At that time the whole Riviera was swarming with professional clairvoyantes, and it soon "got wind" that Prince Valori's "Familiar" was walking about with him. He treated the matter almost as lightly as a distinguished English General treated his "Familiar."
The Englishman, General Elliot, who commanded the forces in Scotland, was a very well-known society man, about twenty-five years ago. He had a name for his Familiar, "Wononi," and used actually to speak aloud with him in the middle of a dinner-party. The General occupied a very distinguished position, not only in his profession, but in the social world, and to look at he was the very last man that one would associate with matters occult.
In 1895 Marie, Duchesse de Pomar and Countess of Caithness, died. She had the right to claim burial in Holyrood Chapel, and a very simple stone marks her last resting-place. To her I owe the warmest friendship of my life, for it was in her opera box I met the present Lady Treowen, born a daughter of Lord Albert Conynghame, who afterwards became the first Lord Londesborough. To the many who know and love her, Albertina Treowen represents a type of perfect breeding, alas! fast becoming extinct in these days. She has lived the reality of noblesse oblige, has the rare gift of perfect friendship, and combines a rare refinement of mind with strong moral courage.
CHAPTER IV
EAST END DAYS AND NIGHTS
If we had found the golden thread of meaning which gives coherence to the whole; if we had been taught as our religion that every man and woman was receiving the strictest justice at the Divine hands, and that our conditions to-day were exactly those our former lives entitled us to, how different would be our outlook on life. As it is, men have fallen away in their bitter discontent from a God in whose justice they have ceased to believe, and of whose impartiality they see no sign.
I doubt if any religion extant has claimed such a wide diversity in its adherents as Christianity. Calvin, Knox, Torquemada, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Kaiser Wilhelm. Mr. Gladstone, and Czar Nicolas. The Pope of Rome, and Spurgeon. Even those nine names, which might be multiplied indefinitely, show us diametrically opposed readings of the same faith.
It would be of enormous benefit to us if we studied all the great religions, and separated from each the obviously false from the true, and appropriated the latter. The Bible would gain enormously in value if studied in conjunction with other sacred books written before the advent of Christ.