ced in autumn seasons and during the mists
and mildness of October nights. On these occasions he was conscious of a
curious extension of personality by which he seemed to enter into all
Nature, and all Nature took voice and interpreted herself intelligibly
to him. After music came verbal communications, and then the apparition
of forms, chiefly of classical mythology. Most people would have termed
this poetic rapture passing into lucidity, but our friend avers that it
is the Enemy.

Such have been the experiences and adventures of Jean Kostka in the
psychic world, and they are of precisely the same calibre as his
critical method. I may say, in conclusion, that, if spared, he will do
better in his next book, for he promises another, which is to exhibit in
a convincing manner how Lucifer has been vanquished by Joan of Arc. In
the meantime we may part from him with due recognition of his absolute
good faith and extreme amiability; we may congratulate him on his
conversion, and still more upon the very pleasant reading he provides;
he does not appear to have unmasked Lucifer, but he has let us into the
secret of the best that can be done in that way.

Lastly, the point to be marked in connection with the memoirs and
revelations of Jean Kostka is this, that neither in Paris nor elsewhere,
neither in Masonry nor in other secret associations, concerning which he
has had every opportunity to judge, has he come personally into contact
with a cultus of Satan or Lucifer; that he chooses to term certain
mystical opinions and practices diabolical, because they are condemned
by the Latin Church, is a matter which is perfectly indifferent and
exhibits only the forlorn position of a case which resorts to the
expedient. But it is highly significant that a man who has mixed among
mystics of all grades for probably thirty years, who is affiliated to
innumerable orders, and in his present mood would be glad to expose
everything, has nothing to tell us of the Palladium, though he dwelt at
its gates, and the circles he frequented were at a stone's cast from the
alleged Mother-Lodge Lotus of Paris.

CHAPTER X

THE VENDETTA OF SIGNOR MARGIOTTA

To Signor Domenico Margiotta we owe the most explicit account of the
great compact between Mazzini and Albert Pike which produced the New and
Reformed Palladium. With this institution he does not attempt to connect
the anterior order founded in 1730; for him the possession of the
Templar B