Page:Educational Review Volume 23.djvu/53

 Lucifer at his pleasure. Intoxicated by his success and the credulity of his adherents, Taxil’s invention runs riot; and he tells the story of a serpent inditing prophecies on the back of a demon who “in order to marry a Freemason, transformed himself into a young lady, and played the piano, evenings, in the form of a crocodile.” Taxil gained confederates in other countries, who contributed to the movement according to their several needs and talents. One of the most interesting figures in the story is the fictitious personage, Diana Vaughan—the ' of the drama and of its '. She was given out to be the descendant of Thomas Vaughan, the seventeenth-century mystic, and the goddess Astarte; her Luciferian origin and principles were shown by her horror of all religious observances, by the devils who attended her, and thru whose aid she made excursions to Mars, where she “rode on Schiaparelli’s canals, sailed on the Sea of the Sirens, and strolled among the gigantic inhabitants of the planet.” Many remarkable incidents of her curious personality are retailed for the benefit of the believers; while poetic justice is appeased by her final conversion to the Church thru the instrumentality of the spirit of Jeanne d’Arc.

When it became necessary to materialize Diana Vaughan for the benefit of the privileged few and to satisfy the skepticism of others, she was cleverly impersonated by “a bright American girl, employed as a copyist in a Parisian typewriter establishment, who wrote all the letters at Taxil’s dictation and received a monthly salary of one hundred and fifty francs for her services.” This was hardly a fair appreciation of American talent, considering that the money remitted to Diana Vaughan in ten years amounted to more than half a million francs. In 1896 Taxil was a prominent figure in a great anti-masonic congress held at Trent, where indeed he was treated as a hero and a saint. On April 19, 1897, in Paris, there was held by invitation of Diana Vaughan a highly sensational function, at which it had been announced that the miraculous lady would appear. When the moment arrived, Taxil stepped forward and said: “Reverend Sirs, ladies and gentlemen! you wish to see Diana Vaughan. Look at me! I myself am that