They heard the name for the first time, but naturally proceeded to call a variety of articles by an appellation presumably so fashionable, and the success of the novel was assured. Madame de Krüdener, promptly and conveniently oblivious of the sources of this sudden triumph, allowed herself to become somewhat intoxicated by it, and wrote to a friend that the “dear woman” (meaning Madame de Staël) was jealous of her. The person at whom this accusation was levelled probably never heard of it. She certainly would never have divined it; and, the little difficulty about Jordan once overcome, she appears to have found Madame de Krüdener’s society more than tolerable. Indeed they ended by becoming affectionate friends; but that was after the authoress of _Valerie_ had undergone the mystic change which transformed her from a flirt into a priestess. She had always been immensely admired, and had not preserved a spotless reputation. But she had one of those emotional natures in which a restless vanity, love of novelty, a morbid sensibility and an excess of imagination, combine to produce religious fervors. Standing at a window in Riga one day, she saw an old admirer drop dead at the very moment that he was lifting his hat to salute her. This event made on her one of those terrifying and ineffaceable impressions which in regenerate circles is known as “a call.” She plunged into mysticism; became the exponent of a new dogma, and finally claimed for herself the gift of prophecy. People were, of course, not wanting to declare that her predictions had in several instances been verified; and, her personal fascination remaining always great, she now acquired an enormous influence. Her extreme self-abnegation and boundless charities increased her reputation for sanctity, and she even succeeded in bringing down on herself a satisfactory amount of persecution. In Paris superstition was, as always, rife. The days were not yet so remote when Philip Egalité had gone to question the devil in the quarries of Montrouge; and men were barely more than middle-aged who in their first youth had looked on the brazen brow of Cagliostro, and felt their blood agreeably frozen by the Comte de St. Germain’s casual mention of personal experiences three hundred years old. But little more than thirty years previous to Madame de Krüdener’s “revival” Mesmer had seen numbers of the fairest and many not of the stupidest heads in Paris gathered round his famous _baquet_. A little later the _illuminati_ had been credited unveraciously and to their scant honor, with a share in the sanguinary priesthood of Robespierre, and finally Mademoiselle Lenormand had shuffled the cards of prophecy at the instance of Napoleon himself. Into this strange world, so exhausted and cynical, yet excited, impulsive, and thirsting for novel emotions, the Northern Sybil, with her strange, pale face and shining eyes, came like a wandering star.