this curious document, in which she is spoken of not as 
 the widow, but as the wife of N. V. Blavatsky. It seems 
 as though Madame Jelihovsky could say nothing without 
 departing from the truth. How often has she herself 
 laughed at the pretended widowhood of her famous sister ! 
 
 (4) In reply to the assertion of the late Prof. Butleroff' s 
 nearest relations, that he was not acquainted with Madame 
 Blavatsky, Madame Jelihovsky says that " she herself had 
 seen in her hands a portrait and a letter of his ". But she 
 omits to say who had given the portrait, and to whom the 
 letter was addressed. This she considers enough to over- 
 throw the testimony of Prof. Butleroff's widow and his 
 nearest friend. 
 
 (5) On p. 318, when speaking of the original of the 
 "Confession" which I gave her to read, she says : "I was 
 surprised to see that the Russian letter was all covered with 
 the stamps of M. Jules Baissac. Mr. Solovyofif explained 
 that this was done for the sake of attestation, to show that 
 the translation was correct." How^ could I have talked 
 such nonsense, when in fact there was only a single stamp 
 on the letter? 
 
 (6) I once more ask Madame Jelihovsky publicly : 
 "Where is the collection (lettre sur lettre) of my letters to 
 Madame Blavatsky, which I am supposed to have written 
 after October 8, 1886, at a time when she was repeatedly 
 
334 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 complaining in black and white of my silence, and of which 
 Madame Jelihovsky talks with such assurance in her article 
 in the Nouvelle Revue ? " They never existed ; Madame 
 Jelihovsky has invented them. 
 
 (7) In a letter to the Novae Vremya Madame Jelihovsky 
 apologises for a misprint in her article in the Nouvelle Revue. 
 But the fact is that on this "misprint" (1885 instead of 
 1884) is founded her own account of the supposed marvels 
 at Wiirzburg, in this very article. Speaking of my meeting 
 with Madame Blavatsky at Wiirzburg, she writes : " Ce 
 dernier y eut la missive du Mahatma Koot Houmi et 
 repartit pour Paris, enthousiasme de sa visite et des choses 
 extraordinaires dont il avait ete temoin a Wurtzbourg, a un 
 tel point qu'il ecrivit lettre sur lettre, toutes dans le genre 
 de celle-ci dont je fais des extraits : Paris, 8 Octobre, 1885," 
 etc. And in another place: "En F annee 1885, par 
 exemple, Mahatma Morya est api)aru a M. Vsevolod 
 Solovioff avec lequel il eut un entretien, que ce dernier a 
 decrit a beaucoup de personnes, avec son eloquence 
 ordinaire ". Now in the latter passage there may of 
 course have been a figure misprinted. But that is not what 
 I complain of. It is the statement about the meeting at 
 Wiirzburg. Here there is no misprint. How can there be 
 a misprinted figure ? The date is correct. But there is a 
 most absolute falsehood, as the readers of Isis will see, an 
 elaborate perversion of a whole series of events. Can 
 Madame Jelihovsky have written thus in consequence of 
 " a misprint while her MS. was passing through the press"? 
 I have three times pointed it out in print to Madame 
 Jelihovsky, but she keeps silence, evidently regarding such 
 things as trifles not worthy the attention of a self-respecting 
 lady. 
 
 (8) Not knowing how to get out of the overwhelming 
 evidence of Madame Blavatsky's frauds in her "phenomena," 
 Madame Jelihovsky goes so far as to try to spread the idea 
 
Appendix. 
 
 335 
 
 that Madame Blavatsky's phenomena were actually treated 
 by herself as tricks In that case, why did she perform 
 them ? Can a religious doctrine be proved by tricks ? If 
 these famous phenomena had been given out by Madame 
 Blavatsky as mere tricks, instead of as marvels of the 
 Mahatmas, men like Charles Richet and Flammarion 
 would never have come to see and investigate; the London 
 Society for Psychical Research would not have spent great 
 sums of money,^ sent Hodgson out to India and appointed 
 a committee to inquire into the phenomena ; nor would 
 Sinnett have written whole volumes of description of these 
 marvels, not tricks, on which is founded the external 
 significance of Madame Blavatsky herself and her doctrines 
 The idea is too crude and absurd. 
 
 (9) One of the most curious points of Madame Jelihovsky's 
 pamphlet is that she so innocently ignores the whole con- 
 cluding part of the Modern Priestess of Isis^ the docu- 
 mentary evidence of the foundation of the Theosophical 
 Society. In these chapters it cannot be said that I am 
 playing any part ; the narrative goes back ten years before 
 my acquaintance with Madame Blavatsky, and she herself 
 tells the whole story in her letters to A. N. Aksakoff, 
 letters which were handed to me in order that the truth of 
 this interesting and important matter might be estabhshed. 
 Madame Blavatsky was an actor on a public stage, she was 
 a sort of historical character, and Madame Jelihovsky 
 herself, though with some exaggeration, represents her 
 career as one of immense and almost world-wide import- 
 ance. Thus all that Madame Blavatsky has left behind 
 her loses its private character, and is open to public 
 criticism. Now this documentary narrative, founded solely 
 
 ^ [Prof. Sidgwick (at that time president) defrayed the expenses of 
 Dr. Hodgson's journey. The subscribers to the Society for Psychical 
 Research were put to no expense in the matter.] 
 
336 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 upon her own autograph letters, the history of the rise of 
 the "universal brotherhood" founded by her, first appeared 
 in the Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 Why has Madame Jelihovsky not a word to say about 
 this interesting account of the rise of the Theosophical 
 Society in America in the seventies, which was completely 
 in the dark till I cast light upon it? The letters were 
 handed to me because they are a documentary testimony 
 of the truth of my narrative, and confirm the conclusions 
 which I had drawn at a time when I had no knowledge 
 whatever of the existence of these American letters. 
 Madame Jelihovsky, in ignoring them, is like an ostrich 
 which hides its head under its wing, and thinks that no one 
 can see it. 
 
 IV. 
 
 MADAME JELIHOVSKY AND HER ADMISSION OF 
 CRIMINALITY. 
 
 Madame Jelihovsky says that I invented certain untruths 
 in reference to Madame Blavatsky's accusation that she 
 had made away with some property of their deceased 
 father. I would advise her to read carefully Madame 
 Blavatsky's letter of 1875 given on p. 267;^ she will then 
 no longer be able to say that I invented, when I gave her, 
 out of friendship, an opportunity of disputing and crushing 
 what I then considered to be only a calumny and a slander. 
 But it appears that by my craft I brought her into a state of 
 insanity in which she lost all power of reasoning ; and it 
 ended in this, that when I was half out of my mind, and 
 my daughters had been brought to a state of indignation on 
 
 ^ " After his death there were stories about some money he 
 had bequeathed to me and of which I never got half ; and my younger 
 sister never writes to me at all." 
 
Appendix. 
 
 337 
 
 my account, he was occupied in carefully watching and 
 writing down everything that fell from our lips, taken in the 
 worst construction, and exaggerated by our irritation It 
 appears, therefore, that she accuses her daughters as well as 
 herself of perverting facts, or, in plain language, of lying. 
 In this case I shall not dispute with Madame Jelihovsky. 
 
 However it seems from her narrative that it was only at 
 St. Petersburg in the winter of 1885-6 that I "bewitched 
 her and brought her to distraction," so that she made me 
 her statements about Madame Blavatsky, in the most 
 exaggerated sense". At Paris, in the beginning of 1884, it 
 would seem from her own words that she was in her right 
 mind. How then about what she told me in the Pare 
 Monceau ? She now exclaims : " What a multitude of 
 superfluous words Mr. Solovyoff has put in my mouth ! " 
 The following letter of October 27, 1884, will show that I 
 have done nothing of the sort : — 
 
 '^You remember our conversation in the Pare de 
 Monceau? I could not then put the dots on many of the 
 /'s, but I think I explained enough to show you that Helena 
 and I had little in common. I love her and I pity her 
 profoundly. I hope that she loves me too, but — it is in 
 her own way. Apart from this feeling, which has often in- 
 clined me to be indulgent, and even to shut my eyes to 
 much which inwardly troubled me, there is nothing but 
 difference between us. 
 
 " I went to see her, at her expense, on the distinct under- 
 standing that not a word should be said about her cause 
 and the society; subsequently this turned out to be im- 
 possible ; I was drawn into the common whirlpool, and, to 
 my great regret, I agreed to become a member of the 
 society, so far as my conscience and religious convictions 
 allowed it, and I even wrote accounts of what I heard and 
 saw. ... If my accounts contain inaccuracies, they are 
 unintentional, and no fault of mine. But that is not the 
 
 22 
 
338 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 question. Helena got angry with me, and ceased to write 
 to me, and as I see, accuses me of cruelty and ingratitude. 
 I am very sorry. I say honestly, I am heartily sorry that 
 our relations should have been broken, perhaps for ever ; 
 but I cannot sacrifice my conscience even for them. I do 
 not accuse her; what she asks me to do seems to her a 
 trifle ; to me it seems a crime. Perhaps we look differently 
 at things because I am a Christian, and she is — I know not 
 what. She has been pressing me about this for along time. 
 I cannot fulfil her wish, and I will not ; because I con- 
 sider it not only dishonourable for myself, but fatal for her. 
 The same view of this question was taken by the late * * * 
 the wisest man and the most thorough Christian I have ever 
 known. He begged me on his death-bed not to yield to 
 her demands, and to show her that above all she was harm- 
 ing herself And so I have done many a time ; but without 
 success. X's great mistake is that she knows no bounds to 
 her pity for Helena. That is why she says that she is the 
 only one who is kind to her and loves her. God grant 
 that this love may not lead to the ruin of both 1 
 
 (Signed) ''V. Jelihovsky. 
 
 ''October 27, 1884." 
 
 After a brief period of illusion, I expressed to Madame 
 Blavatsky both by word and letter my doubts as to the 
 genuineness of some, if not all, of her phenomena, and at 
 the same time I expressed the same doubts and suspicions 
 to other serious persons. Though I do not claim to be a 
 man of science, I, like Charles Richet, and at the same 
 place, was "seeking if there might not be some truth amid 
 many frauds The inquiry, besides, was my plain business 
 as member of the London Society for Psychical Research. 
 When my doubts and suspicions passed into full convic- 
 tion, and I obtained the indispensable support of various 
 supplemental and documentary evidence, I exposed the 
 
Appendix. 
 
 339 
 
 theosophical frauds to those who were concerned, without 
 fear of any unpleasant consequences for myself personally. 
 Such was my line of action, clear and consistent, as is 
 shown in my letters to Madame Blavatsky, her sister, and 
 others, as w^ell as in the letters of Madame Blavatsky, her 
 sister, Charles Richet and others to myself. 
 
 In spite of all this, by picking out certain selected 
 phrases, the real sense of which is explained by the circum- 
 stances I have narrated, and by the clear and logical 
 consistency with them of my proved line of action, Madame 
 Jelihovsky dares to insinuate that I was a sort of confederate 
 of Madame Blavatsky, and was pursuing some secret and 
 evil end. Once more driven to "distraction'' by me, one 
 must suppose, she asserts that she could prove this ; " but 
 she has no clear proofs " . 
 
 In any case it is a strange confederate who conceals from 
 no one his doubts and suspicions, and when he is finally 
 convinced of fraud, exposes it, and thus subjects himself 
 to all sorts of great annoyances and the vengeance of the 
 charlatans whom he has unmasked. 
 
 But what shall we say of this same Madame Jelihovsky, 
 who after this letter of 1^84 has since become a panegyrist 
 of Madame Blavatsky, and declares that hers is a ''mighty 
 cause" and that her theosophy is "a pure and lofty 
 doctrine " ? She was once in error, it seems, but now 
 adores the sanctity of her sister and her doctrine. But, 
 then, w^hat was the "crime" which Madame Blavatsky 
 required of her sisterly affection? What was the "dis- 
 honourable" request "against her conscience" that she 
 made? The recognition of "crime," of "dishonour" 
 and " moral ruin " may be difficult for a child, but not 
 for a woman rich in experience of life, as Madame 
 Jelihovsky was even in 1884. And then * * * the true 
 Christian and wise man, who begged her on his death-bed 
 not to yield to Madame Blavatsky's prayers ; he can hardly 
 
340 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis, 
 
 have been mistaken in his view of the matter. It is clear 
 that the matter was not trivial, bat serious ; and that is 
 why between Madame Blavatsky and her sister, apart from 
 the love which ''led her to shut her eyes to a great deal/' 
 there was nothing but difference. 
 
 It was only in May, 1886, at Elberfeld, that an unex- 
 pected and complete agreement between them came about. 
 They evidently, to their mutual satisfaction, came to a 
 thorough understanding. Madame Jelihovsky is probably 
 carrying out this understanding by doing all in her power 
 to spread the fame of Madame Blavatsky in Russia, not as 
 an able writer but as the foundress of the Theosophical 
 Society, as the apostle of a lofty and pure doctrine, the 
 ''new revelation received from the Mahatmas of Thibet 
 
 V. 
 
 Madame Jelihovsky hovers awkwardly near the line which 
 divides legal impunity from criminal responsibility in what 
 she writes about the French translation of Madame Blavat- 
 sky's "Confession," witnessed by the sworn interpreter. She 
 accuses me of falsifying the document. It will be seen 
 later on, from the written statement of the witness selected 
 by Madame Jelihovsky herself and appealed to in her 
 pamphlet, that she was in the habit of narrating the very 
 details of the falsification which I was supposed to have 
 been guilty of. She does not in her pamphlet give the 
 details, but that does not alter the question. Her state- 
 ments remain clear enough. There can be no question of 
 any '' carelessness " or "error of translation" on my part. 
 Whether the translation was made by myself or another is 
 indifferent, when once the stamp of the sworn interpreter 
 and his attestation have been duly affixed to original and 
 translation. It is not the translator but the sworn inter- 
 preter who is responsible for the accuracy of the translation, 
 
Appendix. 
 
 341 
 
 and of every phrase of it. This responsibility is great in 
 the eyes of the law in every land. Translations tested, 
 stamped and witnessed by Jules Baissac, the sworn inter- 
 preter of the Paris Court of Appeal, a well-known linguist 
 acquainted with Russian, cannot be false. 
 
 If in such a translation an essential phrase is omitted, it 
 cannot be supposed that it was cancelled in the original, 
 for in that case the interpreter would have noted it. Either 
 the translation therefore must have been made from a 
 falsified original, or this phrase must have been suppressed 
 after the attestation. A third possible supposition is that 
 to the genuine original, and a false translation, have been 
 appended falsified stamps and a forged attestation ; and, as 
 will be seen from Colonel Brusiloff's letter, this is the line 
 which was taken by Madame Jelihovsky. 
 
 In all three cases there can be no doubt that if the trans- 
 lation is untrustworthy, this untrustworthiness can only be 
 due to deliberate falsification. It is, therefore, of deliberate 
 falsification that Madame Jelihovsky accuses me when she 
 asserts that the translation is untrustworthy. 
 
 Her subsequent attempts to keep herself clear, such as 
 her sudden transition from assertion to supposition, cannot 
 alter the fact. Once she has published the words, that 
 she asserts the untrustworthiness of the translation, I stand 
 publicly accused of deliberate falsification. 
 
 Now what could I have done, had it happened that 
 Madame M., in whose keepin^^ the documents were in Paris, 
 had destroyed them, thinking that the matter was past and 
 gone, and that they were of no further use ? 
 
 Happily, Madame M. kept the documents, and sent them 
 to me in the beginning of 1892. Madame Jelihovsky de- 
 clares that in the summer of 1892, in Paris, she was refused 
 a sight of the translation attested by Baissac, and triumph- 
 antly exclaims : " Where is it ? " 
 
 I reply.: // is here^ ready for expert examination''; 
 
342 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 and, of course, there stands in it, in its proper place, the 
 phrase which Madame Jehhovsky declares it does not 
 contain : J^e vais inenti?', horiHbleinent nmitir^ et on 77ie croira 
 facile772ent. The phrase comes on the very half-sheet on 
 which Baissac wrote his attestation and affixed his official 
 seal. It was not that they would not, but that they simply 
 could not, show this translation to Madame Jelihovsky in 
 Paris in the summer of 1892, because it had already been 
 sent to me, with other documents. Had I known that she 
 was going to Paris to inspect it, I would have shown it to 
 her before witnesses in St. Petersburg. 
 
 But Madame Jelihovsky, as the proverb says, " without 
 finding out the ford, plunges into the water"; she could 
 not see the documents in Paris, so, we must suppose, she 
 imagined that they were destroyed. It is only this sup- 
 position which can explain the daring with which she has 
 ventured publicl}' to accuse me of falsification. 
 
 How did the defenders of Madame Blavatsky get it into 
 their heads that it was in the "Confession" that there 
 came the direct denial of the Mahatmas ? I think it must 
 have been a deliberate entanglement and embroilment of 
 Madame Blavatsky's. She well knew how to make an 
 artistic tangle, so that people got their heads muddled till 
 they did not know what they were saying or thinking. 
 Any one who has known her and seen her at work will be 
 able to imagine how the thing was done. 
 
 The Parisian theosophists were convinced that she had 
 invented the " Mahatmas who ran her errands," because 
 they believed my written statement of the Wiirzburg con- 
 versations, admirably confirmed and illustrated as it was 
 both by the "Confession" and by the subsequent letters from 
 her, which were also translated and attested by Baissac. 
 A particularly deep impression was made by the letter 
 beginning with the words: "What have I done to you .^^ " 
 and containing the phrases : " If I were hanged for it, I 
 
Appendix. 
 
 343 
 
 would not have betrayed you nor any one else ; even if I 
 knew it to be tnie^ I would have held my tongue 
 
 But more interesting than all this embroilment, this 
 malicious embroilment at my expense, is the question, 
 Why did not Madame Blavatsky's defenders, and Madame 
 Jelihovsky at their head, appear in Paris in the summer of 
 1886, instead of crying out about falsification and the rest? 
 All the documents were there, and Madame M. and Baissac 
 were to be seen. Madame Jelihovsky informed me then 
 that she was coming to Paris to see the documents, but 
 she never came. Why did she not come? If the whole 
 question hung on the point as to whether the translation 
 contained the words, Je vats mentir^ horrible77ient me7itir^ or 
 not, she could have come and inquired, and learned the 
 truth. 
 
 But the fact is that the last thing they wished to learn 
 was the truth. Their cue was to sit still at Elberfeld, to 
 cry out and accuse me of falsification, and to make out 
 that Madame Blavatsky was my innocent victim. They 
 did not stop before inventing the most incredible details of 
 the supposed falsification. 
 
 And I took my own course ; I left the attested docu- 
 ments at Paris to be seen by those who would ; I left for 
 Russia, and only tried to forget all this abomination, 
 charlatanism and deceit ; and it was only in December, 
 1 89 1, that I learnt from Madame Jelihovsky 's words to 
 Colonel Brusiloff, and afterwards face to face from herself, 
 all the detestable accusations they had brought against me, 
 and all the depths of the theosophical vengeance. 
 
 VI. 
 
 [Mr. Solovyoff quotes a letter of Madame Jehhovsky's, 
 dated July 14, 1886, and therefore after her return from 
 
344 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 Elberfeld, in which she begs him to resume his friendly 
 relations with herself and her family.] 
 
 And this was written after she had, as she stated in 
 print, been convinced at Elberfeld of my fraudulent deal- 
 ing with the documents, and of various " falsehoods of 
 mine which had driven her to distraction ! 
 
 Madame JeUhovsky goes yet farther. She rises to a 
 dark hint about something yet darker in my past. There 
 may have been in my past a great personal sorrow, com- 
 bined with family and other troubles ; there may have been, 
 in Madame Jelihovsky's words, "romantic details"; but, 
 thank God, there is nothing for which I need blush or be 
 ashamed, nothing that can in any way touch my honour. 
 Against nameless calumnies and slanders, which I am not 
 aware of, or which have reached me only in the form of 
 vague rumours, I of course, like any one else, am helpless. 
 
 But let me be told, not in anonymous letters — I have 
 received such — but face to face, and with the authority 
 declared, who is it that accuses me, and of what I am 
 accused that is inconsistent with honour and probity ; and 
 then I am sure that I shall be able to bring proofs of the 
 falsehood of the accusation as clear as those which I have 
 given in these pages to refute the supposed falsification 
 and other villainies, great and small, which Madame JeUhov- 
 sky has invented. 
 
 Madame Jelihovsky has not defended the memory of 
 Madame Blavatsky ; if it were not a matter of public in- 
 terest, and if this affectionate sister had not herself extolled 
 it, no one would have attacked her memory. She has only 
 finally blackened her sister's name, and in her helpless 
 malice does not herself see what she has done. 
 
 VIL 
 
 Madame Jelihovsky quotes my teasing letter [B] to 
 Madame Blavatsky, of October 8, 1885, the bantering tone 
 
Appendix, 
 
 345 
 
 of which was perfectly understood by Madame Blavatsky, 
 as it is by any attentive reader ; and on this she founds the 
 most terrible accusations. I have already analysed and 
 explained this letter in detail. Why, what and how I spoke 
 to Madame Adam and Charles Richet the reader already 
 knows. I invented and imagined nothing ; I was only 
 malicious within the limits of fact. Was this such a crime 
 on my part — that I should have a malicious laugh at 
 Madame Blavatsky — after all the marvels of Wlirzburg, and 
 the tricks she had played me ? I hope impartial and 
 sensible men will not bring in a verdict of guilty against 
 me for this ! Madame Blavatsky, though naive at times, 
 was acute ; she could not possibly take seriously what I 
 said about converting to theosophy some^ in Madame 
 Jelihovsky's phrase, of the progressive personages in Europe. 
 Madame Blavatsky well knew that I did not joke with 
 serious people, as I always used to joke with her and her 
 colleagues ; for which reason I received from her from the 
 first, both in conversation and by letter, the nicknames of 
 the "suspecter," ''unbeheving Thomas" and " Mephisto- 
 pheles She could not, I repeat, possibly mistake the 
 meaning of my letter ; and if she afterv/ards showed it to 
 any one as a serious letter, this was only a feint, as is clear 
 from all the circumstances. 
 
 But Madame Jelihovsky rhetorically exclaims that people 
 of European fame, Hke Madame Adam and Charles Richet, 
 " can at any moment ask me, through the press, how I 
 dared deceive them I do not think that Madame Adam 
 will ever ask me the question ; but if she does, and the 
 question comes to my knowledge, I will answer her in 
 detail, and will publish my interview with her ; old though 
 it is, it has not lost its interest. 
 
 As for Charles Richet, here is his own letter, which will 
 show how far I deceived him, and will at the same time 
 
346 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 reply to the inventions published by Madame Jelihovsky in 
 the Russkoe Obozrenie [see p. 28]. 
 
 ^ Dimmiche^ Mars 12, 1893. 
 
 "Cher Monsieur Solovyoff, 
 
 " Je suis toutpreta vous fournir sur Madame Blavat- 
 sky tons les renseignements que vous jugerez necessaires, et 
 que je poiirrai vous donner. 
 
 Je I'ai connue a Paris en 1884, par I'entremise de Madame 
 de Barrau ; et je n'ai jamais ete ni de ses intimes ni de ses 
 amis. Je I'ai vue en tout deux fois certainement, et pent 
 etre trois fois, peut etre meme quatre fois ; mais a coup sur 
 ce n'est pas plus de quatre fois. Ce n'est pas ce qu'on 
 peut appeler, en langue frangaise, de I'intimite. J'etais — et 
 je le suis encore — curieux de tout ce qui peut nous eclairer 
 sur Tavenir de I'homme et les forces occultes, je ne savais 
 — et je ne sais pas encore — si elles existent, ces forces 
 occultes, mais je pense que le devoir d'un savant est de 
 chercher meme la s'il y a quelque verite cachee au fond 
 de beaucoup d'impostures. Lorsque je vous ai vu, vous 
 m'avez dit — ' reservez votre jugement, elle m'a montre des 
 choses qui me paraissent tres etonnantes, mon opinion n'est 
 pas faite encore, mais je crois bien que c'est une femme 
 extraordinaire, douee de proprietes exceptionelles. Attendez, 
 et je vous donnerai de plus amples explications.' 
 
 "J'ai attendu, et vos explications ont ete assez conformes 
 a ce que je supposai tout d'abord, a savoir que c' etait sans 
 doute une mystificatrice, tr^s intelligente assurement, mais 
 dont la bonne foi etait douteuse. 
 
 "Alors sOiit arrivees les discussions que la Societe des 
 Recherches Psychiques anglaise a publiees (Coulomb et 
 Hodgson) et ce doute n'a plus ete possible. 
 
 " Cette histoire ne parait fort simple. Elle etait habile, 
 adroite ; faisait des jongleries ingenieuses, et elle nous a au 
 premier abord tous deroutes. 
 
Appendix, 
 
 347 
 
 Mais je mets au defi qu' on cite une ligne de moi — 
 imprimee ou manuscrite — qui temoigne d'autre chose que 
 d'un doute immense et d'une reserve prudente. 
 
 ''A vrai dire, je n'ai jamais cru serieusement a son 
 pouvoir ; car en fait d'experiences, la seule vraie constatation 
 que je puisse admettre, elle ne m'a jamais rien montre de 
 demonstratif. Quant a ce tout Paris qui I'a adulee, c'est 
 une bien sotte legende : il n'y avait, pour lui rendre visite, 
 que cinq ou six de mes amis, alors fort jeunes, et qui 
 appartenaient plutot a des groupes d'etudiants qu'a des 
 groupes de savants ; nous n'avons ete, hi les uns ni les 
 autres, seduits par le peu de soi-disant phenomenes, 
 qu'elie nous a montre. 
 
 " Voila, cher Monsieur Solovyoff, tout ce dont je me 
 souviens avec precision. Faites de ma lettre ce que vous 
 voudrez, je me fie entierement a vous. 
 
 Croyez moi, je vous prie, votre bien affectionne, 
 
 Charles Richet." 
 
 (1) Madame Jelihovsky categorically denies, and calls a 
 " fable," all that I say about an agreement between herself 
 and me, that she should publish nothing in Russia about 
 Madame Blavatsky's theosophical career or her phenomena, 
 with the object of attracting attention to this materialistic 
 doctrine ; and that so long only as she kept this agreement 
 would I undertake not to pubHsh what I knew about 
 Madame Blavatsky and her society. 
 
 (2) Madame Jehhovsky says that in December, 1891, I 
 sent her the portrait of Madame Blavatsky which I had 
 found among my papers, with a proposal that she should 
 return me my letters to her and to her sister (in case she 
 had such in her possession) in exchange for Madame Jeli- 
 hovsky's letters to myself. " I replied," she writes, ''that 
 I would not give him the letters." And further on : He 
 proposed to be bought off from all personal attacks on 
 
348 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 myself, at the price of the return to him of his correspond- 
 ence with my family ; but I myself refused to buy him 
 off". 
 
 Let the answer to these statements, and to something yet 
 more serious, be found in the following letter of Colonel 
 A. A. Brusiloff, to whom Madame Jelihovsky herself refers, 
 as our intermediary and witness : — 
 
 ''Dear Mr. Vsevolod Sergyeevich, 
 
 In consequence of the appearance of the pamphlet, 
 H. F. Blavatsky and a Modern Priest of Truth, I, at your 
 wish, feel it my duty to speak in writing about the negotia- 
 tions which I carried on between Madame Jelihovsky and 
 yourself, and about your conversation with her at my house 
 and in my presence. 
 
 ''At the beginning of December, 1891, in consequence 
 of Madame Jelihovsky's article about Madame Blavatsky 
 in the November number of the Russkoe Obozrenie, you, 
 knowing that I am acquainted with Madame Jelihovsky's 
 family and used to visit them, asked me to speak to her and 
 try to persuade her not to continue the publication of her 
 sister's biography, on the ground that you did not wish to 
 cause Madame Jelihovsky any annoyance, in consideration 
 of your former friendship with her. But if she continued 
 to write in the same tone about Madame Blavatsky, you 
 would consider yourself bound in conscience to refute her 
 by facts. You asked me to remind her of your agreement 
 that there should be no writing on either part about Madame 
 Blavatsky as the founder of a new doctrine and the apostle 
 of theosophy. You finally expressed a wish to meet her 
 on neutral ground, in order to settle the question. 
 
 " I called on Madame Jelihovsky the same evening and 
 performed your commission. She replied that she could 
 not understand why you should so take to heart her article 
 in the Russkoe Obozrenie, which, in her opinion, could do 
 
Appendix. 
 
 349 
 
 no harm ; and she agreed to meet you in a few days, when 
 she should have recovered from her indisposition, on con- 
 dition that, if you would not call upon her, you should 
 meet her at my house and in my presence. To this I 
 agreed. 
 
 " Madame Jelihovsky also asked me to tell you that she 
 - had not written a word about you, as she did not wish to 
 mention you ; but that all the same she could give you 
 great annoyance by announcing that the theosophists had 
 in their possession a formal declaration, given by Jules 
 Baissac, the sworn interpreter in Paris, saying that he had 
 refused to attest the translations of Madame Blavatsky's 
 letters to you on account of their incorrectness, and that 
 the letters were evidently falsified ; and that the stamps, 
 as the theosophists supposed, must have been affixed by 
 yourself at a moment when Baissac was out uf the room. 
 She asked me to transmit you this information, as well as 
 many other views of hers about your mutual relations. I 
 proposed that she should set out in writing all that she 
 wished communicated to you, and when I received the 
 letter given in her pamphlet, I gave it to you to read. 
 
 " Your meeting took place in the middle of December at 
 my house and in my presence. The day before, Madame 
 Jelihovsky's daughter, Nadejda Vladimirovna, expressed 
 a wish to be present also at the meeting, of which I in- 
 formed you. To this you did not agree, as you did not 
 think it proper, in view of the ticklish turn the conversation 
 might take, to speak openly to the mother in the presence 
 of her daughter. 
 
 " At the beginning of your interview Madame Jelihovsky 
 was very angry, but she afterwards quieted down, and you 
 carried on the conversation calmly. Of this conversation I 
 distinctly remember what follows. You reminded Madame 
 Jelihovsky of the circumstances which led to your mutual 
 agreement to publish nothing in Russia about Madame 
 
350 
 
 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society, and this time Vera 
 Petrovna did not deny the agreement, but said that her 
 articles about her sister were written in a tone which did 
 not violate the terms of the agreement ; you were, however, 
 of a different opinion. You then begged her to put an end 
 to her propaganda of her sister's life and doctrine, and not 
 to publish a second article in the Russkoe Obozrenie. To 
 this Madame Jelihovsky replied that this was now, to her 
 great regret, quite impossible, as the next number was 
 already in print, and she could not help it. You thirdly 
 asked her what were the forged letters and falsified docu- 
 ments about which she had spoken to me, and she con- 
 firmed to you all that I have said above. To this you 
 rephed that you would write to Baissac, and would not leave 
 such a calumny without documentary contradiction. Finally 
 you proposed an exchange of private letters dealing solely 
 with family matters, both your own and hers ; to this Vera 
 Petrovna at once agreed, saying : " By all means, with 
 pleasure hX. the same time she advised you to publish 
 nothing about Madame Blavatsky, as her followers, relations 
 and friends were influential, and would cause you serious 
 annoyance. You answered that you would do your duty, 
 come what might. 
 
 " There was no mention of a return of your letters to 
 Madame Blavatsky and vice versa. After agreeing to the 
 exchange of private letters, you separated, and Madame 
 Jelihovsky soon left. 
 
 I can further add that it was at your own wish, not at 
 Madame Jelihovsky's, as she asserts in her pamphlet, that 
 the exchange of letters did not take place. You gave as the 
 reason for your refusal the possibility that all the letters 
 might not have been preserved, and that this might give 
 rise to misunderstanding between you. 
 
 '*The portrait of Madame Blavatsky was handed by me 
 to Madame Jelihovsky long before the appearance of her 
 
Appendix, 
 
 351 
 
 first article in the Russkoe Obozrenie^ and there was at that 
 time no question of an interchange of letters. This I write 
 because in the above-named pamphlet my share in the 
 negotiations between you is not explained by Madame 
 Jelihovsky in a way entirely consonant with facts. 
 
 I undertook the mediation in the negotiations between 
 you and Madame Jelihovsky in the hope that I might help 
 in making peace, or, at least, in bringing about some mutual 
 agreement ; but the attempt unfortunately failed, as I have 
 already explained. 
 
 "You can use this letter as you think fit. 
 
 " Accept the assurance of my sincere respect and devo- 
 tion. 
 
 A. Brusiloff." 
 
 Statement by Jules Baissac, sworn interpreter in the 
 Paris Court of Appeal : — 
 
 " Paris, Janvier 8, 1892. 
 
 " C'est bien moi et moi-meme qui ai appose ma signature 
 et mon cachet d'office aux traductions que m'a soumises 
 dans le temps Mr. Solovyoff de lettres en langue Russe de 
 Madame Blavatsky, comme c'est moi aussi qui ai timbre ces 
 lettres. II est faux, absolument faux, que Mr. Solovyoff 
 ait profite, comme on I'aurait dit, d'un moment ou j'etais 
 absent de mon bureau pour appliquer lui-meme ce cachet. 
 
 " Mon timbre sur les originaux quelconques n'a point 
 pour objet de les authentiquer, mais d'etablir que ce sont 
 bien les pieces sur lesquelles ont ete faites les traductions 
 approuvees et scellees par moi. Or, je le repete, c'est bien 
 moi qui ai mis mon timbre sur les traductions dont il 
 s'agit, ainsi que sur les textes originaux. 
 
 "J. Baissac. 
 
 P.S. — II est fort inutile d'ajouter, apres ce que je viens 
 de dire, que je n'ai jamais dit ni ecrit a personne quoique ce 
 
352 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 soit qui puisse faire croire le contraire de ce que j'affirme 
 ici ; ni dit, ni ecrit. 
 
 "J. Baissac." 
 
 To this letter is affixed the official stamp bearing the 
 words: ''J. Baissac, interprete jure pres la cour d'Appel, 
 Paris 
 
 This, I think, is enough ; it is time to end. Madame 
 Jelihovsky has repeatedly and cruelly punished herself by 
 her own pamphlet. Her way of falling into a " state of 
 distraction" and taking no account of her words has led 
 her too far. She is not forbidden to leave the path of truth, 
 even in print. But a whole series of pubHshed slanders, 
 refuted by indisputable evidence, is really too much. On 
 what does Madame Jelihovsky reckon ? Evidently only on 
 the fact that she is a woman. Her calculation is correct. 
 I shall not yet attempt to prosecute her. Let us hope she 
 will give up. 
 
 I leave the matter to the judgment of all impartial and 
 honourable persons. 
 
APPENDIX C, 
 
 THE SOURCES OF MADAME BLA- 
 VATSKY'S WRITINGS. 
 
 By WM. EMMETTE COLEMAN.^ 
 
 During the past three years I have made a more or less 
 exhaustive analysis of the contents of the writings of Madame 
 H. P. Blavatsky ; and I have traced the sources whence 
 she derived — and mostly without credit being given — nearly 
 the whole of their subject-matter. The presentation, in 
 detail, of the evidences of this derivation would constitute 
 a volume ; but the limitations of this paper will admit only 
 of a brief summary of the results attained by my analysis 
 of these writings. The detailed proofs and evidence of 
 every assertion herein are now partly in print and partly in 
 manuscript ; and they will be embodied in full in a work I 
 am preparing for publication, — an expose of theosophy as a 
 whole. So far as pertains to Isis Unveiled, Madame Bla- 
 vatsky's first work, the proofs of its wholesale plagiarisms 
 have been in print two years, and no attempt has been 
 made to deny or discredit any of the data therein contained. 
 In that portion of my work which is already in print, as 
 
 1 Member, American Oriental Society, Royal Asiatic Society of 
 Great Britain and Ireland, Pali Text Society, Egypt Exploration 
 Fund, Geographical Society of California ; Corresponding Member, 
 Brooklyn Ethical Association ; and Member, Advisory Council, 
 Psychic Science Congress, Chicago, Illinois. 
 
 23 
 
354 ^ Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 well as in that as yet in manuscript, many parallel passages are 
 given from the two sets of writings, — the works of Madame 
 Blavatsky, and the books whence she copied the plagiarised 
 passages ; they also contain complete lists of the passages 
 plagiarised, giving in each cas^ the page of Madame Bla- 
 vatsky's work in which the passage is found, and the page 
 and name of the book whence she copied it. Any one 
 can, therefore, easily test the accuracy of my statements. 
 
 In Isis Unveiled, published in 1877, I discovered some 
 2000 passages copied from other books without proper 
 credit. By careful analysis I found that in compiling Isis 
 about 100 books were used. About 1400 books are quoted 
 from and referred to in this work ; but, from the 100 books 
 which its author possessed, she copied everything in Isis 
 taken from and relating to the other 1300. There are in 
 Isis about 2100 quotations from and references to books 
 that were copied, at second-hand, from books other than the 
 originals; and of this number only about 140 are credited 
 to the books from which Madame Blavatsky copied them at 
 second-hand. The others are quoted in such a manner as to 
 lead the reader to think that Madame Blavatsky had read 
 and utilised the original works, and had quoted from them 
 at first-hand, — the truth being that these originals had evi- 
 dently never been read by Madame Blavatsky. By this 
 means many readers of Isis^ and subsequently those of her 
 Secret Doctrine and Theosophical Glossary^ have been mis- 
 led into thinking Madame Blavatsky an enormous reader, 
 possessed of vast erudition ; while the fact is her reading 
 was very limited, and her ignorance was profound in all 
 branches of knowledge. 
 
 The books utilised in compiling Isis were nearly all 
 current nineteenth-century literature. Only one of the old 
 and rare books named and quoted from was in Madame 
 Blavatsky's possession, — Henry More's Im??iortality of the 
 Soul^ pubHshed in the seventeenth century. One or two 
 
Appendix, 
 
 355 
 
 others dated from the early part of the present century ; 
 and all the rest pertained to the middle and later part of 
 this century. Our author made great pretensions to Cab- 
 balistic learning ; but every quotation from and every 
 allusion to the Cabbala, in Isis and all her later works, 
 were copied at second-hand from certain books containing 
 scattered quotations from Cabbalistic writings; among them 
 being Mackenzie's Masonic Cyclopcedia, King's Gnostics^ 
 and the works of S. F. Dunlap, L. Jacolliot, and Eliphas 
 Levi. Not a hne of the quotations in Isis^ from the old- 
 time mystics, Paracelsus, Van Helmont, Cardan, Robert 
 Fludd, Philalethes, Gaffarel, and others, was taken from, 
 the original works ; the whole of them were copied from 
 other books containing scattered quotations from those 
 writers. The same thing obtains with her quotations from 
 Josephus, Philo, and the Church Fathers, as Justin Martyr, 
 Origen, Clement, Irenaeus, TertulHan, Easebius, and all 
 the rest. The same holds good with the classical authors, 
 — Homer, Ovid, Horace, Virgil, Plato, Pliny, and many 
 others. The quotations from all these were copied at 
 second-hand from some of the loo books which were 
 used by the compiler of Isis. 
 
 In a number of instances Madame Blavatsky, in Isis^ 
 claimed to possess or to have read certain books quoted 
 from, which it is evident she neither possessed nor had 
 read. In Isis, i., 369-377, are a number of quotations 
 from a work of Figuier's, that she claimed to have taken 
 from the original work, which she says (i., 369) now " lies 
 before us As every word from Figuier in Isis was copied 
 from Des Mousseaux's Magie au Dix-neuvieme Siecle, pp. 45 1- 
 457, the word "lies " in the sentence used by her is quite ^ 
 propos. In Isis^ i., 353, 354, et seq.^ she professed to quote 
 from a work in her possession, whereas all that she quoted 
 was copied from Demonologia^ pp. 224-259. In ii., 8, she 
 claimed that she had read a work by Bellarmin, whereas 
 
356 A Modern Priestess of I sis. 
 
 all that she says about him, and all that she quotes from 
 him, are copied from Demono/ogia, pp. 294, 295. In ii., 
 71, she stated that she had k treatise by De Nogen, but all 
 that she knows about him or his treatise was taken from 
 Demono/ogia, p. 431. In ii., 74, 75, the reader is led to 
 believe that certain quotations from T/ie Golden Legend 
 were copied by her from the original ; the truth being that 
 they were taken from Deinonologia, 420-427. In ii., 59, 
 she gave a description of a standard of the Inquisition, 
 derived, she said, from "a photograph in our possession, 
 from an original procured at the Escurial of Madrid " ; but 
 this description was copied from Deino7iologia, p. 300. 
 
 In Isis, i., pp. xii. to xxii., is an account of the philosophy 
 of Plato and his successors. Nearly the whole of these ten 
 pages was copied from two books, — Cocker's Christianity 
 and Greek Philosophy^ and Zeller's Plato and the Old 
 Academy, There are some 25 passages from Cocker and 
 35 from Zeller ; and, of all these, credit is given for but 
 one citation from Cocker and about a dozen lines from 
 Zeller. In Isis, ii., 344, 345, 9 passages are copied from 
 Zeller, but one of which is credited. 
 
 Here follows a list of some other of the more extensive 
 plagiarisms in Isis, It includes the names of the books 
 plagiarised from, and the number of passages in them 
 that were plagiarised : — 
 
 Ennemoser's History of Magic, English translation, - 107 passages. 
 
 Demonologia, -------- 85 ,, 
 
 Dunlap's Sod the Son of the Man, - - - - 134 
 
 Dunlap's So(i ; the Mysteries of Adoni, - - - 65 ,, 
 
 Dunlap's Spirit History of Man, - - - - 77 n 
 
 0 Salverte's Philosophy of Magic, English translation, - 68 ,, 
 
 Des Mousseaux's Magie au Dix-neuvienie Siecle, - 63 ,, 
 
 Des Mousseaux's Hauts Phenomenes de la Magie, - 45 ,, 
 
 Des Mousseaux's Moeurs et Pratiques des Demons, - 16 ,, 
 
 Supernatural Religion, - - ... - - 40 ,, 
 
 King's Gnostics, ist edition, 42 „ 
 
Appendix. 
 
 357 
 
 Mackenzie's Masonic Cyclopcsdia, - - . - 36 passages. 
 
 Jacolliot's Christna et Ic Christ, - - - - 23 ,, 
 
 Jacolliot's Bible in India, English translation, - - 17 
 
 Jacolliot's Le Spiritisnie dans le Monde, - - - ig 
 
 Hone's Apocryphal New Testament, - - . - 27 
 
 Cory's Ancient Fragments, - - - - - 20 
 
 Howitt's History of the Snpernatural, - - - 20 ,, 
 
 Among the other books plagiarised from may be named 
 Eliphas Levi's Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, and his 
 La Science des Esprits, La Clef des Grands Mysteres, and 
 Histoire de la Magie ; Amberley's Analysis of Religious 
 Belief, Yule's Se?- Marco Polo, Max M tiller's Chips, vols. i. 
 and ii., Lundy's Monumental Christiaiiity, Taylor's Eleu- 
 sinian and Bacchic Mysteries (1875 ed.), Reber's Christ of 
 Paul, Jennings's Rosicrucians^ Higgins's Anacalypsis, 
 Inman's Ancient Faiths in Ancient Names, Inman's Ancient 
 Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolisjn, Inman's Ancient 
 Faiths and Modern, Wright's Sorcery and Witchcraft, 
 Bunsen's Egypt, Payne Knight's Symbolical Language of 
 Ancient Art and Mythology, Westropp and Wake's Aitcient 
 Symbol Worship, Pococke's Lndia in Greece, Findel's 
 ILisiory of Freemasonry, The U?iseen Universe, Elam's A 
 Physician s Problems, Emma Hardinge's Moder7i American 
 Spiritualism, More's Lm mortality of the Soul, Draper's Con- 
 flict betiveen Religion and Scie7ice, Randolph's Pre- Adamite 
 Man, Peebles's Jesus: Myth, Man, or God, Peebles's 
 Around the World, Principles of the Jesuits (1839), Sep- 
 tenary Lnstitutions (1850), Gas pari n's Science and Spiritual- 
 ism, Report on Spiritualism of the London Dialectical Society 
 (1873), Wallace's Miracles and ALodern Spiritualism, and 
 Maudsley's Body and Mind. 
 
 Two years ago I published the statement that the whole 
 of Lsis was compiled from a little over 100 books and 
 periodicals. In the Theosophist, /Vpril, 1893, pp. 387, 388, 
 Colonel Olcott states that when Isis was written the library 
 
358 A Modern Priestess of his. 
 
 of the author comprised about 100 books, and that during 
 its composition various friends lent her a few books, — the 
 latter with her own library thus making up a little over 100, 
 in precise accordance with the well-established results of my 
 critical analysis of every quotation and plagiarism in Isis. 
 
 The Secret Doct?'ine^ published in 1888, is of a piece with 
 Isis. It is permeated with plagiarisms, and is in all its 
 parts a rehash of other books. Two books very largely 
 form the basis of this work, — Wilson's translation of the 
 Vishfiu Furana, and Prof. Winchell's World Life. The 
 Secret Doctrine is saturated with Hinduism and Sanskrit 
 terminology, and the bulk of this was copied from Wilson's 
 Vishnu Furana. A large part of the work is devoted to 
 the discussion of various points in modern science, and 
 the work most largely used by Madame Blavatsky in this 
 department of her book was Winchell's World Life. A 
 specimen of the wholesale plagiarisms in this book appears 
 in vol. ii. , pp. 599-603. Nearly the whole of four images 
 was copied from Oliver's Fythagorea?^ Triangle^ while only 
 a few lines were credited to that work. Considerable other 
 matter in Secret Doctrine was copied, uncredited, from 
 Oliver's work. Donnelly's Atlantis was largely plagiarised 
 from. Madame Blavatsky not only borrowed from this 
 writer the general idea of the derivation of Eastern civilisa- 
 tion, mythology, etc., from Atlantis ; but she coolly appro- 
 priated from him a number of the alleged detailed evidences 
 of this derivation, without crediting him therewith. Vol. 
 ii., pp. 790-793, contains a number of facts, numbered 
 se7'iati}n^ said to prove this Atlantean derivation. These 
 facts were almost wholly copied from Donnelly's book, ch. 
 iv., where they are also numbered seriatim ; but there is no 
 intimation in Secret Doctrine that its author was indebted 
 to Donnelly's book for this mass of matter. In addition to 
 those credited, there are 130 passages from Wilson's Vishnu 
 Furana copied uncredited ; and there are some 70 passages 
 
Appendix, 
 
 359 
 
 from Winchell's World Life not credited. From Dowson's 
 Hindu Classical Dictionary^ 123 passages were plagiarised. 
 From Decharme's Mythologie de la Grece Antique^ about 
 60 passages were plagiarised ; and from Myer's Qabbala, 
 34. These are some of the other books plagiarised from : 
 Kenealy's Book of God^ Faber's Cabiri^ Wake's Great 
 Pyramid^ Gould's Mythical Monsters^ Joly's Man before 
 Metals, Stallo's Modern Physics, Massey's Natural Genesis,, 
 Mackey's Mythological Astronomy , Schmidt's Desce7tt and 
 Darwinism^ Quatrefages's Human Species, Laing's Modern 
 Science and Modern Thought,, Mather's Cabbala Unveiled, 
 Maspero's Musee de Boulaq, Ragon's Mafonnerie Occulte^ 
 Lefevre's Philosophy, and Biichner's Force and Matter. 
 
 The Secret Doctrine is ostensibly based upon certain 
 stanzas, claimed to have been translated by Madame Bla- 
 vatsky from the Book of Dzyan, — the oldest book in the 
 world, written in a language unknown to philology. The 
 Book of Dzyan was the work of Madame Blavatsky, — a 
 compilation, in her own language, from a variety of sources, 
 embracing the general principles of the doctrines and 
 dogmas taught in the Secret Doctrine, I find in this 
 ^'oldest book in the world " statements copied from nine- 
 teenth-century books, and in the usual blundering manner 
 of Madame Blavatsky. Letters and other writings of the 
 adepts are found in the Secret Doctrine, In these Mahat- 
 mic productions I have traced various plagiarised passages 
 from Wilson's Vishnu Purana and Winchell's World Life, 
 — of like character to those in Madame Blavatsky's acknow- 
 ledged writings. Detailed proofs of this will be given in 
 my book. I have also traced the source whence she 
 derived the word Dzyan, 
 
 The Theosophical Glossary, published in 1892, contains 
 an alphabetical arrangement of words and terms pertaining 
 to occultism and theosophy, with explanations and defini- 
 tions thereof. The whole of this book, except the garblings, 
 
360 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 \ 
 
 distortions and fabrications of Madame Blavatsky scattered 
 through it, was copied from other books. The explanations 
 and definitions of 425 names and terms were copied from 
 Dowson's Hindu Classical Dictionary . From Wilson's 
 Vishnu Purana were taken those of 242 terms ; from Eitel's 
 Handbook of Chinese Buddhism^ 179 ; and from Mackenzie's 
 Masonic Cyclopcedia, 164. A modicum of credit was given to 
 these four books in the preface. But, inasmuch as, scattered 
 through the Glossary, credit was given at intervals to these 
 books for a certain few of the passages extracted therefrom, 
 its readers might easily be misled, by the remark in the 
 preface relative to these four books, into the belief that 
 said remark was intended to cover the various passages in 
 the Glossary where these books are named as the sources 
 whence they were derived and these alone, — that the pas- 
 sages duly credited to said books comprised the whole of 
 the matter in the volume taken from them, instead of being 
 but a small part of the immense collection of matter trans- 
 ferred en masse to the Glossa?y. But the four named in 
 the preface are not the only books thus utilised. A glossary 
 of Sanskrit and occultic terms was appended to a work called 
 Five Years of Theosophy, pubHshed by Mohini M. Ch:it- 
 terji in 1885. At least 229 of these terms and their defini- 
 tions were copied in Blavatsky 's Glossary, nearly verbatim 
 in every instance ; and no credit whatever was given for 
 this w^holesale appropriation of another's work. I cannot 
 find a single reference to Chatterji's glossary in any part of 
 the later Glossary. Nearly all of the matter concerning 
 Egyptian mythology, etc., in the latter, was copied from 
 Bonwick's Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought. A small 
 part of this was credited, but over 100 passages from 
 Bon wick were not credited. Nearly every word in relation 
 to Norse and Teutonic mythology was copied from Wagner's 
 Asgard and the Gods, — a little being credited, and some 
 100 passages not. Most of the Thibetan matter was taken 
 
Appendix. 
 
 361 
 
 from Schlagintweit's Buddhism in Thibet^ — some credited, 
 but nearly 50 passages were not. Much of the material 
 anent Southern Buddhism was copied from Spence Hardy's 
 Eastern Mo?iachisf?i,—nQdiv\y 50 passages being uncredited. 
 Most of the Babylonian and Chaldean material was ex- 
 tracted from Smith's Chaldean Account of Genesis^ with 
 nearly- 50 passages not credited. The Parsi and Zoro- 
 astrian matter was from Darmesteter's translation of the 
 Zend-Avesta^ and West's translation of the Bundahish in the 
 Sacred Books of the East^ — mostly uncredited. Among 
 other books levied upon in the compilation of the Glossary^ 
 principally with no credit given, are these : Sayce's Hibbert 
 Lectures, Myer's Qabbaia, Hartmann's Paracelsus, Crawford's 
 translation of the Kalevala, King's Gnostics, Faber's Cabiri, 
 Beal's Catena of Buddhist Scriptures, Rhys Davids's 
 Buddhisin, Edkins's Chinese Buddhis7n, Maspero's Guide 
 au Muske de Boulaq, Subba Row's Notes on the Bhagavad 
 Gita, Kenealy's Book of God, Eliphas Levi's Works., and 
 various others. 
 
 The Voice of the Silence, published in 1889, purports 
 to be a translation by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky from 
 a Thibetan work. It is said to belong to the same series as 
 the Book of Dzyan^ which is true ; as, like that w^ork, it 
 is a compilation of ideas and terminology from various 
 nineteenth-century books, the diction and phraseology 
 being those of Madame Blavatsky. I have traced the 
 sources whence it was taken, and it is a hotch-potch from 
 Brahmanical books on Yoga and other Hindu writings ; 
 Southern Buddhistic books, from the Pali and Sinhalese ; 
 and Northern Buddhistic writings, from the Chinese and 
 Thibetan, — the whole having been taken by Helena Petrovna 
 Blavatsky from translations by, and the writings of, European 
 and other Orientalists of lo-day. In this work are inter- 
 mingled Sanskrit, Pali, Thibetan, Chinese, and Sinhalese 
 terms,— a manifest absurdity in a Thibetan work. I have 
 
362 
 
 A Modem^Priestess of I sis. 
 
 traced the books from which each of these terms was taken. 
 I find embedded in the text of this alleged ancient I'hibetan 
 work quotations, phrases, and terms copied from current 
 Oriental literature. The books most utilised in its compila- 
 tion are these : Schlagintweit's Buddhism in Thibet^ Edkins's 
 Chinese Bitddhis7n, Hardy's Eastern Monachis77i^ Rhys 
 Davids's Buddhism^ Dvivedi's Raja Yoga, and Baja Yoga 
 Philosophy (1888) ; also an article, " The Dream of 
 Ravan," published in the Dublin University Magazine^ 
 January, 1854, extracts from which appeared in the Theoso- 
 phist of January, 1880. Passages from this article, and 
 from the books named above, are scattered about in the 
 text of the V'oice of the Silence, as well as in the annotations 
 thereon, which latter are admitted to be the work of 
 Blavatsky. Full proofs of this, including the parallel 
 passages, will be given in my work on theosophy ; including 
 evidence that this old Thibetan book contains not only 
 passages from the Hindu books quoted in the article in 
 the Dublin Magazine, but also ideas and phrases stolen 
 from the nineteenth-century writer of said article. One 
 example of the incongruity of the elements composing the 
 conglomerate admixture of terms and ideas in the Voice of 
 the Silence will be given. On p. 87, it is said that the 
 Narjols of the Northern Buddhists are ''learned in 
 G6trabhu-gnyana and gnyana-dassana-suddhi Helena 
 Peirovna Blavatsky copied these two terms from Hardy's 
 Eastern Monachis7n, p. 281. The terms used in Northern 
 Buddhism are usually Sanskrit, or from the Sanskrit ; those 
 in Southern Buddhism, Pali, or from the Pah. Hardy's 
 work, devoted to Sinhalese Buddhism, is composed of 
 translations from Sinhalese books, and its terms and phrases 
 are largely Sinhalese corruptions of the Pali. Sinhalese 
 terms are unknown in Northern Buddhism. The two terms 
 in the Voice of the Silence, descriptive of the wisdom of 
 the Narjols, are Sinhalese- Pali corruptions, . and therefore 
 
Appendix. 
 
 363 
 
 unknown in Thibet. Narjol is a word manufactured by 
 Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, from the Thibetan Nal-jor, which 
 she found in Schlagintweit's work, p. 138, — the r and / 
 being transposed by her. 
 
 Esoteric Buddhism^ by A. P. Sinnett, was based upon state- 
 ments in letters received by Mr. Sinnett and Mr. A. O. 
 Hume, through Madame Blavatsky, purporting to be 
 written by the Mahatmas Koot Hoomi and Morya, — prin- 
 cipally the former. Mr. Richard Hodgson has kindly lent 
 me a considerable number of the original letters of the 
 Mahatmas leading to the production of Esoteric Buddhism. 
 I find in them overwhelming evidence that all of them 
 were written by Madame Blavatsky, which evidence will be 
 presented in full in my book. In these letters are a number 
 of extracts from Buddhist books, alleged to be translations 
 from the originals by the Mahatmic writers themselves. 
 These letters claim for the adepts a knowledge of Sanskrit, 
 Thibetan, Pali and Chinese. I have traced to its source 
 each quotation from the Buddhist scriptures in the letters, 
 and they were all copied from current English translations, 
 including even the notes and explanations of the English 
 translators. They were principally copied from Beal's 
 Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese. In other 
 places where the adept (?) is using his own language in ex- 
 planation of Buddhistic terms and ideas, I find that his 
 presumed original language was copied nearly word for 
 word from Rhys Davids's Buddhism, and other books. I 
 have traced every Buddhistic idea in these letters and in 
 Esoteric Buddhism, and every Buddhistic term, such as 
 Devachan, Avitchi, etc., to the books whence Helena 
 Petrovna Blavatsky derived them. Although said to be 
 proficient in the knowledge of Thibetan and Sanskrit, the 
 words and terms in these languages in the letters of the 
 adepts were nearly all used in a ludicrously erroneous and 
 absurd manner. The writer of those letters was an 
 
364 
 
 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 ignoramus in Sanskrit and Thibetan ; and the mistakes and 
 blunders in them, in these languages, are in exact accord- 
 ance with the known ignorance of Madame Blavatsky 
 thereanent. Esoteric Buddhism, like all of Madame Bla- 
 vatsky's works, was based upon wholesale plagiarism and 
 ignorance. 
 
 From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan^ although pub- 
 lished, in letters to a Russian journal, as a veracious 
 narrative of actual experiences of Madame Blavatsky in 
 India, was admitted by Colonel Olcott in Theosophist^ 
 January, 1893, PP- 245, 246,. to be largely a work of fiction ; 
 and this has been even partially conceded in its preface. 
 Like her other books it swarms with blunders, misstate- 
 ments, falsehoods and garblings.^ ^^FuU expose of it will be 
 included in my work. The Key to Theosophy^ by Helena 
 Petrovna Blavatsky, being a compendium of doctrines, its 
 plagiarism consists in the ideas and teachings which it 
 contains, rather than in plagiarised passages from other 
 books. 
 
 In addition to wholesale plagiarism, other marked char- 
 acteristics of Madame Blavatsky 's writings are these : (i) 
 Wholesale garbling, distortion and literary forgery, of which 
 there are very many instances in Isis particularly. The 
 Koot Hoomi letters to Hume and Sinnett contain garbled 
 and spurious quotations from Buddhist sacred books, 
 manufactured by the writer to embody her own peculiar 
 ideas, under the fictitious guise of genuine Buddhism. 
 (2) Wealth of misstatement and error in all branches of 
 knowledge treated by her ; e.g,^ in Isis there are over 600 
 false statements in Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christian- 
 ity, Assyriology, Egyptology, etc. (3) iVIistakes and blunders 
 of many varied kinds — in names of books and authors, in 
 words and figures and what not; nearly 700 being in Isis 
 alone. (4) Great contradiction and inconsistency, both in 
 primary and essential points and in minor matters and 
 
Appendix. 
 
 365 
 
 details. There are probably thousands of contradictions in 
 the whole circuit of her writings. 
 
 The doctrines, teachings, dogmas, etc., of theosophy, as 
 pubUshed by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and affirmed to 
 be derived from the quasi-mi^WWAe Mahatmas of Thibet, 
 were borrowed from the philosophies and religions of the 
 past and present, with some admixture of modern science. 
 There is nothing original in this " Wisdom of the Gods," 
 or " Wisdom Religion," save the work of compilation into a 
 composite whole of the heterogeneous mass of materials 
 gathered by Madame Blavatsky from so many sources, and 
 the garblings, perversions, and fabrications indulged in by 
 her in the preparation of the system of thought called 
 theosophy. A careful analysis of her teachings shows that 
 they were collected from the sources named below, (i) 
 Madame Blavatsky was a spiritualistic medium many years 
 before she became a theosophist, and in its inception 
 theosophy was an off-shoot from spiritualism ; and from this 
 source was a large part of her theosophy taken. I find that 
 its teachings upon some 267 points were copied from those 
 of spiritualism. (2) In its later form, Hinduism constitutes 
 one of the larger portions of theosophy. I have not at- 
 tempted an exhaustive classification of the numerous minor 
 points taken from this source, but I have noted 281 of the 
 more important. (3) From Buddhism I have noted 63. 
 (4) In the beginnings of theosophy, the basis of most of its 
 teachings was derived from the works of Eliphas Levi, 
 and I count 102 points therefrom borrowed. (5) From 
 Paracelsus's works were taken 49. (6) From Jacob Bohme, 
 81. (7) From the Cabbala, 86. (8) From Plato, the 
 Platonists, the Neo-Platonists, and Hermes, 80. (9) From 
 Gnosticism, 61. (10) From modern science and philo- 
 sophy, 75. (11) From Zoroastrianism, 26. (12) From 
 Kingsford and Maitland's Perfect Way, 24. (13) From 
 general mythology, 20. (14) From Egyptology, 17. (15) 
 
/ 
 
 / 
 
 366 A Modern Priestess of Isis. 
 
 From the Rosicrucians, 16. (r6) From other mediaeval 
 and modern mystics, 20. (17) From miscellaneous classi- 
 cal writers, 16. (18) From Assyriology, 14. (19) From 
 Christianity and the Bible, 10. In addition, doctrines and 
 data, in lesser number, have been derived from the follow- 
 ing-named sources : The writings of Gerald Massey, John 
 Yarker^ Subba Row, Ragon, J. Ralston Skinner, Inman, 
 Keeley, Godfrey Higgins, Jacolliot, Wilford, Olivier, 
 Donnelly, Mackenzie, Bulvver-Lytlon, Kenealy, and various 
 others ; also from Chinese, Japanese, Phoenician, and 
 Quiche mythologies. 
 
 There is not a single dogma or tenet in theosophy, nor 
 any detail of moment in the multiplex and complex con- 
 catenation of alleged revelations of occult truth in the 
 teachings of Madame Blavatsky and the pretended adepts, 
 the source of which cannot be pointed out in the world's 
 literature. From first to last, their writings are dominated 
 by a duplex plagiarism, — plagiarism in idea, and plagiarism 
 in language. 
 
 San Francisco, California, U.S.A., 
 2nd August, 1893. 
 
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