The years between 1859 and 1872 were those of Home’s greatest success. Toward the end of this period, however, his popularity waned and having for a second time married a lady belonging to the Russian nobility, he gave up the practice of his profession, broke with nearly all his former friends and returned to the Continent where he devoted much of his time to writing. He died in 1886 and is buried at St. Germain-en-Laye. His active career, his various escapades, and the direct cause of his death[44] all indicate that he lived the life of a hypocrite of the deepest dye. How strange that these inspired agents of “Summerland,” these human deliverers of messages, these stepping stones to the Beyond, are, for the greater part, moral perverts whose favorite defence is the claim that they are forced to do such deeds by the evil spirits which take possession of them. CHAPTER IV PALLADINO Eusapia Palladino, an Italian, has to her credit the successful deception of more philosophic and scientific men than any other known medium, being regarded by some as the most famous of them all, notwithstanding the fact that she seems to have made no pretence of producing the class of miracles claimed by D. D. Home and many others. Materialization was rarely resorted to by her and there is very little variety in her program from 1892 up to the time of her death in 1918, evidently being content to astonish investigating scientists with the levitation and gyrating of inanimate things.[45] Palladino was born in the Neapolitan district of poor peasants who died when she was a mere child. Naturally bright, even shrewd, her perceptive instinct seems to have developed early in life and continued throughout her career though she had no education and to the end was scarcely able to read or write. Her first contact with the mysterious arts appears to have been when she was a mere child of thirteen (1867) in the service of an acrobat or _conjuror_[46] from whom she must have acquired some degree of skill and knowledge of the uncanny which she may have coupled up with the marvellous success achieved by Home, and her quick wit may have opened visions of a change from poverty to that affluence which she saw was the reward of the professional phenomena producer, for she began her Spiritualistic work just following his successful operations in Italy which served to spread Spiritualism in spite of Papal opposition. Her part must have been learned well and her plans carefully laid before she made her debut as a full fledged medium because she succeeded from the start in baffling brainy men of science, and while as the wife of a small shop-keeper she was very poor, she became wealthy within twenty years after taking up mediumistic work.