Theos-Talk Archives (May 2002 Message tt00168)

May 16, 2002

Dear Maria

Here is another of H P B's tales


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CAN THE DOUBLE MURDER?
By H. P. Blavatsky
To the Editor of The Sun.
Sir, -- One morning in 1867 Eastern Europe was startled by news of the
most horrifying description. Michael Obrenovitch, reigning Prince of
Serbia, his aunt, the Princess Catherine or Katinka, and her daughter
had been murdered in broad daylight, near Belgrade, in their own
garden, assassin or assassins remaining unknown. The Prince had
received several bullet-shots, and stabs, and his body was actually
butchered; the Princess was killed on the spot, her head smashed, and
her young daughter, though still alive, was not expected to survive.
The circumstances are too recent to have been forgotten, but in that
part of the world, at the time, the case created a delirium of
excitement.
In the Austrian dominions and in those under the doubtful protectorate
of Turkey, from Bucharest down to Trieste, no high family felt secure.
In those half Oriental countries every Montecchi has its Capuletti,
and it was rumoured that the bloody deed was perpetrated by the Prince
Kara-Gueorguevitch, or "Tzerno-Gueorgey," as he is usually called in
those parts. Several persons innocent of the act were, as is usual in
such cases imprisoned, and the real murderers escaped justice. A young
relative of the victim, greatly beloved by his people, a mere child,
taken for the purpose from a school in Paris, was brought over in
ceremony to Belgrade and proclaimed Hospodar of Serbia. In the turmoil
of political excitement the tragedy of Belgrade was forgotten by all
but an old Serbian matron who had been attached to the Obrenovitch
family, and who, like Rachel, would not be comforted for the death of
her children. After the proclamation of the young Obrenovitch, nephew
of the murdered man, she had sold out her property and disappeared;
but not before taking a solemn vow on the tombs of the victims to
avenge their deaths.
The writer of this truthful narrative had passed a few days at
Belgrade, about three months before the horrid deed was perpetrated,
and knew the Princess Katinka. She was a kind, gentle, and lazy
creature at home; abroad she seemed a Parisienne in manners and
education. As nearly all the personages who will figure in this true
story are still living, it is but decent that I should withhold their
names, and give only initials.
The old Serbian lady seldom left her house, going but to see the
Princess occasionally. Crouched on a pile of pillows and carpeting,
clad in the picturesque national dress, she looked like the Cumaean
sibyl in her days of calm repose. Strange stories were whispered about
her Occult knowledge, and thrilling accounts circulated sometimes
among the guests assembled round the fireside of the modest inn. Our
fat landlord's maiden aunt's cousin had been troubled for some time
past by a wandering vampire, and had been bled nearly to death by the
nocturnal visitor, and while the efforts and exorcisms of the parish
pope had been of no avail, the victim was luckily delivered by Gospoja
P---, who had put to flight the disturbing ghost by merely shaking her
fist at him, and shaming him in his own language. It was in Belgrade
that I learned for the first time this highly interesting fact in
philology, namely, that spooks have a language of their own. The old
lady, whom I will call Gospoja P--- , was generally attended by
another personage destined to be the principal actress in our tale of
horror. It was a young gipsy girl from some part of Roumania, about
fourteen years of age. Where she was born, and who she was, she seemed
to know as little as anyone else. I was told she had been brought one
day by a party of strolling gypsies, and left in the yard of the old
lady, from which moment she became an inmate of the house. She was
nicknamed "the sleeping girl," as she was said to be gifted with the
faculty of apparently dropping asleep wherever she stood, and speaking
her dreams aloud. The girl's heathen name was Frosya.
About eighteen months after the news of the murder had reached Italy,
where I was at the time, I travelled over the Banat in a small wagon
of my own, hiring a horse whenever I needed one. I met on my way an
old Frenchman, a scientist, travelling alone after my own fashion, but
with the difference that while he was a pedestrian, I dominated the
road from the eminence of a throne of dry hay in a jolting wagon. I
discovered him one fine morning slumbering in a wilderness of shrubs
and flowers, and had nearly passed over him, absorbed as I was in the
contemplation of the surrounding glorious scenery. The acquaintance
was soon made, no great ceremony of mutual introduction being needed.
I had heard his name mentioned in circles interested in mesmerism, and
knew him to be a powerful adept of the school of Du Potet.
"I have found," he remarked, in the course of the conversation after I
had made him share my seat of hay, "one of the most wonderful subjects
in this lovely Thebaide. I have an appointment to-night with the
family. They are seeking to unravel the mystery of a murder by means
of the clairvoyance of the girl . . . she is wonderful!"
"Who is she?" I asked.
"A Roumanian gipsy. She was brought up, it appears, in the family of
the Serbian reigning Prince, who reigns no more, for he was very
mysteriously mur--- Halloo, take care! Diable, you will upset us over
the precipice!" he hurriedly exclaimed, unceremoniously snatching from
me the reins, and giving the horse a violent pull.
"You do not mean Prince Obrenovitch? " I asked aghast.
"Yes, I do; and him precisely. To-night I have to be there, hoping to
close a series of seances by finally developing a most marvellous
manifestation of the hidden power of the human spirit; and you may
come with me. I will introduce you; and besides, you can help me as an
interpreter, for they do not speak French."
As I was pretty sure that if the somnambule was Frosya, the rest of
the family must be Gospoja P---, I readily accepted. At sunset we were
at the foot of the mountain, leading to the old castle, as the
Frenchman called the place. It fully deserved the poetical name given
it. There was a rough bench in the depths of one of the shadowy
retreats, and as we stopped at the entrance of this poetical place,
and the Frenchman was gallantly busying himself with my horse on the
suspicious-looking bridge which led across the water to the entrance
gate, I saw a tall figure slowly rise from the bench and come towards
us.
It was my old friend Gospoja P---, looking more pale and more
mysterious than ever. She exhibited no surprise at seeing me, but
simply greeting me after the Serbian fashion, with a triple kiss on
both cheeks, she took hold of my hand and led me straight to the nest
of ivy. Half reclining on a small carpet spread on the tall grass,
with her back leaning against the wall, I recognized our Frosya.
She was dressed in the national costume of the Wallachian women, a
sort of gauze turban intermingled with various gilt medals and bands
on her head, white shirt with opened sleeves, and petticoats of
variegated colours. Her face looked deadly pale, her eyes were closed,
and her countenance presented that stony, sphinx-like look which
characterizes in such a peculiar way the entranced clairvoyant
somnambule. If it were not for the heaving motion of her chest and
bosom, ornamented by rows of medals and bead necklaces which feebly
tinkled at every breath, one might have thought her dead, so, lifeless
and corpse-like was her face. The Frenchman informed me that he had
sent her to sleep just as we were approaching the house, and that she
now was as he had left her the previous night; he then began busying
himself with the sujet, as he called Frosya. Paying no further
attention to us, he shook her by the hand, and then making a few rapid
passes stretched out her arm and stiffened it. The arm as rigid as
iron, remained in that position. He then closed all her fingers but
one -- the middle finger -- which he caused to point at the evening
star, which twinkled in the deep blue sky. Then he turned round and
went over from right to left, throwing on some of his fluids here,
again discharging them at another place; busying himself with his
invisible but potent fluids, like a painter with his brush when giving
the last touches to a picture.
The old lady, who had silently watched him, with her chin in her hand
the while, put her thin, skeleton-looking hands on his arm and
arrested it, as he was preparing himself to begin the regular mesmeric
passes.
"Wait," she whispered, "till the star is set and the ninth hour
completed. The Vourdalaki are hovering round; they may spoil the
influence."
"What does she say?" enquired the mesmerizer, annoyed at her
interference.
I explained to him that the old lady feared the pernicious influences
of the Vourdalaki.
"Vourdalaki! What's that -- the Vourdalaki?" exclaimed the Frenchman.
"Let us be satisfied with Christian spirits, if they honour us
to-night with a visit, and lose no time for the Vourdalaki!"
I glanced at the Gospoja. She had become deathly pale and her brow was
sternly knitted over her flashing black eyes.
"Tell him not to jest at this hour of the night!" she cried. "He does
not know the country. Even this holy church may fail to protect us
once the Vourdalaki are roused. What's this?" pushing with her foot a
bundle of herbs the botanizing mesmerizer had laid near on the grass.
She bent over the collection and anxiously examined the contents of
the bundle, after which she flung the whole into the water.
"It must not be left here," she firmly added; "these are the St.
John's plants, and they might attract the wandering ones."
Meanwhile the night had come, and the moon illuminated the landscape
with a pale, ghostly light. The nights in the Banat are nearly as
beautiful as in the East, and the Frenchman had to go on with his
experiments in the open air, as the priest of the church had
prohibited such in the tower, which was used as the parsonage, for
fear of filling the holy precincts with the heretical devils of the
mesmerizer, which, the priest remarked, he would be unable to exorcise
on account of their being foreigners.
The old gentleman had thrown off his travelling blouse, rolled up his
shirt sleeves, and now, striking a theatrical attitude, began a
regular process of mesmerization.
Under his quivering fingers the odile fluid actually seemed to flash
in the twilight. Frosya was placed with her figure facing the moon,
and every motion of the entranced girl was discernible as in daylight.
In a few minutes large drops of perspiration appeared on her brow, and
slowly rolled down her pale face, glittering in the moonbeams. Then
she moved uneasily about and began chanting a low melody, to the words
of which the Gospoja, anxiously bent over the unconscious girl, was
listening with avidity and trying to catch every syllable. With her
thin finger on her lips, her eyes nearly starting from their sockets,
her frame motionless, the old lady seemed herself transfixed into a
statue of attention. The group was a remarkable one, and I regretted
that I was not a painter. What followed was a scene worthy to figure
in Macbeth. At one side she, the slender girl, pale and corpse-like,
writhing under the invisible fluid of him who for the hour was her
omnipotent master; at the other the old matron, who, burning with her
unquenched fire of revenge, stood waiting for the long-expected name
of the Prince's murderer to be at last pronounced. The Frenchman
himself seemed transfigured, his grey hair standing on end; his bulky
clumsy form seemed to have grown in a few minutes. All theatrical
pretence was now gone; there remained but the mesmerizer, aware of his
responsibility, unconscious himself of the possible results, studying
and anxiously expecting. Suddenly Frosya, as if lifted by some
supernatural force, rose from her reclining posture and stood erect
before us, again motionless and still, waiting for the magnetic fluid
to direct her. The Frenchman, silently taking the old lady's hand,
placed it in that of the somnambulist, and ordered her to put herself
en rapport with the Gospoja.
"What seest thou, my daughter?" softly murmured the Serbian Lady. "Can
your spirit seek out the murderers?"
"Search and behold!" sternly commanded the mesmerizer, fixing his gaze
upon the face of the subject.
"I am on my way -- I go," faintly whispered Frosya, her voice seeming
not to come from herself, but from the surrounding atmosphere.
At this moment something so strange took place that I doubt my ability
to describe it. A luminous vapour appeared, closely surrounding the
girl's body. At first about an inch in thickness, it gradually
expanded, and, gathering itself, suddenly seemed to break off from the
body altogether and condense itself into a kind of semisolid vapour,
which very soon assumed the likeness of the somnambule herself.
Flickering about the surface of the earth the form vacillated for two
or three seconds, then glided noiselessly toward the river. It
disappeared like a mist, dissolved in the moonbeams, which seemed to
absorb it altogether.
I had followed the scene with an intense attention. The mysterious
operation, know in the East as the evocation of the scin-lecca, was
taking place before my own eyes. To doubt was impossible, and Du Potet
was right in saying that mesmerism is the conscious Magic of the
ancients, and Spiritualism the unconscious effect of the same Magic
upon certain organisms.
As soon as the vaporous double had smoked itself through the pores of
the girl, Gospoja had, by a rapid motion of the hand which was left
free, drawn from under her pelisse something which looked to us
suspiciously like a small stiletto, and placed it as rapidly in the
girl's bosom. The action was so quick that the mesmerizer, absorbed in
his work, had not remarked it, as he afterwards told me. A few minutes
elapsed in a dead silence. We seemed a group of petrified persons.
Suddenly a thrilling and transpiercing cry burst from the entranced
girl's lips, she bent forward, and snatching the stiletto from her
bosom, plunged it furiously round her, in the air, as if pursuing
imaginary foes. Her mouth foamed, and incoherent, wild exclamations
broke from her lips, among which discordant sounds I discerned,
several times two familiar Christian names of men. The mesmerizer was
so terrified that he lost all control over himself, and instead of
withdrawing the fluid he loaded the girl with it still more.
"Take care," exclaimed I. "Stop! You will kill her, or she will kill
you!"
But the Frenchman had unwittingly raised subtle potencies of Nature
over which he had no control. Furiously turning round, the girl struck
at him a blow which would have killed him had he not avoided it by
jumping aside, receiving but a severe scratch on the right arm. The
poor man was panic-stricken; climbing with an extraordinary agility,
for a man of his bulky form, on the wall over her, he fixed himself on
it astride, and gathering the remnants of his will power, sent in her
direction a series of passes. At the second, the girl dropped the
weapon and remained motionless.
"What are you about?" hoarsely shouted the mesmerizer in French,
seated like some monstrous night-goblin on the wall. `Answer me, I
command you!"
"I did . . . but what she . . . whom you ordered me to obey . . .
commanded me to do," answered the girl in French, to my amazement.
"What did the old witch command you?" irreverently asked he.
"To find them . . . who murdered . . . kill them . . . I did so . . .
and they are no more . . . Avenged! . . . Avenged! They are . . ."
An exclamation of triumph, a loud shout of infernal joy, rang loud in
the air, and awakening the dogs of the neighbouring villages a
responsive howl of barking began from that moment, like a ceaseless
echo of the Gospoja's cry:
"I am avenged! I feel it; I know it. My warning heart tells me that
the fiends are no more." She fell panting on the ground, dragging
down, in her fall, the girl, who allowed herself to be pulled down as
if she were a bag of wool.
"I hope my subject did no further mischief to-night. She is a
dangerous as well as a very wonderful subject," said the Frenchman.
We parted. Three days after that I was at T---, and as I was sitting
in the dining-room of a restaurant, waiting for my lunch, I happened
to pick up a newspaper, and the first lines I read ran thus:
VIENNA, 186--. Two Mysterious Deaths.
Last evening, at 9:45, as P--- was about to retire, two of the
gentlemen-in-waiting suddenly exhibited great terror, as though they
had seen a dreadful apparition. They screamed, staggered, and ran
about the room, holding up their hands as if to ward off the blows of
an unseen weapon. They paid no attention to the eager questions of the
prince and suite, but presently fell writhing upon the floor, and
expired in great agony. Their bodies exhibited no appearance of
apoplexy, nor any external marks of wounds, but, wonderful to relate,
there were numerous dark spots and long marks upon the skin, as though
they were stabs and slashes made without puncturing the cuticle. The
autopsy revealed the fact that beneath each of these mysterious
discolourations there was a deposit of coagulated blood. The greatest
excitement prevails, and the faculty are unable to solve the mystery.



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Best wishes, let me know if and when you would like another -- there
are several more.

Dallas

-----Original Message-----
From: maria k
Sent: Monday, May 13, 2002 4:01 PM
To: dalval14@earthlink.net
Subject: by H P B Stories


Thank you very much Dallas!!!

I would like also the other stories.

By the way I live in Chicago and I was wondering if there is a
Theosophy
Branch or any events or something like that. I looked in the web site
but
it is not updated and/or I couldn't find anything taking place in
Chicago.
Any idea where I should ask or do you happen to know?


Thanks again.

maria