“Thirdly.—Are the men and women of commonplace and thoroughly material life?—Then, it is plain they cannot influence others to strive for a higher existence.
“Fourthly.—Do they love notoriety?—If they do, the gates of the unseen world are shut upon them.
“Fifthly.—Do they disagree among themselves, and speak against one another?—If so, they contradict by their own behavior all the laws of spiritual force and harmony.
“Sixthly and lastly.—Do they reject Christ?—If they do, they know nothing whatever about Spiritualism, there being none without Him.”
There is a charming finale. Theos marries the angel Edris. An angel? Yes; but an angel because a woman, most purely womanly. That is all, and all women can be angels—“A Dream of Heaven made human!”
CHAPTER VI
“WORMWOOD” AND “THE SOUL OF LILITH”
Some day a selection of extracts from “The Works of Marie Corelli” will be published, and excellent reading it will prove. For, scattered about the novelist’s goodly list of books, one may light on many interesting little observations concerning human nature which will well bear reproduction without the context. In the course of this biography a modest choice of Miss Corelli’s thoughts on religion, men, women, education, and such-like topics will be found; but it is impossible in the narrow scope of the present publication to quote everything that one would like to.
Early in “Wormwood” there occurs a passage of the kind to which we refer. It is a pretty description of the ill-fated heroine of the story, and of her “soft and trifling chatter.” Pauline de Charmilles is eighteen, newly home from school—“a child as innocent and fresh as a flower just bursting into bloom, with no knowledge of the world into which she was entering, and with certainly no idea of the power of her own beauty to rouse the passions of men.” Pauline, by mutual parental head-nodding, is thrown much into the society of young Beauvais (who tells the story), a wealthy banker’s son. His description of the girl forms the passage alluded to above:
“Pauline de Charmilles was not a shy girl, but by this I do not mean it to be in the least imagined that she was bold. On the contrary, she had merely that quick brightness and esprit which is the happy heritage of so many Frenchwomen, none of whom think it necessary to practice or assume the chilly touch-me-not diffidence and unbecoming constraint which make the young English “mees” such a tame and tiresome companion to men of sense and humor. She was soon perfectly at her ease with me, and became prettily garrulous and confidential, telling me stories of her life at Lausanne, describing the loveliness of the scenery on Lake Leman, and drawing word-portraits of her teachers and schoolmates with a facile directness and point that brought them at once before the mind’s eye as though they were actually present.”
Pauline’s ingenuousness and alluring looks quickly enslave young Beauvais. He cannot understand the reason of this fascination. He quite realizes that she is a bread-and-butter schoolgirl, and “a mere baby in thought,” but—she is beautiful. So, having granted that the net in which he finds himself immeshed is purely a physical one, he thus descants on the reasonableness of his fall: