Albigenses invoke, if they invoke anything; to Madame X., he is Mary Stuart; to his own adepts, within sound of the lointain bruissement, he is a jeune homme blond aux yeux bleus, whom I understand to have worn a dalmatic, and to have been curiously indebted to the author of Aut Diabolus aut Nihil; for the Theosophists, he is that "illustrious demoniac," Madame Blawatsky—his innate delicacy leads him to the permutation of the Typhon V.; and then Freemasonry—it goes without saying that the little horn of Lucifer has displaced all other horns in all the grades and lodges, that the fraternity is his throne and his footstool, and the city of the great king.
If we button-hole Jean Kostka, and ask him to tell us confidentially and upon honour what it is that has changed his views, making him discover the leer of Baal-Zeboub where he once saw the smile of the spiritual Eos, he turns Trappist at once, and goes into retreat with M. Huysman; there is not a syllable of information in all his beau volume as to any intellectual process through which he passed on
