pters have drunk raw
spirit, and must now qualify it after the Scotch fashion. The aqueous
intellectuality and quiet stream of unpretending deposition peculiar to
M. Jean Kostka, will be well adapted to modify undue exaltations and
restore order to a universe which has been intoxicated by sorcerers. He
will show us how Lucifer is unmasked in an undemonstrative and
gentlemanly fashion by a late Gnostic and initiate of the 33rd degree.
He writes, as he frankly tells us, in a spirit of reparation and
gratitude, having commerced freely with devils during a long series of
unholy years. "Blessed be the omnipotent Lord, and blessed the loving
kindness which drew me out of the abyss.... To glorify these I unmask
the fallen angel." The delicacy of the motive and its setting of
chivalrous sentiment will be appreciated even by the victim, and the
tenderness of the treatment will prompt Lucifer to pardon his reviler,
who has been already pardoned by M. Papus for betraying the order of the
Martinists. And to do justice towards an amiable writer, who has
scarcely the requisite qualities for seriously damaging or advancing any
cause, it may be kind to add that he has considerably exaggerated his
own case. After a careful examination of his statement, which is
exceedingly naive, I am tempted to conclude that he has never been near
an abyss; he is innocent of either height or depth, and so far from
having ever plunged into the infernal void, he has scarcely so much as
paddled in a purgatorial puddle. His guilty transcendental experiences
are in reality the most infantile afternoon occultism, and his
drawing-room diablerie might be appropriately symbolised by the paper
speaking-tube of our old friend John King; there is nothing in it when
the voice is not speaking, and there is nothing in it when it is.

Since his conversion, M. Jean Kostka has exhibited much harmless
devotion towards Joan of Arc, an enthusiasm which originated among
occultists, and he has pious memories of St Stanislaus Kostka, for which
dispositions I trust that all my readers will have the complaisance to
commend him. He writes, furthermore, "in the decline of maturity, on the
threshold of age, in the late autumn of life," which is his dropsical
method of saying that he is past sixty, and he veils a "futile name"
under the patronymic of his favourite saint. Jean Kostka is not Jean
Kostka, but it is without intent to deceive that he evades any possible
responsibility i