“At the first moment her plain, old earthy-colored 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.”
Madame Blavatsky received Solovyoff kindly, and they became excellent friends. She urged him to join the Theosophical Society, and he expressed himself as favorably impressed with the purposes of the organization. During the interview she produced her astral bell “phenomenon.” She excused herself to attend to some domestic duty, and on her return to the sitting-room, the phenomenon took place. Says Solovyoff: “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 Aeolian 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 forever.’
“She looked me straight in the eyes, and caressed me with her glance and her kindly smile.”
This Mahatmic phenomenon ought to have absolutely convinced Solovyoff, but it did not. He asked himself the question:
“‘Why was the sound of the silver bell not heard at once, but only after she had left the room and come back again?’”
A few days after this event, the Russian journalist was regularly enrolled as a member of the Theosophical Society, and began to study Madame Blavatsky instead of Oriental literature and occultism. He was introduced to Colonel Olcott, who showed him the turban that had been left at the New York headquarters by the astral Koot Hoomi. Solovyoff witnessed other “phenomena” in the presence of Madame Blavatsky, which did not impress him very favorably. Finally, the High Priestess produced her chef d’ oeuvre, the psychometric reading of a letter. Solovyoff was rather impressed with this feat and sent an account of it to the Rebus, but subsequently came to the conclusion that trickery had entered into it. When the Coulomb exposures came, he did not see much of Madame Blavatsky. She was overwhelmed with letters and spent a considerable time anxiously travelling to and fro on Theosophical affairs. In August, 1885, she was at Wurzburg sick at heart and in body, attended by a diminutive Hindoo servant, Bavaji by name. She begged Solovyoff to visit her, promising to give him lessons in occultism. With a determination to investigate the “phenomena,” he went to the Bavarian watering place, and one morning called on Madame Blavatsky. He found her seated in a great arm chair:
“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.