WOMAN INSURGENT: A PARISIAN

SÉANCE.

HE vague unrest, dissatisfaction, and dim aspirations which have now found something like adequate expression in a definite programme, have occasionally moved the fair sex to participate in fatuous outbreaks against convention. It was perhaps inevitable, in the state of Parisian society towards the end of the eighteenth century, that the women, as well as the men, should have fallen under the influence of that master of chicanery, the great Cagliostro, who never lost an opportunity of exploiting the follies and foibles of humanity. During his residence in Paris, which terminated with the famous transaction of the Diamond Necklace, he rose to the greatest height of popular favour, and even from the affair of the necklace he extricated himself not without applause.

The time was opportune for the exercise of his peculiar talents. A host of sects, all more or less mystical in their beliefs and teachings, and all pronouncedly heretical in their tendencies, had sprung up, captivating the intellectual, and dazzling the unlearned. The occult was in fashion, and charlatanism of every kind battened on the gaping credulity of the upper classes, whose undisciplined intellects, loosed from the trammels of the old political, social, and religious ideas, found no sure guides in the violent ferment of thought which accompanied the general breaking up. Hence they fell an easy prey to the delusions of Mesmer, and the high-sounding emptiness of Cagliostro's system of Egyptian freemasonry.

In Germany, Cagliostro had been initiated into the mysteries of the Cabalists by the Count of St. Germain, who, thanks to the protection of Madame Pompadour, enjoyed some reputation at the Court of Louis XV., and had shown to that monarch, in a magic mirror, the fate of his children, striking terror to his heart by the vision of the decapitated Dauphin. When in London, Cagliostro had, it is supposed, been admitted as a freemason by some obscure lodge; and, compounding the doctrines of the two systems, by the

aid of his own genius, which had always displayed a tendency towards the occult, he founded his "Egyptian Lodge," which promised to adepts moral and physical regeneration, through which perfection was ultimately to be attained by the discovery of the "Primary Matter," or "Philosopher's Stone," and the "Acacia," which would bestow perpetual youth and health, while by the "Pentagon" man was to be restored to his state of primitive innocence.

The lodge was intended for men only, but the consuming curiosity of the fair sex led them urgently to solicit Madame Cagliostro to obtain for them also initiation into the mysteries. The "Seraphic Countess "-as Carlyle terms her-who had devotedly followed the varying fortunes of her marvellously, though perversely-gifted husband, and, by her charms of person and intellect, had been of the greatest assistance to his multifarious projects, always the arch-impostor's ready accomplice, nothing loth, undertook the business of founding a lodge for the feminine portion of the community. Between them the pair hatched as pretty a piece of mummery as ever entered into the mind of man to conceive, in which tawdry magnificence, mystic symbolism, and a bombastic philosophy of half-truths, veiled in mystic phraseology, played on the senses and excited the imaginations of their volatile following.

When first approached on the subject, Madame Cagliostro, feigning indifference, replied to the Duchess who had been delegated to sound her, that as soon as thirty-six pupils were found ready to submit to the necessary conditions she would inaugurate her magic court. That same day the list was complete.

The preliminary conditions were rigorous enough. In the forefront was the money question-without doubt the main object of the entire transaction-and it was required of each lady candidate that she should pay into the treasury a hundred louis d'or. The ladies of Paris were not, in these days, too well provided with funds, but the difficulties were overcome by resorting to the Montde-Piété, and in other ways into which it is well not to pry too closely. Then, as second condition, from the first day to the ninth the novices had to undergo complete seclusion from all intercourse with the world, and to hold themselves aloof from their own households, in order that by self-communing they might be the better prepared to receive the divine communications which were to be imparted to them. The other preliminary was the taking of an oath of entire submission to whatever orders might be given, however impossible of fulfilment these might appear to be.

The appointed rendezvous for the introductory ceremonies was a large house in the Rue Verte Saint-Honoré, and the hour eleven o'clock at night. In the entrance hall, each lady, on arrival, had to divest herself of several of her outer garments, and don a white robe, with a girdle which was of a different colour for each group of six dames. Finally, each received a large veil, which was gracefully draped over the left shoulder. These preliminary preparations over, the novices were introduced two by two into a large apartment, fitted up as a temple, brilliantly illuminated, and furnished with thirty-six chairs covered with black satin. Madame Cagliostro, clothed in white, was seated on a sort of throne, and on either hand were her supporters, two tall figures, wearing spectral habiliments which rendered their sex indistinguishable. When all had entered, and time for a hurried glance round had been allowed, the séance began by a gradual diminution of the light, until it became so dark that each could barely distinguish her neighbour through the gloom. Then the high-priestess commanded all to uncover the left limb as far as the knee, following up this peculiar exercise by a command to raise the right arm and support it on the nearest pillar. While they maintained this position two females entered, holding swords in their right hands, who approached the priestess, and received from her silken ropes, with which they bound the limbs of each one of the thirty-six wondering demoiselles.

This done, Madame Cagliostro began to speak :—

"Your present condition is the symbol of your position in society. If men exclude you from their mysteries, from their projects, they do so because they desire to keep you for ever in a state of dependence. Throughout the whole world woman is man's first slave, from the seraglio in which a despot shuts up five hundred of us, to those savage climes where the wife dare not sit down by the side of her huntsman spouse. We are sacrificial victims, devoted from infancy to strange and cruel gods. If, breaking this shameful yoke, we act strongly in concert, soon you shall see the proud sex humbled in the dust, and begging submissively for our favours. Leave them to carry on their murderous wars and to disentangle the chaos of their insensate laws; ours be it to rule opinion, to purify manners, to cultivate the intellect, to preserve delicacy, and to diminish the numbers of the unfortunate. Such cares as these are worth far more than the elaborate dressing of mere automata, or the discussion of scandals and ridiculous quarrels. If any one among you has any opposition to offer to what I have said let her speak."

Whether her ideas were altogether those of her audience, or

whether they were quite too novel and daring to be so readily digested, matters not. Only the applause she had counted on conveyed the answer of the fascinated Parisiennes, who dimly saw before them an opening vista of powers and conquests far beyond anything they had been able ever of themselves to imagine. The Grand Mistress, having first loosed them from their symbolic bonds, continued her oration :

"Doubtless your proud and fiery spirits sup with ardour on the prospect of recovering that liberty which is the first possession of every created being, but you have to learn, through more than one trial, how far you can count on yourselves, and it is those proofs that will embolden me to entrust you with the secrets on which depend the future happiness of your lives.

"You are to divide into six groups. Those who are denoted by similar colours will together enter one of the six apartments adjoining this temple. Those who succumb during the ordeal shall never re-enter this sacred fane; the palm of victory awaits those who triumph."

Each group thereupon passed into a splendidly furnished room, where the "trials" certainly assumed a very different complexion from that they anticipated. They were immediately joined by a gay band of cavaliers, who, with light badinage, mingled with some more serious remonstrances, attempted to turn the ladies from their firm resolve to carry their more than doubtful enterprise to the end. But in vain were threats of possible scandal and open ridicule held out, nor were they moved by taunts that love and friendship were being thus sacrificed to serve the purposes of greedy adventurers, who were foisting on them the crudest extravagances, useless as well as disagreeable, in the guise of the highest ideals of truth and wisdom.

Scarcely deigned they to listen to those unpleasant words of cold reason, and pleasantries, which but ill accorded with their state of mental exaltation. There were visible in an adjoining gallery a series of paintings by great artists representing the most brilliant examples of the domination of woman: among the rest, Hercules spinning at the feet of Omphale; Mark Antony, the slave of Cleopatra; and the terrible Catherine II., of Russia. Viewing these, one of the gentlemen said: "There then is the terrible sex which treats yours as slaves. For whom, then, are the gentle kindnesses and the attentions of society? Is it for your hurt that we strive to keep far from you ennui and trouble of every kind? For whom are our palaces built? Are they not consecrated for your use as their

most splendid adornment? In truth, do we not delight in decking out the idols of our faith and love? Shall we adopt the rude manners of the East, and consent to hide your charms beneath a jealous veil? Far from guarding the entrances to your apartments by uncouth and repulsive sentinels, do we not rather frequently efface ourselves with complaisant good-nature, so as to leave a free field for your coquetry?"

To this amiable and modest gentleman one of the ladies immediately responded: "Ail your eloquence cannot charm away the humiliating gratings of convents, or the grim duennas you impose on us, ostensibly as companions, but in reality as spies on our most trivial actions, nor can it make up for the smiling contempt which reduces all our finest literary endeavours to impotence, or explain away your protective airs, and your commands imposed on us under the disguise of counsels."

In another of the apartments a more interesting scene was being enacted. The ladies whose colour was lilac found waiting there each her most ardent wooer; and it was their painful duty, if they were to go forward to the goal towards which they were striving, to give them the most absolute dismissal. The chamber had three doors leading into the gardens, which were at that hour softly illumined by the light of the moon. The cavaliers invited their dames to descend, and this last favour was readily granted to the swains, whom they were about to leave inconsolable. One of them, named Leonora, was not able to conceal her trouble and perplexity of mind as she accompanied the noble Count whose suit she had hitherto favoured, and he, knowing to some extent the actual state of matters, lost no time in approaching the subject, and demanding an explanation.

"As a last favour," said he, "tell me my crimes! Am I a perjured wretch that you abandon me thus easily? What have I done during these two days to merit such treatment? My feelings, my thoughts, my life, my very heart's blood, are they not all irrevocably yours? You cannot have all at once turned inconstant. What kind of fanaticism has taken hold of you with a strength sufficient to turn away from me your heart, which has cost me so many torments ?"

"It is not you I hate," she replied; "it is your sex-your cruel tyrannical laws."

"Ah! and of this sex, proscribed to-day, you have known only me. Where then is my despotism? When have I been unhappy enough to cause trouble to the one I love?"

At this Leonora sighed, for she found no words in which to VOL. CCI XXXII. NO. 1997.

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