[345] I have failed to verify the statement that this person had access to the Emperor Alexander.
[346] It should be understood that Valérie appeared at Paris in 1803, when the writer was thirty-nine years old. Her acquaintance with the Russian Emperor was eleven years later, and it was during the intervening period that her spiritual development took place. She was no longer an amiable coquette, though the description may once have applied to her. There is no question that the portrait of Valérie was, and was intended to be, her own portrait. As to the identity of her hero, he was her husband’s secretary and there was no intimacy between them in the evil sense of the term, though she was not of unblemished reputation in other respects.
[347] It was the Empress Elizabeth, wife of Alexander, who first brought Madame de Krudener to the notice of her husband. She shewed him some of her letters to draw him under religious influence. The King and mystic met, under singular circumstances, on June 4, 1815. Madame de Krudener was 13 years older than the Emperor, with pale, emaciated and drawn features. The story repeated by Éliphas Lévi, whencesoever it may come, is an execrable calumny. The acquaintance began at Würtemberg and continued during the Emperor’s residence in Paris, or till September 28, 1815. Those were the days which ended in the proclamation of the Holy Alliance, and Madame de Krudener’s part in that work is a matter of history.
[348] Thomas Ignatius Martin is said to have foretold the revolution of 1830, but the fact is dubious. In his interview with Louis XVIII he is said also to have told the French King that he was not the rightful occupant of the French throne, but this is more than dubious. The particular legitimacy which he supported was that of Naündorff.
[349] See La France Mystique, by Alexandre Erdan, vol. ii. p. 135 et seq. for notices of four chief disciples of Fourier, the maddest being Victor Hennequin.
[350] He was the prophet of a third and final alliance between God and man.
[351] It is said that after the rupture of his relations with Wronski, M. Arson instituted a kind of humanitarian religion on his own account, and combined it with some aspect of metempsychosis speculations.
[352] The discourses of St. Michael with Vintras are said to have concerned (a) the destinies of France, (b) the future of religion, (c) the reform of the clergy. The Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph and Christ Himself also visited the seer, according to his own testimony.
[353] L’Œuvre de la Miséricorde prit une teinte fleur-de-lys très prononcée.—Alexandre Erdan.
[354] See my Mysteries of Magic: a Digest of the Writings of Éliphas Lévi.