"I see the Scarlet Flower quite plainly . . . a small Scarlet Flower. . . . And I see the great Light which is like an aureole, the Light of the Chosen One. It is of dazzling brightness—but over it the Scarlet Flower casts a Stygian shadow."
"Ask them," Robespierre broke in peremptorily, "ask thy spirits how best I can overcome mine enemy."
"I see something," the witch went on in an even monotone, still gazing into the crystal globe, "white and rose and tender . . . is it a woman . . .?"
"A woman?"
"She is tall, and she is beautiful . . . a stranger in the land . . . with eyes dark as the night and tresses black as the raven's wing. . . . Yes, it is a woman. . . . She stands between the Light and that blood-red flower. She takes the flower in her hand . . . she fondles it, raises it to her lips. . . . Ah!" and the old seer gave a loud cry of triumph. "She tosses it mangled and bleeding into the consuming Light. . . . And now it lies faded, torn, crushed, and the Light grows in radiance and in brilliancy, and there is none now to dim its pristine glory——"
"But the woman? Who is she?" the man broke in impatiently. "What is her name?"
"The spirits speak no names," the seer replied. "Any woman would gladly be thy handmaid, O Elect of France! The spirits have spoken," she concluded solemnly. "Salvation will come to thee by the hand of a woman."
"And mine enemy?" he insisted. "Which of us two is in danger of death now—now that I am warned—which of us two?—mine English enemy, or I?"
Nothing loth, the old hag was ready to continue her sortilege. Robespierre hung breathless upon her lips. His whole personality seemed transformed. He appeared eager, fearful, credulous—a different man to the cold, calculating despot who sent thousands to their death with his measured oratory, the mere power of his presence. Indeed, history has sought in vain for the probable motive which drove this cynical tyrant into consulting this pitiable charlatan. That Catherine Théot had certain psychic powers has never been gainsaid, and since the philosophers of the eighteenth century had undermined the religious superstitions of the Middle Ages, it was only to be expected that in the great upheaval of this awful Revolution, men and women should turn to the mystic and the supernatural as to a solace and respite from the fathomless misery of their daily lives.
In this world of ours, the more stupendous the events, the more abysmal the catastrophes, the more do men realize their own impotence and the more eagerly do they look for the Hidden Hand that is powerful enough to bring about such events and to hurl upon them such devastating cataclysms. Indeed, never since the dawn of history had so many theosophies, demonologies, occult arts, spiritualism, exorcism of all sorts, flourished as they did now: the Theists, the Rosicrucians, the Illuminati, Swedenborg, the Count of Saint Germain, Weishaupt, and scores of others, avowed charlatans or earnest believers, had their neophytes, their devotees, and their cults.