Under the thinnest disguise of fiction, he gives in his romance of _La Bas_, an incredible and untranslatable picture of sorcery, sacrilege, black magic, and nameless abominations, secretly practised in Paris.

Possessing a brilliant reputation, commanding a wide audience, and with a psychological interest attaching to his own personality, which more than literary excellence infuses a contagious element into private views and impressions, he has given currency to the Question of Lucifer, has promoted it from obscurity into prominence, and has made it the vogue of the moment.

It is true that, by his vocation of novelist, he is suspected of inventing his facts, and Dr "Papus," president of the influential Martinist group in French occultism, states quite plainly that the doors of the mystic fraternities have been closed in his face, so that he can know nothing, and his opinions are consequently indifferent.

I have weighed these points carefully, but unless the mystic fraternities are connected with diabolism, which Papus would most rightly deny, the exclusion does not remove the opportunity of first-hand knowledge concerning the practice of Satanism, and, "brilliant imagination" apart, M.Huysman has proved quite recently that he is in mortal earnest by his preface to a historical treatise on "Satanism and Magic," the work of a literary disciple, Jules Bois.

In a criticism, which for general soberness and lucidity does not leave much to be desired, he there affirms that a number of persons, not specially distinguished from the rest of the world by the mark of the beast in their foreheads, are "devoted in secret to the operations of Black Magic, communicate or seek to communicate with Spirits of Darkness, for the attainment of ambition, the accomplishment of revenge, the satisfaction of their passions, or some other form of ill-doing." He affirms also that there are facts which cannot be concealed and from which only one deduction can be made, namely, that the existence of Satanism is undeniable.
To understand the first of these facts I must explain that the attempt to form a partnership with the lost angels of orthodox theology, which attempt constitutes Black Magic, has, in Europe at least, been invariably connected with sacrilege.