Madame Olcott

Madame Olcott is an occult medium and forceful ritual leader whose appearances connect commercial occult spectacle to the lethal séance at the Conservatoire. First glimpsed through an advertisement, she later commands the Fox triplets to produce historical figures before the assembled conspirators; when the manifestations turn destructive, her authority proves unable to master them.

Public Image and Occult Setting

At the Librairie Sloane, Madame Olcott exists first as a face on a garish poster for Le Petit Cirque de l'Incroyable. The advertisement presents her alongside an assortment of sensational attractions, from “Les Derviches Hurleurs” and “Les Freaks Mignons” to the Fox triplets, billed as illuminators of ectoplasm. Among pendulums, incense, amulets, tarot decks, and piles of old books, her image belongs to a marketplace where occult learning and theatrical entertainment mingle.

The narrator recognizes the poster’s olive-skinned, mannish face and hair gathered at the nape when Olcott appears in person at the Conservatoire. She is livid, wears an olive garment, and speaks in a hoarse voice described as a man’s. The resemblance also recalls another sighting: she is the Druidess who had run toward the group in a clearing in Piedmont. The recognition links the bookshop’s advertised spectacle to the secret gathering and its participants.

Command at the Conservatoire

When Salon proposes bringing the prisoner face to face with people who knew him, Olcott takes over the proceedings. She orders Alex and Denys to bring the prisoner forward, and the assembly’s murmuring indicates approval. The two giants obey, while Lorenza is entrusted to the Freaks Mignons. Aglie grips the arms of his throne: he has been outvoted, and Olcott’s intervention has shifted control of the gathering away from him.

Olcott then directs the Fox triplets, Theo, Leo, and Geo, arranging three armchairs for them between the statue of Pascal and the Obeissante. As the séance intensifies, a Derviche chants from the fuselage of Breguet’s plane while drums grow louder. Olcott crouches behind the brothers and whispers encouragement; they slump in their chairs, clutch the arms, close their eyes, sweat, and twitch. She presents their performance to the dignitaries as a means of bringing three people who knew into the assembly, naming Edward Kelley, Heinrich Khunrath, and the Comte de Saint-Germain.

Authority and Collapse

Olcott’s announcement provokes Aglie’s most uncontrolled response. He springs from his seat, narrowly avoids the Pendulum, calls her a liar, and insists that the summoning is an imposture. But no one intervenes on his behalf; Pierre takes the throne and tells Olcott to proceed. For that moment, she has the assembly’s backing against Aglie’s denial.

That authority cannot keep the rite’s manifestations in order. When Aglie pulls a medium from his chair, Geo falls with the form he had produced, which dissolves on the floor; Geo continues vomiting sticky matter before stiffening and dying. Olcott seizes Aglie and cries for him to stop, then urges the surviving brothers to hold fast and commands Khunrath to prove that he is real.

As Leo tries to reabsorb the owl, Olcott presses her fingers to his temples to bend him to her will. The owl turns on its creator, and Leo collapses; the owl vanishes into muck, taking the medium down with it. Olcott turns to Theo and calls for Kelley to speak, but Kelley cannot detach himself from the medium. The manifestation becomes a chewing-gum-like mass that entangles and suffocates Theo, finally covering him like a shroud before melting away and leaving him lifeless. Olcott’s increasingly urgent commands—first to the brothers, then to the figures she claims to summon—cannot reverse the deaths or restore control of the ceremony.

Narrative Significance

Olcott’s scenes expose the danger concealed by the poster’s promise of spectacle. In the shop, her advertised attractions make mediumship look like one commodity among many; at the Conservatoire, the performance becomes an instrument in a struggle for authority and a source of actual death. The episode does not resolve the dispute between imposture and supernatural manifestation: Aglie denounces a lie, while Olcott insists that the summoned figures must speak. Instead, the collapsing bodies and hostile forms make the séance’s consequences undeniable within the scene, even as its explanation remains contested.