Transcriber’s Note:

This text is a compilation of the six numbers of the first Volume of Lucifer, spanning September 1887 through February 1888.

Footnotes have been collected at the end of each issue of the magazine, and are linked for ease of reference. They have been resequenced for uniqueness across the text.

Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s [note] at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.

Any corrections are indicated using an underline highlight. Placing the cursor over the correction will produce the original text in a small popup.

• [Volume I No. 1 September, 1887]
• [Volume I No. 2 October, 1887]
• [Volume I No. 3 November, 1887]
• [Volume I No. 4 December, 1887]
• [Volume I No. 5 January, 1888]
• [Volume I No. 6 February, 1888]

Any corrections are indicated as hyperlinks, which will navigate the reader to the corresponding entry in the corrections table in the note at the end of the text.

LUCIFER
A Theosophical Magazine,

DESIGNED TO “BRING TO LIGHT THE HIDDEN THINGS OF DARKNESS.”

EDITED BY

H. P. BLAVATSKY AND MABEL COLLINS.

THE LIGHT-BEARER IS THE MORNING STAR OR LUCIFER, AND “LUCIFER IS NO PROFANE OR SATANIC TITLE. IT IS THE LATIN LUCIFERUS. THE LIGHT-BRINGER, THE MORNING STAR, EQUIVALENT TO THE GREEK φωσφορος ... THE NAME OF THE PURE PALE HERALD OF DAYLIGHT.”—Yonge.

VOLUME I.

SEPTEMBER 1887-FEBRUARY 1888.

London:

GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

KELLY & CO., PRINTERS

1 & 3, GATE STREET, LINCOLNS INN FIELDS, LONDON, W.C.

AND MIDDLE MILL, KINGSTON-ON-THAMES.

CONTENTS.

LUCIFER

Vol. I. LONDON, SEPTEMBER 15TH, 1887. No. 1.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?
WHY THE MAGAZINE IS CALLED “LUCIFER.”

What’s in a name? Very often there is more in it than the profane is prepared to understand, or the learned mystic to explain. It is an invisible, secret, but very potential influence that every name carries about with it and “leaveth wherever it goeth.” Carlyle thought that “there is much, nay, almost all, in names.” “Could I unfold the influence of names, which are the most important of all clothings, I were a second great Trismegistus,” he writes.

The name or title of a magazine started with a definite object, is, therefore, all important; for it is, indeed, the invisible seedgrain, which will either grow “to be an all-over-shadowing tree” on the fruits of which must depend the nature of the results brought about by the said object, or the tree will wither and die. These considerations show that the name of the present magazine—rather equivocal to orthodox Christian ears—is due to no careless selection, but arose in consequence of much thinking over its fitness, and was adopted as the best symbol to express that object and the results in view.

Now, the first and most important, if not the sole object of the magazine, is expressed in the line from the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, on its title page. It is to bring light to “the hidden things of darkness,” (iv. 5); to show in their true aspect and their original real meaning things and names, men and their doings and customs; it is finally to fight prejudice, hypocrisy and shams in every nation, in every class of Society, as in every department of life. The task is a laborious one but it is neither impracticable nor useless, if even as an experiment.

Thus, for an attempt of such nature, no better title could ever be found than the one chosen. “Lucifer,” is the pale morning-star, the precursor of the full blaze of the noon-day sun—the “Eosphoros” of the Greeks. It shines timidly at dawn to gather forces and dazzle the eye after sunset as its own brother ‘Hesperos’—the radiant evening star, or the planet Venus. No fitter symbol exists for the proposed work—that of throwing a ray of truth on everything hidden by the darkness of prejudice, by social or religious misconceptions; especially by that idiotic routine in life, which, once that a certain action, a thing, a name, has been branded by slanderous inventions, however unjust, makes respectable people, so called, turn away shiveringly, refusing to even look at it from any other aspect than the one sanctioned by public opinion. Such an endeavour then, to force the weak-hearted to look truth straight in the face, is helped most efficaciously by a title belonging to the category of branded names.

Piously inclined readers may argue that “Lucifer” is accepted by all the churches as one of the many names of the Devil. According to Milton’s superb fiction, Lucifer is Satan, the “rebellious” angel, the enemy of God and man. If one analyzes his rebellion, however, it will be found of no worse nature than an assertion of free-will and independent thought, as if Lucifer had been born in the XIXth century. This epithet of “rebellious,” is a theological calumny, on a par with that other slander of God by the Predestinarians, one that makes of deity an “Almighty” fiend worse than the “rebellious” Spirit himself; “an omnipotent Devil desiring to be ‘complimented’ as all merciful when he is exerting the most fiendish cruelty,” as put by J. Cotter Morison. Both the foreordaining and predestining fiend-God, and his subordinate agent are of human invention; they are two of the most morally repulsive and horrible theological dogmas that the nightmares of light-hating monks have ever evolved out of their unclean fancies.

They date from the Mediæval age, the period of mental obscuration, during which most of the present prejudices and superstitions have been forcibly inoculated on the human mind, so as to have become nearly ineradicable in some cases, one of which is the present prejudice now under discussion.

So deeply rooted, indeed, is this preconception and aversion to the name of Lucifer—meaning no worse than “light-bringer” (from lux, lucis, “light,” and ferre “to bring”)[^[1]]—even among the educated classes, that by adopting it for the title of their magazine the editors have the prospect of a long strife with public prejudice before them. So absurd and ridiculous is that prejudice, indeed, that no one has seemed to ever ask himself the question, how came Satan to be called a light-bringer, unless the silvery rays of the morning-star can in any way be made suggestive of the glare of the infernal flames. It is simply, as Henderson showed, “one of those gross perversions of sacred writ which so extensively obtain, and which are to be traced to a proneness to seek for more in a given passage than it really contains—a disposition to be influenced by sound rather than sense, and an implicit faith in received interpretation”—which is not quite one of the weaknesses of our present age. Nevertheless, the prejudice is there, to the shame of our century.

This cannot be helped. The two editors would hold themselves as recreants in their own sight, as traitors to the very spirit of the proposed work, were they to yield and cry craven before the danger. If one would fight prejudice, and brush off the ugly cobwebs of superstition and materialism alike from the noblest ideals of our forefathers, one has to prepare for opposition. “The crown of the reformer and the innovator is a crown of thorns” indeed. If one would rescue Truth in all her chaste nudity from the almost bottomless well, into which she has been hurled by cant and hypocritical propriety, one should not hesitate to descend into the dark, gaping pit of that well. No matter how badly the blind bats—the dwellers in darkness, and the haters of light—may treat in their gloomy abode the intruder, unless one is the first to show the spirit and courage he preaches to others, he must be justly held as a hypocrite and a seceder from his own principles.

Hardly had the title been agreed upon, when the first premonitions of what was in store for us, in the matter of the opposition to be encountered owing to the title chosen, appeared on our horizon. One of the editors received and recorded some spicy objections. The scenes that follow are sketches from nature.

I.

A Well-known Novelist. Tell me about your new magazine. What class do you propose to appeal to?

Editor. No class in particular: we intend to appeal to the public.

Novelist. I am very glad of that. For once I shall be one of the public, for I don’t understand your subject in the least, and I want to. But you must remember that if your public is to understand you, it must necessarily be a very small one. People talk about occultism nowadays as they talk about many other things, without the least idea of what it means. We are so ignorant and—so prejudiced.

Editor. Exactly. That is what calls the new magazine into existence. We propose to educate you, and to tear the mask from every prejudice.

Novelist. That really is good news to me, for I want to be educated. What is your magazine to be called?

Editor. Lucifer.

Novelist. What! Are you going to educate us in vice? We know enough about that. Fallen angels are plentiful. You may find popularity, for soiled doves are in fashion just now, while the white-winged angels are voted a bore, because they are not so amusing. But I doubt your being able to teach us much.

II.

A Man of the World (in a careful undertone, for the scene is a dinner-party). I hear you are going to start a magazine, all about occultism. Do you know, I’m very glad. I don’t say anything about such matters as a rule, but some queer things have happened in my life which can’t be explained in any ordinary manner. I hope you will go in for explanations.

Editor. We shall try, certainly. My impression is, that when occultism is in any measure apprehended, its laws are accepted by everyone as the only intelligible explanation of life.

A M. W. Just so, I want to know all about it, for ’pon my honour, life’s a mystery. There are plenty of other people as curious as myself. This is an age which is afflicted with the Yankee disease of ‘wanting to know.’ I’ll get you lots of subscribers. What’s the magazine called?

Editor. Lucifer—and (warned by former experience) don’t misunderstand the name. It is typical of the divine spirit which sacrificed itself for humanity—it was Milton’s doing that it ever became associated with the devil. We are sworn enemies to popular prejudices, and it is quite appropriate that we should attack such a prejudice as this—Lucifer, you know, is the Morning Star—the Lightbearer,...

A M. W. (interrupting). Oh, I know all that—at least I don’t know, but I take it for granted you’ve got some good reason for taking such a title. But your first object is to have readers; you want the public to buy your magazine, I suppose. That’s in the programme, isn’t it?

Editor. Most decidedly.

A M. W. Well, listen to the advice of a man who knows his way about town. Don’t mark your magazine with the wrong colour at starting. It’s quite evident, when one stays an instant to think of its derivation and meaning, that Lucifer is an excellent word. But the public don’t stay to think of derivations and meanings; and the first impression is the most important. Nobody will buy the magazine if you call it Lucifer.

III.

A Fashionable Lady Interested in Occultism. I want to hear some more about the new magazine, for I have interested a great many people in it, even with the little you have told me. But I find it difficult to express its actual purpose. What is it?

Editor. To try and give a little light to those that want it.

A F. L. Well, that’s a simple way of putting it, and will be very useful to me. What is the magazine to be called?

Editor. Lucifer.

A F. L. (After a pause) You can’t mean it.

Editor. Why not?

A F. L. The associations are so dreadful! What can be the object of calling it that? It sounds like some unfortunate sort of joke, made against it by its enemies.

Editor. Oh, but Lucifer, you know, means Light-bearer; it is typical of the Divine Spirit——

A F. L. Never mind all that—I want to do your magazine good and make it known, and you can’t expect me to enter into explanations of that sort every time I mention the title? Impossible! Life is too short and too busy. Besides, it would produce such a bad effect; people would think me priggish, and then I couldn’t talk at all, for I couldn’t bear them to think that. Don’t call it Lucifer—please don’t. Nobody knows what the word is typical of; what it means now is the devil, nothing more or less.

Editor. But then that is quite a mistake, and one of the first prejudices we propose to do battle with. Lucifer is the pale, pure herald of dawn——

Lady (interrupting). I thought you were going to do something more interesting and more important than to whitewash mythological characters. We shall all have to go to school again, or read up Dr. Smith’s Classical Dictionary. And what is the use of it when it is done? I thought you were going to tell us things about our own lives and how to make them better. I suppose Milton wrote about Lucifer, didn’t he?—but nobody reads Milton now. Do let us have a modern title with some human meaning in it.

IV.

A Journalist (thoughtfully, while rolling his cigarette). Yes, it is a good idea, this magazine of yours. We shall all laugh at it, as a matter of course: and we shall cut it up in the papers. But we shall all read it, because secretly everybody hungers after the mysterious. What are you going to call it?

Editor. Lucifer.

Journalist (striking a light). Why not The Fusee? Quite as good a title and not so pretentious.

The “Novelist,” the “Man of the World,” the “Fashionable Lady,” and the “Journalist,” should be the first to receive a little instruction. A glimpse into the real and primitive character of Lucifer can do them no harm and may, perchance, cure them of a bit of ridiculous prejudice. They ought to study their Homer and Hesiod’s Theogony if they would do justice to Lucifer, “Eosphoros and Hesperos,” the Morning and the Evening beautiful star. If there are more useful things to do in this life than “to whitewash mythological characters,” to slander and blacken them is, at least, as useless, and shows, moreover, a narrow-mindedness which can do honour to no one.

To object to the title of Lucifer, only because its “associations are so dreadful,” is pardonable—if it can be pardonable in any case—only in an ignorant American missionary of some dissenting sect, in one whose natural laziness and lack of education led him to prefer ploughing the minds of heathens, as ignorant as he is himself, to the more profitable, but rather more arduous, process of ploughing the fields of his own father’s farm. In the English clergy, however, who receive all a more or less classical education, and are, therefore, supposed to be acquainted with the ins and outs of theological sophistry and casuistry, this kind of opposition is absolutely unpardonable. It not only smacks of hypocrisy and deceit, but places them directly on a lower moral level than him they call the apostate angel. By endeavouring to show the theological Lucifer, fallen through the idea that

“To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell;

Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,”

they are virtually putting into practice the supposed crime they would fain accuse him of. They prefer reigning over the spirit of the masses by means of a pernicious dark LIE, productive of many an evil, than serve heaven by serving TRUTH. Such practices are worthy only of the Jesuits.

But their sacred writ is the first to contradict their interpretations and the association of Lucifer, the Morning Star, with Satan. Chapter XXII. of Revelation, verse 16th, says: “I, Jesus ... am the root ... and the bright and Morning Star” (ὀρθρινὸς “early rising”): hence Eosphoros, or the Latin Lucifer. The opprobrium attached to this name is of such a very late date, that the Roman Church found itself forced to screen the theological slander behind a two-sided interpretation—as usual. Christ, we are told, is the “Morning Star,” the divine Lucifer; and Satan the usurpator of the Verbum, the “infernal Lucifer.”[^[2]] “The great Archangel Michael, the conqueror of Satan, is identical in paganism[^[3]] with Mercury-Mithra, to whom, after defending the Sun (symbolical of God) from the attacks of Venus-Lucifer, was given the possession of this planet, et datus est ei locus Luciferi. And since the Archangel Michael is the ‘Angel of the Face,’ and ‘the Vicar of the Verbum’ he is now considered in the Roman Church as the regent of that planet Venus which ‘the vanquished fiend had usurped.’” Angelus faciei Dei sedem superbi humilis obtinuit, says Cornelius à Lapide (in Vol. VI. p. 229).

This gives the reason why one of the early Popes was called Lucifer, as Yonge and ecclesiastical records prove. It thus follows that the title chosen for our magazine is as much associated with divine and pious ideas as with the supposed rebellion of the hero of Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” By choosing it, we throw the first ray of light and truth on a ridiculous prejudice which ought to have no room made for it in this our “age of facts and discovery.” We work for true Religion and Science, in the interest of fact as against fiction and prejudice. It is our duty, as it is that of physical Science—professedly its mission—to throw light on facts in Nature hitherto surrounded by the darkness of ignorance. And since ignorance is justly regarded as the chief promoter of superstition, that work is, therefore, a noble and beneficent work. But natural Sciences are only one aspect of Science and Truth. Psychological and moral Sciences, or theosophy, the knowledge of divine truth, wheresoever found, are still more important in human affairs, and real Science should not be limited simply to the physical aspect of life and nature. Science is an abstract of every fact, a comprehension of every truth within the scope of human research and intelligence. “Shakespeare’s deep and accurate science in mental philosophy” (Coleridge), has proved more beneficent to the true philosopher in the study of the human heart—therefore, in the promotion of truth—than the more accurate, but certainly less deep, science of any Fellow of the Royal Institution.

Those readers, however, who do not find themselves convinced that the Church had no right to throw a slur upon a beautiful star, and that it did so through a mere necessity of accounting for one of its numerous loans from Paganism with all its poetical conceptions of the truths in Nature, are asked to read our article “The History of a Planet.” Perhaps, after its perusal, they will see how far Dupuis was justified in asserting that “all the theologies have their origin in astronomy.” With the modern Orientalists every myth is solar. This is one more prejudice, and a preconception in favour of materialism and physical science. It will be one of our duties to combat it with much of the rest.

Occultism is not magic, though magic is one of its tools.

Occultism is not the acquirement of powers, whether psychic or intellectual, though both are its servants. Neither is occultism the pursuit of happiness, as men understand the word; for the first step is sacrifice, the second, renunciation.

Life is built up by the sacrifice of the individual to the whole. Each cell in the living body must sacrifice itself to the perfection of the whole; when it is otherwise, disease and death enforce the lesson.

Occultism is the science of life, the art of living.

COMMENTS ON “LIGHT ON THE PATH.”

BY THE AUTHOR.

“Before the eyes can see they must be incapable of tears.”

It should be very clearly remembered by all readers of this volume that it is a book which may appear to have some little philosophy in it, but very little sense, to those who believe it to be written in ordinary English. To the many, who read in this manner it will be—not caviare so much as olives strong of their salt. Be warned and read but a little in this way.

There is another way of reading, which is, indeed, the only one of any use with many authors. It is reading, not between the lines but within the words. In fact, it is deciphering a profound cipher. All alchemical works are written in the cipher of which I speak; it has been used by the great philosophers and poets of all time. It is used systematically by the adepts in life and knowledge, who, seemingly giving out their deepest wisdom, hide in the very words which frame it its actual mystery. They cannot do more. There is a law of nature which insists that a man shall read these mysteries for himself. By no other method can he obtain them. A man who desires to live must eat his food himself: this is the simple law of nature—which applies also to the higher life. A man who would live and act in it cannot be fed like a babe with a spoon; he must eat for himself.

I propose to put into new and sometimes plainer language parts of “Light on the Path”; but whether this effort of mine will really be any interpretation I cannot say. To a deaf and dumb man, a truth is made no more intelligible if, in order to make it so, some misguided linguist translates the words in which it is couched into every living or dead language, and shouts these different phrases in his ear. But for those who are not deaf and dumb one language is generally easier than the rest; and it is to such as these I address myself.

The very first aphorisms of “Light on the Path,” included under Number I. have, I know well, remained sealed as to their inner meaning to many who have otherwise followed the purpose of the book.

There are four proven and certain truths with regard to the entrance to occultism. The Gates of Gold bar that threshold; yet there are some who pass those gates and discover the sublime and illimitable beyond. In the far spaces of Time all will pass those gates. But I am one who wish that Time, the great deluder, were not so over-masterful. To those who know and love him I have no word to say; but to the others—and there are not so very few as some may fancy—to whom the passage of Time is as the stroke of a sledge-hammer, and the sense of Space like the bars of an iron cage, I will translate and re-translate until they understand fully.

The four truths written on the first page of “Light on the Path,” refer to the trial initiation of the would-be occultist. Until he has passed it, he cannot even reach to the latch of the gate which admits to knowledge. Knowledge is man’s greatest inheritance; why, then, should he not attempt to reach it by every possible road? The laboratory is not the only ground for experiment; science, we must remember, is derived from sciens, present participle of scire, “to know,”—its origin is similar to that of the word “discern,” “to ken.” Science does not therefore deal only with matter, no, not even its subtlest and obscurest forms. Such an idea is born merely of the idle spirit of the age. Science is a word which covers all forms of knowledge. It is exceedingly interesting to hear what chemists discover, and to see them finding their way through the densities of matter to its finer forms; but there are other kinds of knowledge than this, and it is not every one who restricts his (strictly scientific) desire for knowledge to experiments which are capable of being tested by the physical senses.

Everyone who is not a dullard, or a man stupefied by some predominant vice, has guessed, or even perhaps discovered with some certainty, that there are subtle senses lying within the physical senses. There is nothing at all extraordinary in this; if we took the trouble to call Nature into the witness box we should find that everything which is perceptible to the ordinary sight, has something even more important than itself hidden within it; the microscope has opened a world to us, but within those encasements which the microscope reveals, lies a mystery which no machinery can probe.

The whole world is animated and lit, down to its most material shapes, by a world within it. This inner world is called Astral by some people, and it is as good a word as any other, though it merely means starry; but the stars, as Locke pointed out, are luminous bodies which give light of themselves. This quality is characteristic of the life which lies within matter; for those who see it, need no lamp to see it by. The word star, moreover, is derived from the Anglo-Saxon “stir-an,” to steer, to stir, to move, and undeniably it is the inner life which is master of the outer, just as a man’s brain guides the movements of his lips. So that although Astral is no very excellent word in itself, I am content to use it for my present purpose.

The whole of “Light on the Path” is written in an astral cipher and can therefore only be deciphered by one who reads astrally. And its teaching is chiefly directed towards the cultivation and development of the astral life. Until the first step has been taken in this development, the swift knowledge, which is called intuition with certainty, is impossible to man. And this positive and certain intuition is the only form of knowledge which enables a man to work rapidly or reach his true and high estate, within the limit of his conscious effort. To obtain knowledge by experiment is too tedious a method for those who aspire to accomplish real work; he who gets it by certain intuition, lays hands on its various forms with supreme rapidity, by fierce effort of will; as a determined workman grasps his tools, indifferent to their weight or any other difficulty which may stand in his way. He does not stay for each to be tested—he uses such as he sees are fittest.

All the rules contained in “Light on the Path,” are written for all disciples, but only for disciples—those who “take knowledge.” To none else but the student in this school are its laws of any use or interest.

To all who are interested seriously in Occultism, I say first—take knowledge. To him who hath shall be given. It is useless to wait for it. The womb of Time will close before you, and in later days you will remain unborn, without power. I therefore say to those who have any hunger or thirst for knowledge, attend to these rules.

They are none of my handicraft or invention. They are merely the phrasing of laws in super-nature, the putting into words truths as absolute in their own sphere, as those laws which govern the conduct of the earth and its atmosphere.

The senses spoken of in these four statements are the astral, or inner senses.

No man desires to see that light which illumines the spaceless soul until pain and sorrow and despair have driven him away from the life of ordinary humanity. First he wears out pleasure; then he wears out pain—till, at last, his eyes become incapable of tears.

This is a truism, although I know perfectly well that it will meet with a vehement denial from many who are in sympathy with thoughts which spring from the inner life. To see with the astral sense of sight is a form of activity which it is difficult for us to understand immediately. The scientist knows very well what a miracle is achieved by each child that is born into the world, when it first conquers its eye-sight and compels it to obey its brain. An equal miracle is performed with each sense certainly, but this ordering of sight is perhaps the most stupendous effort. Yet the child does it almost unconsciously, by force of the powerful heredity of habit. No one now is aware that he has ever done it at all; just as we cannot recollect the individual movements which enabled us to walk up a hill a year ago. This arises from the fact that we move and live and have our being in matter. Our knowledge of it has become intuitive.

With our astral life it is very much otherwise. For long ages past, man has paid very little attention to it—so little, that he has practically lost the use of his senses. It is true, that in every civilization the star arises, and man confesses, with more or less of folly and confusion, that he knows himself to be. But most often he denies it, and in being a materialist becomes that strange thing, a being which cannot see its own light, a thing of life which will not live, an astral animal which has eyes, and ears, and speech, and power, yet will use none of these gifts. This is the case, and the habit of ignorance has become so confirmed, that now none will see with the inner vision till agony has made the physical eyes not only unseeing, but without tears—the moisture of life. To be incapable of tears is to have faced and conquered the simple human nature, and to have attained an equilibrium which cannot be shaken by personal emotions. It does not imply any hardness of heart, or any indifference. It does not imply the exhaustion of sorrow, when the suffering soul seems powerless to suffer acutely any longer; it does not mean the deadness of old age, when emotion is becoming dull because the strings which vibrate to it are wearing out. None of these conditions are fit for a disciple, and if any one of them exist in him, it must be overcome before the path can be entered upon. Hardness of heart belongs to the selfish man, the egotist, to whom the gate is for ever closed. Indifference belongs to the fool and the false philosopher; those whose lukewarmness makes them mere puppets, not strong enough to face the realities of existence. When pain or sorrow has worn out the keenness of suffering, the result is a lethargy not unlike that which accompanies old age, as it is usually experienced by men and women. Such a condition makes the entrance to the path impossible, because the first step is one of difficulty and needs a strong man, full of psychic and physical vigour, to attempt it.

It is a truth, that, as Edgar Allan Poe said, the eyes are the windows for the soul, the windows of that haunted palace in which it dwells. This is the very nearest interpretation into ordinary language of the meaning of the text. If grief, dismay, disappointment or pleasure, can shake the soul so that it loses its fixed hold on the calm spirit which inspires it, and the moisture of life breaks forth, drowning knowledge in sensation, then all is blurred, the windows are darkened, the light is useless. This is as literal a fact as that if a man, at the edge of a precipice, loses his nerve through some sudden emotion he will certainly fall. The poise of the body, the balance, must be preserved, not only in dangerous places, but even on the level ground, and with all the assistance Nature gives us by the law of gravitation. So it is with the soul, it is the link between the outer body and the starry spirit beyond; the divine spark dwells in the still place where no convulsion of Nature can shake the air; this is so always. But the soul may lose its hold on that, its knowledge of it, even though these two are part of one whole; and it is by emotion, by sensation, that this hold is loosed. To suffer either pleasure or pain, causes a vivid vibration which is, to the consciousness of man, life. Now this sensibility does not lessen when the disciple enters upon his training; it increases. It is the first test of his strength; he must suffer, must enjoy or endure, more keenly than other men, while yet he has taken on him a duty which does not exist for other men, that of not allowing his suffering to shake him from his fixed purpose. He has, in fact, at the first step to take himself steadily in hand and put the bit into his own mouth; no one else can do it for him.

The first four aphorisms of “Light on the Path,” refer entirely to astral development. This development must be accomplished to a certain extent—that is to say it must be fully entered upon—before the remainder of the book is really intelligible except to the intellect; in fact, before it can be read as a practical, not a metaphysical treatise.

In one of the great mystic Brotherhoods, there are four ceremonies, that take place early in the year, which practically illustrate and elucidate these aphorisms. They are ceremonies in which only novices take part, for they are simply services of the threshold. But it will show how serious a thing it is to become a disciple, when it is understood that these are all ceremonies of sacrifice. The first one is this of which I have been speaking. The keenest enjoyment, the bitterest pain, the anguish of loss and despair, are brought to bear on the trembling soul, which has not yet found light in the darkness, which is helpless as a blind man is, and until these shocks can be endured without loss of equilibrium the astral senses must remain sealed. This is the merciful law. The “medium,” or “spiritualist,” who rushes into the psychic world without preparation, is a law-breaker, a breaker of the laws of super-nature. Those who break Nature’s laws lose their physical health; those who break the laws of the inner life, lose their psychic health. “Mediums” become mad, suicides, miserable creatures devoid of moral sense; and often end as unbelievers, doubters even of that which their own eyes have seen. The disciple is compelled to become his own master before he adventures on this perilous path, and attempts to face those beings who live and work in the astral world, and whom we call masters, because of their great knowledge and their ability to control not only themselves but the forces around them.

The condition of the soul when it lives for the life of sensation as distinguished from that of knowledge, is vibratory or oscillating, as distinguished from fixed. That is the nearest literal representation of the fact; but it is only literal to the intellect, not to the intuition. For this part of man’s consciousness a different vocabulary is needed. The idea of “fixed” might perhaps be transposed into that of “at home.” In sensation no permanent home can be found, because change is the law of this vibratory existence. That fact is the first one which must be learned by the disciple. It is useless to pause and weep for a scene in a kaleidoscope which has passed.

It is a very well-known fact, one with which Bulwer Lytton dealt with great power, that an intolerable sadness is the very first experience of the neophyte in Occultism. A sense of blankness falls upon him which makes the world a waste, and life a vain exertion. This follows his first serious contemplation of the abstract. In gazing, or even in attempting to gaze, on the ineffable mystery of his own higher nature, he himself causes the initial trial to fall on him. The oscillation between pleasure and pain ceases for—perhaps an instant of time; but that is enough to have cut him loose from his fast moorings in the world of sensation. He has experienced, however briefly, the greater life; and he goes on with ordinary existence weighted by a sense of unreality, of blank, of horrid negation. This was the nightmare which visited Bulwer Lytton’s neophyte in “Zanoni”; and even Zanoni himself, who had learned great truths, and been entrusted with great powers, had not actually passed the threshold where fear and hope, despair and joy seem at one moment absolute realities, at the next mere forms of fancy.

This initial trial is often brought on us by life itself. For life is after all, the great teacher. We return to study it, after we have acquired power over it, just as the master in chemistry learns more in the laboratory than his pupil does. There are persons so near the door of knowledge that life itself prepares them for it, and no individual hand has to invoke the hideous guardian of the entrance. These must naturally be keen and powerful organizations, capable of the most vivid pleasure; then pain comes and fills its great duty. The most intense forms of suffering fall on such a nature, till at last it arouses from its stupor of consciousness, and by the force of its internal vitality steps over the threshold into a place of peace. Then the vibration of life loses its power of tyranny. The sensitive nature must suffer still; but the soul has freed itself and stands aloof, guiding the life towards its greatness. Those who are the subjects of Time, and go slowly through all his spaces, live on through a long-drawn series of sensations, and suffer a constant mingling of pleasure and of pain. They do not dare to take the snake of self in a steady grasp and conquer it, so becoming divine; but prefer to go on fretting through divers experiences, suffering blows from the opposing forces.

When one of these subjects of Time decides to enter on the path of Occultism, it is this which is his first task. If life has not taught it to him, if he is not strong enough to teach himself, and if he has power enough to demand the help of a master, then this fearful trial, depicted in Zanoni, is put upon him. The oscillation in which he lives, is for an instant stilled; and he has to survive the shock of facing what seems to him at first sight as the abyss of nothingness. Not till he has learned to dwell in this abyss, and has found its peace, is it possible for his eyes to have become incapable of tears.

The difficulty of writing intelligibly on these subjects is so great that I beg of those who have found any interest in this article, and are yet left with perplexities and doubts, to address me in the correspondence column of this magazine. I ask this because thoughtful questions are as great an assistance to the general reader as the answers to them.

Δ

(To be [continued].)

Harmony is the law of life, discord its shadow, whence springs suffering, the teacher, the awakener of consciousness.

Through joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure, the soul comes to a knowledge of itself; then begins the task of learning the laws of life, that the discords may be resolved, and the harmony be restored.

The eyes of wisdom are like the ocean depths; there is neither joy nor sorrow in them; therefore the soul of the occultist must become stronger than joy, and greater than sorrow.

THE HISTORY OF A PLANET.

No star, among the countless myriads that twinkle over the sidereal fields of the night sky, shines so dazzlingly as the planet Venus—not even Sirius-Sothis, the dog-star, beloved by Isis. Venus is the queen among our planets, the crown jewel of our solar system. She is the inspirer of the poet, the guardian and companion of the lonely shepherd, the lovely morning and the evening star. For,

“Stars teach as well as shine.”

although their secrets are still untold and unrevealed to the majority of men, including astronomers. They are “a beauty and a mystery,” verily. But “where there is a mystery, it is generally supposed that there must also be evil,” says Byron. Evil, therefore, was detected by evilly-disposed human fancy, even in those bright luminous eyes peeping at our wicked world through the veil of ether. Thus there came to exist slandered stars and planets as well as slandered men and women. Too often are the reputation and fortune of one man or party sacrificed for the benefit of another man or party. As on earth below, so in the heavens above, and Venus, the sister planet of our Earth,[^[4]] was sacrificed to the ambition of our little globe to show the latter the “chosen” planet of the Lord. She became the scapegoat, the Azaziel of the starry dome, for the sins of the Earth, or rather for those of a certain class in the human family—the clergy—who slandered the bright orb, in order to prove what their ambition suggested to them as the best means to reach power, and exercise it unswervingly over the superstitious and ignorant masses.

This took place during the middle ages. And now the sin lies black at the door of Christians and their scientific inspirers, though the error was successfully raised to the lofty position of a religious dogma, as many other fictions and inventions have been.

Indeed, the whole sidereal world, planets and their regents—the ancient gods of poetical paganism—the sun, the moon, the elements, and the entire host of incalculable worlds—those at least which happened to be known to the Church Fathers—shared in the same fate. They have all been slandered, all bedevilled by the insatiable desire of proving one little system of theology—built on and constructed out of old pagan materials—the only right and holy one, and all those which preceded or followed it utterly wrong. Sun and stars, the very air itself, we are asked to believe, became pure and “redeemed” from original sin and the Satanic element of heathenism, only after the year I, A.D. Scholastics and scholiasts, the spirit of whom “spurned laborious investigation and slow induction,” had shown, to the satisfaction of infallible Church, the whole Kosmos in the power of Satan—a poor compliment to God—before the year of the Nativity; and Christians had to believe or be condemned. Never have subtle sophistry and casuistry shown themselves so plainly in their true light, however, as in the questions of the ex-Satanism and later redemption of various heavenly bodies. Poor beautiful Venus got worsted in that war of so-called divine proofs to a greater degree than any of her sidereal colleagues. While the history of the other six planets, and their gradual transformation from Greco-Aryan gods into Semitic devils, and finally into “divine attributes of the seven eyes of the Lord,” is known but to the educated, that of Venus-Lucifer has become a household story among even the most illiterate in Roman Catholic countries.

This story shall now be told for the benefit of those who may have neglected their astral mythology.

Venus, characterised by Pythagoras as the sol alter, a second Sun, on account of her magnificent radiance—equalled by none other—was the first to draw the attention of ancient Theogonists. Before it began to be called Venus, it was known in pre-Hesiodic theogony as Eosphoros (or Phosphoros) and Hesperos, the children of the dawn and twilight. In Hesiod, moreover, the planet is decomposed into two divine beings, two brothers—Eosphoros (the Lucifer of the Latins) the morning, and Hesperos, the evening star. They are the children of Astrœos and Eos, the starry heaven and the dawn, as also of Kephalos and Eos (Theog: 381, Hyg: Poet: Astron: 11, 42). Preller, quoted by Decharme, shows Phaeton identical with Phosphoros or Lucifer (Griech: Mythol: 1. 365). And on the authority of Hesiod he also makes Phaeton the son of the latter two divinities—Kephalos and Eos.

Now Phaeton or Phosphoros, the “luminous morning orb,” is carried away in his early youth by Aphrodite (Venus) who makes of him the night guardian of her sanctuary (Theog: 987-991). He is the “beautiful morning star” (Vide St. John’s Revelation XXII. 16) loved for its radiant light by the Goddess of the Dawn, Aurora, who, while gradually eclipsing the light of her beloved, thus seeming to carry off the star, makes it reappear on the evening horizon where it watches the gates of heaven. In early morning, Phosphoros “issuing from the waters of the Ocean, raises in heaven his sacred head to announce the approach of divine light.” (Iliad, XXIII. 226; Odyss: XIII. 93; Virg: Æneid, VIII. 589; Mythol: de la Grèce Antique. 247). He holds a torch in his hand and flies through space as he precedes the car of Aurora. In the evening he becomes Hesperos, “the most splendid of the stars that shine on the celestial vault” (Iliad, XXII. 317). He is the father of the Hesperides, the guardians of the golden apples together with the Dragon; the beautiful genius of the flowing golden curls, sung and glorified in all the ancient epithalami (the bridal songs of the early Christians as of the pagan Greeks); he, who at the fall of the night, leads the nuptial cortège and delivers the bride into the arms of the bridegroom. (Carmen Nuptiale. See Mythol: de la Grèce Antique. Decharme.)

So far, there seems to be no possible rapprochement, no analogy to be discovered between this poetical personification of a star, a purely astronomical myth, and the Satanism of Christian theology. True, the close connection between the planet as Hesperos, the evening star, and the Greek Garden of Eden with its Dragon and the golden apples may, with a certain stretch of imagination, suggest some painful comparisons with the third chapter of Genesis. But this is insufficient to justify the building of a theological wall of defence against paganism made up of slander and misrepresentations.

But of all the Greek euhemerisations, Lucifer-Eosphoros is, perhaps, the most complicated. The planet has become with the Latins, Venus, or Aphrodite-Anadyomene, the foam-born Goddess, the “Divine Mother,” and one with the Phœnician Astarte, or the Jewish Astaroth. They were all called “The Morning Star,” and the Virgins of the Sea, or Mar (whence Mary), the great Deep, titles now given by the Roman Church to their Virgin Mary. They were all connected with the moon and the crescent, with the Dragon and the planet Venus, as the mother of Christ has been made connected with all these attributes. If the Phœnician mariners carried, fixed on the prow of their ships, the image of the goddess Astarte (or Aphrodite, Venus Erycina) and looked upon the evening and the morning star as their guiding star, “the eye of their Goddess mother,” so do the Roman Catholic sailors the same to this day. They fix a Madonna on the prows of their vessels, and the blessed Virgin Mary is called the “Virgin of the Sea.” The accepted patroness of Christian sailors, their star, “Stella Del Mar,” etc., she stands on the crescent moon. Like the old pagan Goddesses, she is the “Queen of Heaven,” and the “Morning Star” just as they were.

Whether this can explain anything, is left to the reader’s sagacity. Meanwhile, Lucifer-Venus has nought to do with darkness, and everything with light. When called Lucifer, it is the “light bringer,” the first radiant beam which destroys the lethal darkness of night. When named Venus, the planet-star becomes the symbol of dawn, the chaste Aurora. Professor Max Müller rightly conjectures that Aphrodite, born of the sea, is a personification of the Dawn of Day, and the most lovely of all the sights in Nature (“Science of Language”) for, before her naturalisation by the Greeks, Aphrodite was Nature personified, the life and light of the Pagan world, as proven in the beautiful invocation to Venus by Lucretius, quoted by Decharme. She is divine Nature in her entirety, Aditi-Prakriti before she becomes Lakshmi. She is that Nature before whose majestic and fair face, “the winds fly away, the quieted sky pours torrents of light, and the sea-waves smile,” (Lucretius). When referred to as the Syrian goddess Astarte, the Astaroth of Hieropolis, the radiant planet was personified as a majestic woman, holding in one outstretched hand a torch, in the other, a crooked staff in the form of a cross. (Vide Lucian’s De Dea Syriê, and Cicero’s De Nat: Deorum, 3 c.23). Finally, the planet is represented astronomically, as a globe poised above the cross—a symbol no devil would like to associate with—while the planet Earth is a globe with a cross over it.

But then, these crosses are not the symbols of Christianity, but the Egyptian crux ansata, the attribute of Isis (who is Venus, and Aphrodite, Nature, also) ♀ or ♀ the planet; the fact that the Earth has the crux ansata reversed, ♁ having a great occult significance upon which there is no necessity of entering at present.

Now what says the Church and how does it explain the “dreadful association.” The Church believes in the devil, of course, and could not afford to lose him. “The Devil is the chief pillar of the Church” confesses unblushingly an advocate[^[5]] of the Ecclesia Militans. “All the Alexandrian Gnostics speak to us of the fall of the Æons and their Pleroma, and all attribute that fall to the desire to know,” writes another volunteer in the same army, slandering the Gnostics as usual and identifying the desire to know or occultism, magic, with Satanism.[^[6]] And then, forthwith, he quotes from Schlegel’s Philosophie de l’Histoire to show that the seven rectors (planets) of Pymander, “commissioned by God to contain the phenomenal world in their seven circles, lost in love with their own beauty,[^[7]] came to admire themselves with such intensity that owing to this proud self-adulation they finally fell.”

Perversity having thus found its way amongst the angels, the most beautiful creature of God “revolted against its Maker.” That creature is in theological fancy Venus-Lucifer, or rather the informing Spirit or Regent of that planet. This teaching is based on the following speculation. The three principal heroes of the great sidereal catastrophe mentioned in Revelation are, according to the testimony of the Church fathers—“the Verbum, Lucifer his usurper (see editorial) and the grand Archangel who conquered him,” and whose “palaces” (the “houses” astrology calls them) are in the Sun, Venus-Lucifer and Mercury. This is quite evident, since the position of these orbs in the Solar system correspond in their hierarchical order to that of the “heroes” in Chapter xii of Revelation “their names and destinies (?) being closely connected in the theological (exoteric) system with these three great metaphysical names.” (De Mirville’s Memoir to the Academy of France, on the rapping Spirits and the Demons).

The outcome of this was, that theological legend made of Venus-Lucifer the sphere and domain of the fallen Archangel, or Satan before his apostacy. Called upon to reconcile this statement with that other fact, that the metaphor of “the morning star,” is applied to both Jesus, and his Virgin mother, and that the planet Venus-Lucifer is included, moreover, among the “stars” of the seven planetary spirits worshipped by the Roman Catholics[^[8]] under new names, the defenders of the Latin dogmas and beliefs answer as follows:—

“Lucifer, the jealous neighbour of the Sun (Christ) said to himself in his great pride: ‘I will rise as high as he!’ He was thwarted in his design by Mercury, though the brightness of the latter (who is St. Michael) was as much lost in the blazing fires of the great Solar orb as his own was, and though, like Lucifer, Mercury is only the assessor, and the guard of honour to the Sun.”—(Ibid.)

Guards of “dishonour” now rather, if the teachings of theological Christianity were true. But here comes in the cloven foot of the Jesuit. The ardent defender of Roman Catholic Demonolatry and of the worship of the seven planetary spirits, at the same time, pretends great wonder at the coincidences between old Pagan and Christian legends, between the fable about Mercury and Venus, and the historical truths told of St. Michael—the “angel of the face,”—the terrestrial double, or ferouer of Christ. He points them out saying: “like Mercury, the archangel Michael, is the friend of the Sun, his Mitra, perhaps, for Michael is a psychopompic genius, one who leads the separated souls to their appointed abodes, and like Mitra, he is the well-known adversary of the demons.” This is demonstrated by the book of the Nabatheans recently discovered (by Chwolson), in which the Zoroastrian[Zoroastrian] Mitra is called the “grand enemy of the planet Venus.”[^[9]] (ibid p. 160.)

There is something in this. A candid confession, for once, of perfect identity of celestial personages and of borrowing from every pagan source. It is curious, if unblushing. While in the oldest Mazdean allegories, Mitra conquers the planet Venus, in Christian tradition Michael defeats Lucifer, and both receive, as war spoils, the planet of the vanquished deity.

“Mitra,” says Dollinger, “possessed, in days of old, the star of Mercury, placed between the sun and the moon, but he was given the planet of the conquered, and ever since his victory he is identified with Venus.” (“Judaisme and Paganisme,” Vol. II., p. 109. French transl.)

“In the Christian tradition,” adds the learned Marquis, “St. Michael is apportioned in Heaven the throne and the palace of the foe he has vanquished. Moreover, like Mercury, during the palmy days of paganism, which made sacred to this demon-god all the promontories of the earth, the Archangel is the patron of the same in our religion.” This means, if it does mean anything, that now, at any rate, Lucifer-Venus is a sacred planet, and no synonym of Satan, since St. Michael has become his legal heir?

The above remarks conclude with this cool reflection:

“It is evident that paganism has utilised beforehand, and most marvellously, all the features and characteristics of the prince of the face of the Lord (Michael) in applying them to that Mercury, to the Egyptian Hermes Anubis, and the Hermes Christos of the Gnostics. Each of these was represented as the first among the divine councillors, and the god nearest to the sun, quis ut Deus.”

Which title, with all its attributes, became that of Michael. The good Fathers, the Master Masons of the temple of Church Christianity, knew indeed how to utilize pagan material for their new dogmas.

The fact is, that it is sufficient to examine certain Egyptian cartouches, pointed out by Rossellini (Egypte, Vol. I., p. 289), to find Mercury (the double of Sirius in our solar system) as Sothis, preceded by the words “sole” and “solis custode, sostegnon dei dominanti, e forte grande dei vigilanti,” “watchman of the sun, sustainer of dominions, and the strongest of all the vigilants.” All these titles and attributes are now those of the Archangel Michael, who has inherited them from the demons of paganism.

Moreover, travellers in Rome may testify to the wonderful presence in the statue of Mitra, at the Vatican, of the best known Christian symbols. Mystics boast of it. They find “in his lion’s head, and the eagle’s wings, those of the courageous Seraph, the master of space (Michael); in his caduceus, the spear, in the two serpents coiled round the body, the struggle of the good and bad principles, and especially in the two keys which the said Mitra holds, like St. Peter, the keys with which this Seraph-patron of the latter opens and shuts the gates of Heaven, astra cludit et recludit.” (Mem: p. 162.)

To sum up, the aforesaid shows that the theological romance of Lucifer was built upon the various myths and allegories of the pagan world, and that it is no revealed dogma, but simply one invented to uphold superstition. Mercury being one of the Sun’s assessors, or the cynocephali of the Egyptians and the watch-dogs of the Sun, literally, the other was Eosphoros, the most brilliant of the planets, “qui mane oriebaris,” the early rising, or the Greek ὀρθρινὸς. It was identical with the Amoon-ra, the light-bearer of Egypt, and called by all nations “the second born of light” (the first being Mercury), the beginning of his (the Sun’s) ways of wisdom, the Archangel Michael being also referred to as the principium viarum Domini.

Thus a purely astronomical personification, built upon an occult meaning which no one has hitherto seemed to unriddle outside the Eastern wisdom, has now become a dogma, part and parcel of Christian revelation. A clumsy transference of characters is unequal to the task of making thinking people accept in one and the same trinitarian group, the “Word” or Jesus, God and Michael (with the Virgin occasionally to complete it) on the one hand, and Mitra, Satan and Apollo-Abbadon on the other: the whole at the whim and pleasure of Roman Catholic Scholiasts. If Mercury and Venus (Lucifer) are (astronomically in their revolution around the Sun) the symbols of God the Father, the Son, and of their Vicar, Michael, the “Dragon-Conqueror,” in Christian legend, why should they when called Apollo-Abaddon, the “King of the Abyss,” Lucifer, Satan, or Venus—become forthwith devils and demons? If we are told that the “conqueror,” or “Mercury-Sun,” or again St. Michael of the Revelation, was given the spoils of the conquered angel, namely, his planet, why should opprobrium be any longer attached to a constellation so purified? Lucifer is now the “Angel of the Face of the Lord,”[^[10]] because “that face is mirrored in it.” We think rather, because the Sun is reflecting his beams in Mercury seven times more than it does on our Earth, and twice more in Lucifer-Venus: the Christian symbol proving again its astronomical origin. But whether from the astronomical, mystical or symbological aspect, Lucifer is as good as any other planet. To advance as a proof of its demoniacal character, and identity with Satan, the configuration of Venus, which gives to the crescent of this planet the appearance of a cut-off horn is rank nonsense. But to connect this with the horns of “The Mystic Dragon” in Revelation—“one of which was broken”[^[11]]—as the two French Demonologists, the Marquis de Mirville and the Chevalier des Mousseaux, the champions of the Church militant, would have their readers believe in the second half of our present century—is simply an insult to the public.

Besides which, the Devil had no horns before the fourth century of the Christian era. It is a purely Patristic invention arising from their desire to connect the god Pan, and the pagan Fauns and Satyrs, with their Satanic legend. The demons of Heathendom were as hornless and as tailless as the Archangel Michael himself in the imaginations of his worshippers. The “horns” were, in pagan symbolism, an emblem of divine power and creation, and of fertility in nature. Hence the ram’s horns of Ammon, of Bacchus, and of Moses on ancient medals, and the cow’s horns of Isis and Diana, etc., etc., and of the Lord God of the Prophets of Israel himself. For Habakkuk gives the evidence that this symbolism was accepted by the “chosen people” as much as by the Gentiles. In Chapter III. that prophet speaks of the “Holy One from Mount Paran,” of the Lord God who “comes from Teman, and whose brightness was as the light,” and who had “horns coming out of his hand.”

When one reads, moreover, the Hebrew text of Isaiah, and finds that no Lucifer is mentioned at all in Chapter XIV., v. 12, but simply הֵילֵל, Hillel, “a bright star,” one can hardly refrain from wondering that educated people should be still ignorant enough at the close of our century to associate a radiant planet—or anything else in nature for the matter of that—with the Devil![^[12]]

H. P. B.

THE BLOSSOM AND THE FRUIT:

A TALE OF LOVE AND MAGIC.

by Mabel Collins,

Author of “The Prettiest Woman in Warsaw,” &c., &c., And Scribe of “The Idyll of the White Lotus,” and “Through the Gates of Gold.”

Only—

One facet of the stone,

One ray of the star,

One petal of the flower of life,

But the one that stands outermost and faces us, who are men and women.

This strange story has come to me from a far country and was brought to me in a mysterious manner; I claim only to be the scribe and the editor. In this capacity, however, it is I who am answerable to the public and the critics. I therefore ask in advance, one favour only of the reader; that he will accept (while reading this story) the theory of the reincarnation of souls as a living fact.

M. C.

INTRODUCTION.

Containing two sad lives on earth,

And two sweet times of sleep in Heaven.

A LIFETIME.

Overhead the boughs of the trees intermingle, hiding the deep blue sky and mellowing the fierce heat of the sun. The boughs are so covered with white blossoms that it is like a canopy of clustered snow-flakes, tinged here and there with a soft pink. It is a natural orchard, a spot favoured by the wild apricot. And among the trees, wandering from shine to shade, flitting to and fro, is a solitary figure. It is that of a young woman, a savage, one of a wild and fierce tribe dwelling in the fastnesses of an inaccessible virgin forest. She is dark but beautiful. Her blue-black hair hangs far down over her naked body; its masses shield the warm, quivering, nervous brown skin from the direct rays of the sun. She wears neither clothing nor any ornament. Her eyes are dark, fierce and tender: her mouth soft and natural as the lips of an opening flower. She is absolutely perfect in her simple savage beauty and in the natural majesty of her womanhood, virgin in herself and virgin in the quality of her race, which is untaught, undegraded. But in her sublimely natural face is the dawn of a great tragedy. Her soul, her thought, is struggling to awake. She has done a deed that seemed to her quite simple, quite natural; yet now it is done a dim perplexity is rising within her obscure mind. Wandering to and fro beneath the rich masses of blossom-laden boughs, she for the first time endeavours to question herself. Finding no answer within she goes again to look on that which she has done.

A form lies motionless upon the ground within the thickest shade of the rich fruit trees. A young man, one of her own tribe, beautiful like herself, and with strength and vigour written in every line of his form. But he is dead. He was her lover, and she found his love sweet, yet with one wild treacherous movement of her strong supple arm she had killed him. The blood flowed from his forehead where the sharp stone had made the death wound. The life blood ebbed away from his strong young form; a moment since his lips still trembled, now they were still. Why had she in this moment of fierce passion taken that beautiful life? She loved him as well as her untaught heart knew how to love; but he, exulting in his greater strength, tried to snatch her love before it was ripe. It was but a blossom, like the white flowers overhead: he would have taken it with strong hands as though it were a fruit ripe and ready. And then in a sudden flame of wondrous new emotion the woman became aware that the man was her enemy, that he desired to be her tyrant. Until now she had thought him as herself, a thing to love as she loved herself, with a blind unthinking trust. And she acted passionately upon the guidance of this thing—feeling—which until now she had never known. He, unaccustomed to any treachery or anger, suspected no strange act from her, and thus, unsuspicious, unwarned, he was at her mercy. And now he lay dead at her feet. And still the fierce sun shone through the green leaves and silvern blossoms and gleamed upon her black hair and tender brown skin. She was beautiful as the morning when it rose over the tree tops of that world-old forest. But there is a new wonder in her dark eyes; a question that was not there until this strange and potent hour came to her. What ages must pass over her dull spirit ere it can utter the question; ere it can listen and hear the answer?

The savage woman, nameless, unknown save of her tribe, who regard her as indifferently as any creature of the woods, has none to help her or stay in its commencement the great roll of the wave of energy she has started. Blindly she lives out her own emotions. She is dissatisfied, uneasy, conscious of some error. When she leaves the orchard of wild fruit trees and wanders back to the clearer part of the forest beneath the great trees, where her tribe dwells, when she returns among them her lips are dumb, her voice is silent. None ever heard that he, the one she loved, had died by her hand, for she knew not how to frame or tell this story. It was a mystery to her, this thing which had happened. Yet it made her sad, and her great eyes wore a dumb look of longing. But she was very beautiful and soon another young and sturdy lover was always at her side. He did not please her; there was not the glow in his eyes that had gladdened her in those of the dead one whom she had loved. And yet she shrunk not from him nor did she raise her arm in anger, but held it fast at her side lest her passion should break loose unawares. For she felt that she had brought a want, a despair upon herself by her former deed; and now she determined that she would act differently. Blindly she tried to learn the lesson that had come upon her. Blindly she let herself be the agent of her own will. For now she became the willing slave and serf of one whom she did not love, and whose passion for her was full of tyranny. Yet she did not, she dared not, resist this tyranny; not because she feared him, but because she feared herself. She had the feeling that one might have who had come in contact with a new and hitherto unknown natural force. She feared lest resistance or independence should bring upon her a greater wonder, a greater sadness and loss than that which she had already brought upon herself.

And so she submitted to that which in her first youth would no more have been endured by her than the bit by the wild horse.

The apricot blossom has fallen and fruit has followed it; the leaves have fallen and the trees are bare. The sky is grey and wild above, the ground dank and soft with fallen leaves below. The aspect of the place is changed, but it is the same; the face and form of the woman have changed; but she is the same. She is alone again in the wild orchard, finding her way by instinct to the spot where her first lover died. She has found it. What is there? Some white bones that lie together; a skeleton. The woman’s eyes fasten and feed on the sight and grow large and terrible. Horror at last is struck into her soul. This is all that is left of her young love, who died by her hand—white bones that lie in ghastly order! And the long hot days and sultry nights of her life have been given to a tyrant who has reaped no gladness and no satisfaction from her submission; for he has not learned yet even the difference between woman and woman. All alike are mere creatures like the wild things; creatures to hunt and to conquer. Dumbly in her dark heart strange questionings arise. She turns from this graveyard of her unquestioning time and goes back to her slavery. Through the years of her life she waits and wonders, looking blankly at the life around her. Will no answer come to her soul?

AFTER SLEEP, AWAKENING.

Splendid was the veil that shielded her from that other soul, the soul she knew and of which she showed her recognition by swift and sudden love. But the veil separated them; a veil heavy with gold and shining with stars of silver. And as she gazed upon these stars, with delighted admiration of their brilliance, they grew larger and larger, till at length they blended together, and the veil became one shining sheen gorgeous with golden broideries. Then it became easier to see through the veil, or rather it seemed easier to these lovers. For before the veil had made the shape appear dim; now it appeared glorious and ideally beautiful and strong. Then the woman put out her hand, hoping to obtain the pressure of another hand through the shining gossamer. And at the same instant he too put out his hand, for in this moment their souls communicated, and they understood each other. Their hands touched; the veil was broken; the moment of joy was ended and again the struggle began.

A LIFETIME.

Sitting, singing, on the steps of an old palace, her feet paddling in the water of a broad canal, was a child who was becoming more than a child; a creature on the threshold of life, of awakening sensation. A girl, with ruddy gold hair, and innocent blue eyes, that had in their vivid depths the strange startled look of a wild creature. She was as simple and isolated in her happiness as any animal of the woods or hills—the sunshine, the sweet air with the faint savour of salt in it, her own pure clear girlish voice, and the gay songs of the people that she sang—these were pleasure enough and to spare for her.

But the space of unconscious happiness or unhappiness which heralds the real events of a life was already at an end. The great wave which she had set in motion was increasing in volume ceaselessly; how long before it shall reach the shore and break upon that far off coast? None can know, save those whose eyesight is more than man’s. None can tell; and she is ignorant, unknowing. But though she knows nothing of it, she is within the sweep of the wave, and is powerless to arrest it until her soul shall awake.

“My blossom, my beautiful wild flower,” said a voice close beside her. A young boatman had brought his small vessel so gently to the steps she had not noticed his approach. He leaned over his boat towards her, and touched her bare white feet with his hand.

“Come away with me, Wild Blossom,” he said. “Leave that wretched home you cling to. What is there to keep you there now your mother is dead? Your father is like a savage, and makes you live like a savage too. Come away with me, and we will live among people who will love you and find you beautiful as I do. Will you come? How often have I asked you, Wild Blossom, and you have never answered. Will you answer now?”

“Yes,” said the girl, looking up with grave, serious eyes, that had beneath their beauty a melancholy meaning, a sad question.

The man saw this strange look and interpreted it as clearly as he could.

“Trust me,” he said, “I am not a savage like your father. When you are my little wife I will care for you far more dearly than myself. You will be my soul, my guide, my star. And I will shield you as my soul is shielded within my body, follow you as my guide, look up to you as to a star in the blue heavens. Surely you can trust my love, Wild Blossom.”

He had not answered the doubt in her heart, for he had not guessed what it was, nor could she have told him. For she had not yet learned to know what it was, nor to know of it more than that it troubled her. But she put it aside and silenced it now, for the moment had come to do so. Not till she had learned her lesson much more fully could the question ever be expressed even to her own soul, and before this could be, the question must be silenced many times.

“Yes,” she said, “I will come.”

She held out her hand to him as if to seal the compact. He interpreted the gesture by his own desire, and taking her hand in his drew her towards him. She yielded and stepped into the boat. And then he quickly pushed away from the steps, and, dipping his oars in the water, soon had gone far away down the canal. Blossom looking earnestly back, watched the old palace disappear. In some of its old rooms and on its sunny steps her child-life had been spent. Now she knew that was at an end. She understood that all was changed henceforth, though she could not guess into what she was going, and she waited for her future with a strange confidence in the companion she had accepted. This puzzled her dimly. Yet how should she lack confidence, having known him long ago and thrown away his love and his life beneath the wild apricot trees, having seen afterwards the steadfastness of his love when her soul stood beside his in soul life?

A long way they went in the little boat. They left the canals and went out upon the open sea, and still the boatman rowed unwearyingly, his eyes all the while upon the beautiful wild blossom he had plucked and carried away with him to be his own, his dear and adored possession. Far away along the coast lay a small village of fishermen’s cots. It was to this that the young man guided his boat, for it was here he dwelled.

At the door of his cot stood his old mother, a quaint old woman with wrinkled, rosy face, wearing a rough fishwife’s dress and coarse shawl; her brown hand shaded her eyes as she watched her son’s boat approaching. Presently a smile came on her mouth. “He’s gotten the blossom he’s talked of so often in his sleep. Will he be happy now, the good lad?”

He was truly a good lad; for his mother knew him well, and the more she knew him the deeper grew her love. She would do anything for his happiness. And now she took to her arms the child, the Blossom, and cherished her for his sake. Before many days had passed the fishing village made a fête day for the wedding of its strongest boatman. And the women’s eyes filled with tears when they looked at the sad, tender, questioning face of the beautiful Wild Blossom.

She had given her love without hesitation, in complete confidence. She had given more; herself, her life, her very soul. The surrender was now complete.

And now, when all seemed done and all accomplished, her question began to be answered. Dimly she knew that, spite of the husband at whose feet she bowed, spite of the babes she carried in her arms till their tiny feet were strong enough to carry them down over the shore to the marge of the blue waters, spite of the cottage home she garnished and cleansed and loved so dearly, spite of all, her heart was hungry and empty. What could it mean, that though she had all she had none? Blossom was grown a woman now, and there were some lines of care and of pain on her forehead. Yet, still, she was beautiful and still she bore her child-name of Blossom; but the beauty of her face grew sadder and more strange as the years went by, the years that bring ease and satisfaction to the stagnant soul. Wild Blossom’s soul was eager and anxious; she could not still the mysterious voices of her heart, and these told her (though perhaps she did not always understand their speech) that her husband was not in reality her king; that he heard no sound from that inner region in which she chiefly existed. For him contentment existed in the outward life that he lived, in sheer physical pleasure, in the excitement of hard work, and the dangers of the sea, in the beauty of his wife, the mirth of his happy children. He asked no more. But Wild Blossom’s eyes had the prophetic light in them. She saw that all this peace must pass, this pleasure end; she recognised that these things did not, could not, absolutely satisfy the spirit; her soul seemed to tremble within her as she began to feel the first dawn of the terrible answer to her sad questioning.

A deeper dream of rest;

A stronger waking.

Many a long year later, a solitary woman dwelled in that fisherman’s cottage on the shore of the blue sea. She was old and bowed with age and trouble. But still her eyes were brighter than any girl’s in the village, and held in them the mysterious beauty of the soul; still her hair, once golden, now grey, waved about her forehead. The people loved her and were kind to her, for she was always gentle and full of generous thought. But they never understood her, for they were long ages behind her in her growth. She was ready now for the great central test of personal existence; the experience of life in civilization. When the old fishwife lay dead within her cottage, and the people came to grieve beside her body, they little guessed that she was going on to a great and glorious future; a future full of daring and of danger. When her eyes closed in death, her inner eyes opened on a sight that filled her with absolute joy. She was in a garden of fruit trees, and the blossom of the trees was at its full. When her eyes fell on this white maze of flowers and drank in its beauty, she remembered the name she had borne on earth and dimly understood its meaning. The blossoms hid from her the sky and all else until a soft pressure on her hand drew her eyes downwards; and then she saw beside her that one whom she had loved through the ages, and who, side by side with her, was experiencing the profound mystery, and learning the strange lesson of incarnation in the world where sex is the first great teacher. And with each phase of existence that they passed through, these two forged stronger and stronger links that held them together and compelled them again and again to meet, so that together they were destined to pass through the vital hour; the hour when the life is shaped for greater ends or for vain deeds.

Here within this sheltered place, where blossoms filled the air with sweetness and beauty, it seemed to them, that they had attained to the full of pleasure. They rested in perfect satisfaction, drinking deep draughts of the joy of living. To them existence seemed a final and splendid fact in itself; existence as they then had it. The moment in which they lived was sufficient, they desired none other, nor any other place, nor any other beauty, than those they had. None knows and none can tell what time or age was passed in this deep contentment and fulfilment of pleasure. At last Wild Blossom’s soul woke from its sleep, satiated; the hunger returned to gnaw at her heart; the longing to know reasserted itself. Holding tight the hand she held in hers, she sprang from the soft couch on which she lay. Then, for the first time, she noticed that the ground was so soft and pleasant, because there, where she had lain, had drifted great heaps of the fallen fruit blossoms. The ground was all white with them, though some had begun to lose their delicate beauty, to curl and wrinkle and turn dark. Then she looked overhead and saw that the trees had, with the loss of the delicate petals, lost their first fairness, the splendour of the spring. Now they were covered with small, hard, green fruit, scarce formed, unbeautiful to the eye, hard to the touch, acid to the taste. With a shudder of regret for the sweet spring time that was gone, Wild Blossom hurried away from the trees, still holding fast that other hand in hers. She was going to face new, strange experiences, perhaps terrible dangers: her task was the easier for that tried companionship, for the nearness of that other who was climbing the same steep ladder of life.

END OF INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I.

In a masked ball there is an element of adventure that appeals to the daring of both sexes, to the bright and witty spirits. Hilary Estanol was just such an one as the hero of a bright revel should be. A beautiful boy, with a lovely face, and eyes that had in them a deep sadness. In repose his face was almost womanish in its softness; but a chill brilliance was in his smile, a certain slight cynicism coloured all his speech. Yet Hilary had no reason to be a cynic, and he was not one who adopted anything from fashion or affectation. The spring of this uncalled-for coldness and indifference lay in himself.

To-night he was the centre of attraction in Madame Estanol’s drawing-rooms. This bal masqué was to celebrate his coming of age, and Hilary had never looked so womanish as when he stood among his friends receiving their congratulations and admiring their gifts. He wore the dress of a troubadour, and it was one which became him well, not only in its picturesqueness as a costume, but in the requirements of the character. He had the faculty of the improvisatore, his voice was rich and soft, his musical and poetic gifts swift and versatile. Hilary was adored by his friends, but disliked, indeed almost hated, by his one near relation, his mother. She was standing near him now, talking to a group who had gathered round her. She was one of the cleverest women of the day, and, still beautiful and full of a charming pride, held a court of her own. Her dislike for Hilary was founded on her estimate of his character. To one of her intimate friends she had said, not long before this night, “Hilary will disgrace his name and family before there is one grey thread in his dark hair. He has the qualities that bring despair and ensure remorse. God will surely forgive me that I say this of my son; but I see it before me, an abyss into which he will drag me with him; and I wait for it every day.”

A guest, just arrived, approached Madame Estanol with a smile, and after greeting her affectionately, said, in a whisper, “I have brought a friend with me. Welcome her in her character as a fortune-teller. She is very witty, and will amuse us presently, if you like.”

She moved aside a little, and Madame Estanol saw standing behind her a stooping figure, an old haggard crone, with palsied head, and hand that trembled as it grasped her stick.

“Ah, Countess! it is impossible to recognise your friend under this disguise,” said Madame Estanol. “Will you not tell me who she is?”

“I am pledged to say nothing but that she is a fortune-teller,” said the Countess Bairoun. “Her name she herself will reveal only to one person; and that person must be born under the star that favoured her own birth.”

The fortune-teller turned her bent head towards Madame Estanol, and fixed a pair of brilliant and fascinating eyes on hers. Immediately Madame Estanol became aware of a strong charm that drew her towards this mysterious person. She advanced and held out her hand to assist the old woman in moving across the room.

“Come with me,” she said, “I should like to introduce you to my son. He is the hero of this scene to-night, for the ball is held in honour of his coming of age.”

They went together through the maskers that were now beginning to throng the large drawing-rooms, and everyone turned to look at the strange figure of the tottering old crone. Hilary Estanol was leaning against the high carved oak mantel frame of the inner drawing-room, surrounded by a laughing group of his intimate friends. He held his mask in his hand, and as he stood there smiling, his dark curls falling on his forehead, his mother thought, as she approached him, “My boy grows handsomer every hour of his gay young life.” When Hilary saw his mother’s strange companion he advanced a step, as if to welcome her, but Madame Estanol checked him with a smile. “I cannot introduce our visitor to you,” she said, “for I do not know her name. She will tell it to but one person, who must have been born under the same star as herself. Meantime, we are to greet her in her character as the fortune-teller.”

This announcement was welcomed by a murmur of amusement and interest.

“Then will our kind visitor perhaps exercise her craft for us?” asked Hilary, gazing with curiosity at the trembling head and grey locks before him. The old woman turned her head sideways, and gave him a look from those strange brilliant eyes. He, too, like his mother, felt the charm from them. But he felt more. Something suddenly wakened within him; a rush of inexplicable emotions roused him into amazement; he put his hand to his forehead; he was bewildered, almost faint.

There was a small drawing-room which opened out of the room they were in. It was so tiny that it held but a table covered with flowers, a low couch and an easy-chair. The laughing group that surrounded Hilary went eagerly to convert this room into the sanctum of the prophetess. They lowered and softened the shaded light; drew close the blinds and shut the doors, locking all but one. Here was placed a guardian who was to admit grudgingly and one by one those who were fortunate enough to speak alone with the sybil, for she would only see certain of the guests whom she selected herself from the throng, describing their appearance and dress to the guardian of her improvised temple. These were all ladies of great position. They entered laughing and half defiant. They came out, some pale, some red, some trembling, some in tears. “Who can she be?” they whispered in terrified tones to one another, and in that terror showed how she had penetrated their hearts and touched on their secret thoughts.

At last the guardian of the door said that Hilary himself was to enter.

When Hilary went in, the young man, as he closed the door on the fortune teller and her new guest, turned with a laugh to the group behind him.

“Already she has startled him,” he said, “I heard him utter almost a cry as he entered.”

“Could you see in?” asked one, “perhaps she has taken off her disguise for her host!”

“No, I saw nothing,” he answered. “Can none of you who have been in guess who she is?”

“No,” answered a girl who had come out from the ordeal with white and trembling lips. “It is impossible to guess. She knows everything.”

It was as they had supposed. She had taken off her disguise for her host. The staff, the large cloak, the wig and cap lay on the ground. With the swift use of a cosmetiqued kerchief she had removed from her fair skin the dark complexion of the ancient sybil. When Hilary entered she had completed this rapid toilette and sat leaning back in a low chair. She was dressed in a rich evening costume; she held a mask in her hand ready for use. But now her face was uncovered; her strange and brilliant eyes were fixed on Hilary; her beautiful mouth wore a half smile of amusement at his surprise. It was more than surprise that he experienced. Again that rush of inexplicable emotion overpowered him. He felt like one intoxicated. He regarded her very earnestly for a few moments.

“Surely,” he said, “we have met before!”

“We were born under the same star,” she answered in a voice that thrilled him. Until now he had not heard her speak. The sense of some strong link or association that united them, was made doubly strong by the sound of that voice, rich, strong and soft. Suddenly he recognised the meaning of his emotion. He no longer struggled against it, he no longer was bewildered by it.

He approached her and sat down upon the couch at her side. He regarded her with wonder and adoration, but no longer with awe or surprise. For he understood that the event which he had imagined would never come was already here—he was in love.

“You said you would disclose your name to the one who was born under the same star as yourself.”

“Do you not know me?” she said with a slight look of surprise. She fancied everyone knew her at least by sight.

“I do not,” he answered, “though indeed I am perplexed to think I can ever have lived without knowing you.”

Flattery produced no effect upon her, she lived in an atmosphere of it.

“I am the Princess Fleta,” she answered. Hilary started and coloured a little at the words, and could ill control his emotion. The Princess Fleta held a position in the society of the country, which can only belong to one who stands next to a throne that rules an important nation. She was a personage among crowned heads, one to whom an emperor might, without stooping, offer his love; and Hilary, the child of an officer of the Austrian army, and of a poor daughter of a decayed aristocratic family, Hilary had in the swift stirring of love at first sight, told his own heart that he loved her! It could never be unsaid, and he knew it. He had whispered the words within himself, the whisper would find a hundred echoes. He must always love her.

The Princess turned her wonderful eyes on him and smiled.

“I have done my work for to-night,” she said. “I have amused some of the people, now I should like to dance.”

Hilary was sufficient of a courtier not to be deaf to this command, though his whole soul was in his eyes and all his thoughts fixed on her beauty. He rose and offered her his arm, she put on her mask and they left the room. When Hilary appeared among the crowd that hung round the door of the fortune teller’s sanctum, accompanied by a slender, graceful woman, whose face was hidden save for the great dark eyes, there was an irrepressible murmur of excitement and wonder. “Who can she be?” was repeated again a hundred times. But no one guessed. None dreamed this could be the Princess Fleta herself; for there were but few houses she would visit at, and no one imagined that there could be any inducement to bring her to Madame Estanol’s. The mystery of her presence she explained to Hilary while they danced together.

“I am a student of magic,” she said, “and I have already learned some useful secrets. I can read the hearts of the courtiers who surround me, and I know where to look for true friends. Last night I dreamed of the friend I should find here. Do you care for these mystic occupations?”

“I know nothing of them,” said Hilary.

“Let me teach you then,” said the Princess, with a light laugh. “You will be a good pupil, that I know. Perhaps I may make a disciple of you! and there are not many with whom that is possible.”

“And why?” asked Hilary. “Surely it is a fascinating study to those who can believe in the secrets.”

“Scepticism is not the great difficulty,” answered the Princess, “but fear. Terror turns the crowd back from the threshold. Only a few dare cross it.”

“And you are one of the few,” said Hilary, gazing on her with eyes of burning admiration.

“I have never felt fear,” she answered.

“And would it be impossible to make you feel it, I wonder,” said Hilary.

“Do you desire to try?” she answered, with a smile at his daring speech. It did not sound so full of impertinence as it looks, for Hilary’s eyes and face were all alight with love and admiration, and his voice trembled with passion.

“You can make the attempt if you choose,” she said, glancing at him with those strange eyes of hers. “Terrify me if you can.”

“Not here, in my own house, it would not be hospitable.”

“Come and see me, then, some day when you think it will amuse you. Try and frighten me. I will show you my laboratory, where I produce essences and incenses to please the gnomes and ghouls.”

Hilary accepted this invitation with a flush of pleasure.

“Take me to the Countess,” she said at last. “I am going home. But I want her first to introduce me to your mother.”

The Countess was delighted that the Princess had made up her mind to this. She hardly thought Madame Estanol would be pleased to discover that the great lady had been masquerading in her drawing-room, and had not cared to throw off her disguise even for her hostess. And the Countess valued the friendship of Madame Estanol; so she was glad the wilful Princess had decided to treat her with politeness.

Madame Estanol could scarcely conceal her surprise at learning what the dignity was which had been hidden under the disguise of the old fortune-teller. The Princess did not remove her mask, and, with a laugh, she warned Madame Estanol that some of her guests would not be pleased to discover who the sybil was who had read their hearts so shrewdly.

When she had gone, Hilary’s heart and spirits had gone with her. It seemed as if he hardly cared to speak; his laughter had died away altogether. His thoughts, his very self, followed the fascinating personality that had bewitched him.

Madame Estanol saw his abstraction, his flushed eager look, and the new softness of his eyes. But she said no word. She feared the Princess, who was well known to be full of caprice and wilfulness. She feared lest Hilary should be mad enough to yield to the charm of the girl’s beauty and confident manner; the charm of power, peculiar, or rather, possible only to one in a royal place. But she would say no word; knowing Hilary well, she knew that any attempt to influence him against it would only intensify his new passion.

CHAPTER II.

Two days later Hilary nerved himself to pay the visit to the Princess. He thought she could not consider it to be too soon, for it seemed to him two months since he had seen her.

She lived in a garden-house some two or three miles away in the country. Her father’s palace in the city never pleased her; she only came there when festivities or ceremonials made her presence necessary. In the country, with her chaperone and her maids, she was free to do as she chose. For they were one and all afraid of her, and held her “laboratory” in the profoundest respect. None of them would have entered that room except to avoid some dreadful doom.

Hilary was taken to the Princess in the garden, where she was walking to and fro in an avenue of trees which were covered with sweet scented blossoms. She welcomed Hilary with a charming manner, and the hour he spent with her here in the sunshine was one of the wildest intoxication. They began openly to play the pretty game of love. Now that no eyes were on them the Princess let him forget that she belonged to a different rank from his own. When she was tired of walking, “Come,” she said, “and I will shew you my laboratory. No one in this house ever enters it. If you should say in the city that you have been in that room you will be besieged with questions. Be careful to say nothing.”

“I would die sooner,” exclaimed Hilary, to whom the idea of talking about the Princess and her secrets seemed like sacrilege.

The room was without windows, perfectly dark but for a softened light shed by a lamp in the centre of the high ceiling. The walls were painted black and on them were drawn strange figures and shapes in red. These had evidently not been painted by any artisan hand; though bold in touch, they were irregular in workmanship. Beside a great vessel which stood upon the ground, was a chair, and in this chair a figure upon which Hilary’s attention immediately became fastened.

He saw at once that it was not human, that it was not a lay figure, that it was not a statue. It resembled most a lay figure, but there was something strange about it which does not exist in the mere form on which draperies are hung. And its detail was elaborated; the skin was tinted, the eyes darkened correctly, the hair appeared to be human. Hilary remained at the doorway unable to advance because of the fascination this form exercised upon him.

The Princess looked back from where she stood in the centre of the room beneath the light; she saw the direction of his gaze and laughed.

“You need not fear it,” she said.

“Is it a lay figure?” asked Hilary, trying to speak easily, for he remembered that she despised those who knew fear.

“Yes,” she answered, “it is my lay figure.”

There was something that puzzled Hilary in her tone.

“Are you an artist?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered, “in life—in human nature. I do not work with a pencil or a brush; I use an agent that cannot be seen yet can be felt.”

“What do you mean?” asked Hilary.

She turned on him a strange look, that was at first distrustful, and then grew soft and tender.

“I will not tell you yet,” she said.

Hilary roused himself to answer her lightly.

“Have I to pass through some ordeal before you tell me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered gaily, “and already an ordeal faces you. Dare you advance into the room or no?”

Hilary made a great effort to break the spell that was on him. He went hastily across the room to where she stood. Then he realised that he had actually passed through an ordeal. He had resisted some force, the nature of which he knew not, and he had come out the victor. Realising this brought to him another conviction.

“Princess,” he said, “there is some one else in this room besides you and me. We are not alone.”

He spoke so suddenly, and from so great a sense of startled surprise, that he did not pause to think whether his question were a wise one or not. The Princess laughed as she looked at him.

“You are very sensitive,” she said. “Certainly we were born under the same star, for we are susceptible to the same influences. No, we are not alone. I have servants here whom no eyes have seen but mine. Would you like to see them? Do not say yes hastily. It means a long and tedious apprenticeship, obtaining mastery over these servants. But unless you conquer them you cannot often see me; for if you are much near to me they will hate you, and their hate is greater than your power to resist it.”

She spoke seriously now, and Hilary felt a strange sensation as he looked at this beautiful girl standing beneath the lamp light. He experienced a sudden dread of her as of someone stronger than himself; and also an impassioned desire to serve her, to be her slave, to give his life to her utterly. Perhaps she read the love in his eyes, for she turned away and moved towards the figure in the chair.

“I know this distresses you,” she said. “You shall see it no longer.” She opened a large screen which was formed of some gold coloured material covered with shapes outlined in black. She arranged this so that the figure was altogether hidden from view and also the great vessel which stood beside it.

“Now,” she said, “you will breathe more freely. And I am going to shew you something. We did not come out of the sunshine for no purpose. And we must be quick, for my good aunt will be terrified when she finds I have brought you in here. I believe she will hardly expect to see you alive again.”

She opened a gold vessel, which stood upon a cabinet, while she spoke, and the air immediately became full of a strong sweet perfume. Hilary put his hand to his forehead. Was it possible that he could be so immediately affected, or was it his imagination that the red shapes and figures which were on the black wall moved and ordered and arranged themselves? Yet, so it was; to his eyes the forms mingled and again broke up and re-mingled. A word was formed and then another. It was unconsciously imprinted on Hilary’s memory before it changed and vanished; he noticed only the mysterious occurrence which was happening before his eyes. Suddenly he became aware that a sentence had been completed; that words had been written there which he would never have dared to utter; that on the wall before him had appeared in letters as of fire the secret of his heart. He staggered back and drew his eyes with difficulty from the wall to fix them in amazement and fear upon the Princess. Her face was flushed, her eyes were bright and tender.

“Did you see it?” he asked in a trembling voice.

For a moment she hesitated then she answered, “Yes, I saw it.”

There was a brief silence. Hilary looked again at the wall, expecting to see the thought in his mind written there. But the shapes were returning to their original appearance, and the perfume was dying out of the air.

“Come,” said the Princess suddenly, “we have been here long enough. My aunt will be distressed. Let us go to her.”

She led the way from the room, and Hilary followed her. In another moment they were in a large drawing-room, flooded with sunshine and fragrant with flowers; the Princess’ aunt was busied with silks which she had entangled while at her embroidery; the Princess was on her knees beside her, holding a skein of yellow silk upon her hands. Hilary stood a moment utterly bewildered. Had he been dreaming? Was that black room and its terrible atmosphere a phantasy?

He had stayed long enough, and he now took his leave reluctantly. The Princess, who would have no ceremony at the Garden House, rose from her knees and said she would open the gate for him. Hilary flushed with pleasure at this mark of kindness.

The gate she took him to was a narrow one that stood in a thick-set hedge of flowering shrubs. When he had passed through he looked back, and saw the Princess leaning on the gate, framed in gorgeous blossoms. She smiled and held out her hand to him. The richness of her presence intoxicated him, and he lost all sense of the apparently impassable gulf between them.

“You read the words,” he said, “and you give me your hand in mine?”

“I read the words,” she answered, in a soft voice that thrilled him, “and I give you my hand in yours. Good-bye!”

She had touched his hand for an instant, and now she was gone. Hilary turned to walk through the flowering hedges to the city. But his heart, his thought, his soul remained behind. She had read the words, and she was not angry. She knew of his love for her and she was not angry. She had read his heart and had not taken offence. What might he not hope for?

Then came another thought. She had read the words. Then that black room was no phantasy, but a fact as actual as the sunshine. What were the powers of this strange creature that he loved? He knew not; but he knew that he loved her.

* * * * * * * *

An overpowering desire carried him daily on that road between the flowery hedges to the Garden House. Only sometimes had he the courage to enter. Most often he lingered at that narrow gate, embosomed in flowers and looked longingly over it. The first time that he entered after this visit, in which his secret was written before his eyes, he found the Princess standing within the gate. She held out her hand to him saying simply, “I knew you were coming. I have prepared something, and I have persuaded[persuaded] my aunt that no terrible thing will happen if you are in my laboratory for a little while. So come with me.”

It was brilliantly lit, this black walled room she called her laboratory. The great vessel stood in the midst of the floor beneath the lamp, and from it rose flame and smoke. A strong and vivid perfume filled the air, and the upper part of the high room was clouded with grey blue smoke, that shone in the light like silver.

In the chair beside it sat a figure: it was that of a beautiful woman. A strange mixture of emotions overpowered Hilary. At the first glance he felt that this figure was the same he had seen the other day; at the second he recognised his mother. He rushed forward to her and became aware that she was lifeless; then he turned passionately upon the Princess with anger and horror in his face.

“What have you done? What have you done?” he cried.

“Nothing,” she said, with a smile. “I have done no harm. Do you not see that is only an image? My lay figure, as I told you.”

He gave a long look at the inanimate shape that was so perfect a representation of his mother, and then he turned upon the Princess a look of more intense horror than before.

“What are you doing?” he asked, in a low voice.

“No harm!” she answered lightly. “Your mother hates and fears me. I cannot endure that. I am making her love me. I am making her desire your presence here with me.”

For a while they stood in silence by the side of the vessel and its flaming contents; then suddenly Hilary cried out: “I cannot bear it! Put an end to this terrible spell!”

“Yes,” said the Princess, “I will, but not to its results.”

She drew the screen before the seated figure, and threw something into the vessel that instantly quenched the flame.

Then she led Hilary from the room, and they walked up and down beneath the trees, talking of things as lovers talk—things that interested themselves but none other.

When Hilary returned home his mother rose from her couch and held out her hand to him. She drew him to sit beside her.

“Hilary,” she said, “something tells me you have been with the Princess Fleta. It is well, and I am glad. She is a good friend for you; ask her if I shall come to see her.”

Hilary rose without replying. The dew stood on his brow. For the first time he was conscious of actual fear, and the fear he felt was of the woman he loved.