Alexandra writes at length from 30 boulevard Saint-Michel:
“As you will have surmised from my last letter, life with the Paris Theosophists leaves much to be desired. I have already described their awful food (fortunately there is a cheap restaurant just down the street) and their scholarship is little better. They pretend to read the Bhagavad-Gita by comparing the Sanskrit word for word with a French translation, with no regard for grammar. And then they sit around for hours on hard chairs, meditating — until (so I’m told) their spirits leave their bodies and rise towards higher planes of existence. When my landlord M. Jourdan claps his hands and says ‘Rentrez’, the disembodied spirits must return to their fleshly envelopes, which by now I think are getting very stiff and cold. One can only hope that all the spirits find their way back to their proper owners!”
Apparently the Theosophists of Paris believe themselves descended from ancestral beings who once inhabited the moon. “As you can imagine, it is hard not to laugh,” writes Alexandra, “but they are very serious in their beliefs and I must try not to give offense.”
I suspect that the Bohemian life is losing its charm for Alexandra. She adds that the Theosophists like to set out at midnight and wander through the streets of Paris until three or four in the morning. Then, “sustained by many cups of café noir, they talk until dawn.” Alexandra is studying Sanskrit at the Collège de France with a Tibetan scholar, Professor Foucaux ( though I expect all those sleepless nights are making it difficult for her to concentrate). Listening to him, she says, she has become more than ever determined to visit the Forbidden Kingdom. “So few Europeans have ever travelled there, not even the Professor himself.” (Madame Blavatsky’s Himalayan travels, we are both convinced, are a figment of her imagination!)
Alexandra goes on to tell how she has discovered the Musée Guimet, where she has been reading about the literature and philosophy of India and China. “There I believe I will find more mystery, more secret wisdom, than the inhabitants of the Boulevard Saint-Michel have ever dreamed of.”
And she writes with great enthusiasm of a new acquaintance she met at the museum: “The Countess de Bréant — a most brilliant and intriguing woman, a student of Jewish and Arab philosophies, of Pantheism, and also of the Vedantas. She has travelled in India, and was interested to learn that I too hoped one day to visit the Buddha’s birthplace.”
Quite out of the blue this Countess invited Alexandra first for a cup of tea, and then to a meeting of the Pythagorean Society, of which she is a member. “As you can imagine, I was astonished and excited to learn that here in Paris there are devotees of the great Greek mathematician, who is almost a mythological figure, a veritable god of science. Of course I accepted her invitation.”
And thus Alexandra embarks on another adventure. Much to her disappointment, I suspect, she could only attend the meeting, which was open to the public, but not the ritual ceremony at which only initiates were allowed. “And of course if there was a Society, there must be initiates! Everywhere, it seems, are these crowds of devotees and disciples, dedicated to the arcane mysteries of Egypt and ancient Greece.
“The Pythagoreans meet in a pavilion at the end of a little Parisian garden. The meeting room is large and austere, but comfortably furnished — very different from the cramped and wretched atmosphere of the Boulevard Saint-Michel. We seated ourselves on velvet-upholstered benches. Below the speaker’s platform was an inscription, Même si elle est trop haute, which means that one should strive always towards one’s loftiest ideals, even when they seem impossible to attain.
“Such an idea has always appealed to me. It is the journey that counts, after all — the adventure of the road, the excitement of the ever-changing landscape, the perilous ascent to the high peaks, with no certainty of what lies behind the mists. Perhaps, I thought, among the Pythagoreans I could learn to experience that sense of awe that has so far eluded me — the terreur sacrée that overwhelms our reason and can take us to the very edge of the unknown.
“Alas, chère Jeanne, quel désappointement!”
The assistants, she tells me, distributed the text of a very long récitation printed on expensive paper. Slowly, gravely and interminably, the members intoned the words. Far from being inspired with sacred terror, she found herself drifting off to sleep.
“Then the speaker referred to the formula written on one of the walls, and based on the writings of Pythagoras: Le nombre est l’essence de choses — ‘number is the ultimate reality’. I hoped he would discuss this enigma further, but no — instead he began to explain how human souls are formed from the ether which fills space, and how after the death of the body, our souls go to live on various other planets, according to how much merit we have earned in life. It seemed to me this had little to do with mathematics.
“I thanked Madame Bréant politely for her invitation and excused myself, pleading the demands of my other studies. Still, I am not discouraged. I shall continue my explorations, wherever they may lead me.”