hom she had known so well that they had dabbled in magic
together of which "neither knew anything at all" in those days; and she
ran on, as if there was nobody there to overhear her, "I used to wonder at
and pity the people who sell their souls to the devil, but now I only pity
them. They do it to have somebody on their side," and added to that, after
some words I have forgotten, "I write, write, write as the Wandering Jew
walks, walks, walks."

Besides the devotees, who came to listen and to turn every doctrine into a
new sanction for the puritanical convictions of their Victorian childhood,
cranks came from half Europe and from all America, and they came that they
might talk. One American said to me, "She has become the most famous woman
in the world by sitting in a big chair and permitting us to talk." They
talked and she played patience, and totted up her score on the green
baize, and generally seemed to listen, but sometimes she would listen no
more. There was a woman who talked perpetually of "the divine spark"
within her, until Madame Blavatsky stopped her with--"Yes, my dear, you
have a divine spark within you and if you are not very careful you will
hear it snore." A certain Salvation Army captain probably pleased her, for
if vociferous and loud of voice, he had much animation. He had known
hardship and spoke of his visions while starving in the streets and he
was still perhaps a little light in the head. I wondered what he could
preach to ignorant men, his head ablaze with wild mysticism, till I met a
man who had heard him talking near Covent Garden to some crowd in the
street. "My friends," he was saying, "you have the kingdom of heaven
within you and it would take a pretty big pill to get that out."

Meanwhile I had got no nearer to proving that the sage Ahasuerus "dwells
in a sea cavern 'mid the Demonesi," nor did I learn any more of those
"Masters" whose representative Madame Blavatsky claimed to be. All there
seemed to feel their presence, and all spoke of them as if they were more
important than any visible inhabitant of the house. When Madame Blavatsky
was more silent, less vivid than usual, it was "because her Masters were
angry;" they had rebuked her because of some error, and she professed
constant error. Once I seemed in their presence, or that of some messenger
of theirs. It was about nine at night, and half a dozen of us sat round
her big table cloth, when the room seemed to fill with the odour of