712 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



an indecisive and utterly nugatory report, to the effect that " no 

 thoroughly convincing evidence had been furnished for or against 

 the existence and conversion of Diana Vaughan and the authen- 

 ticity of the writings attributed to her." This evasion of the issue, 

 however, did not shake the confidence of the ultramontane press, 

 nor prevent its positive affirmation of the points which the com- 

 mission had discreetly left in doubt. As a reward for this fanat- 

 ical zeal and steadfast credulity, the editor of The Pelican received 

 a special apostolical benediction, and was thus encouraged to " re- 

 sist the raging of Satan." "Stand firm!" he exclaimed. "The 

 Holy Father is with us, and who is over him? " 



With the Congress of Trent the mystification which Taxil had 

 been playing off on papacy for so many years had reached the acme 

 of success, and nothing now remained but to wind up the plot with 

 a drastic denouement. Accordingly, Diana Vaughan issued an in- 

 vitation to a conference to be held on April 19, 1897, in the great 

 hall of the Geographical Society of Paris. It was also stated that 

 other conferences would be held in the principal cities of France, 

 Italy, England, and the United States. The programme for the 

 evening was quite elaborate, beginning with a lottery for an Ameri- 

 can typewriter and ending with a series of fifty-four stereopticon 

 pictures representing, among other fantastic scenes, Sophia Walder 

 and her serpents, events in the life of Diana Vaughan, the appari- 

 tion of the devil Bitru in Rome, Eden and Eve with the fatal apple, 

 sacrilegious stabbing of the host on a Satanic altar in a Masonic 

 lodge at Berlin, and finally Leo XIII with the encyclical letter 

 Ilumanum genus as a flaming sword in his hand, "the archangel 

 Michael on his right and the apocalyptic St. John on his left tread- 

 ing the triple-headed dragon of Freemasonry under foot. The 

 audience consisted chiefly of priests, with a few Protestant clergy- 

 men and Freemasons, and an unusually large number of news- 

 paper reporters. The typewriter was won by Ali Kemal, corre- 

 spondent of the Constantinople journal Ikdam, who only regretted 

 that it did not write Turkish. Taxil then appeared on the plat- 

 form, and began his address with the words: " Eeverend sirs, ladies, 

 and gentlemen! You wish to see Diana Vaughan. Look at me! 

 I myself am that lady! " After this startling exordium, he pro- 

 ceeded to relate how from his youth up he had always had an irre- 

 sistible inclination to play practical jokes. Once he frightened the 

 inhabitants of ^farseilles by discovering a shoal of sharks in the 

 harbor, and again he set the arehroologists all agog by announcing 

 the existence of a city, built on piles, at the bottom of Lake Leman. 

 But these were " childish thing? " compared with the manner in 

 which he had humbugged the Catholic clergy for nearly a dozen 



