Jules Bois, and Madame Emma Calve. Pere Hyacinthe, a Carmelite monk who had
renounced his vows, had married an American lady and assumed the name of Charles
Loyson. The Swami, however, always addressed him by his old monastic name and
described him as endowed with 'a very sweet nature' and the temperament of a lover of
God. Maxim, the inventor of the gun associated with his name, was a great connoisseur
and lover of India and China. Sarah Bernhardt also bore a great love for India, which
she often described as 'very ancient, very civilized.' To visit India was the dream of her
life.
Madame Calve the Swami had met in America, and now he came to know her more
intimately. She became one of his devoted followers. 'She was born poor,' he once
wrote of her, 'but by her innate talents, prodigious labour and diligence, and after
wrestling against much hardship, she is now enormously rich and commands respect
from kings and emperors....The rare combination of beauty, youth, talents, and "divine"
voice has assigned Calve the highest place among the singers of the West. There is,
indeed, no better teacher than misery and poverty. That constant fight against the dire
poverty, misery, and hardship of the days of her girlhood, which has led to her present
triumph over them, has brought into her life a unique sympathy and a depth of thought
with a wide outlook.'
After the Swami's passing away, Madame Calve visited the Belur Math, the
headquarters of the Ramakrishna Mission. In old age she embraced the Catholic faith
and had to give up, officially, her allegiance to Swami Vivekananda. But one wonders
whether she was able to efface him from her heart.
Jules Bois, with whom the Swami stayed for a few days in Paris, was a distinguished
writer. 'We have,' the Swami wrote to a disciple, 'many great ideas in common and feel
happy together.'
Most of the Swami's time in Paris was devoted to the study of French culture and
especially the language. He wrote a few letters in French. About the culture, his
appreciation was tempered with criticism. He spoke of Paris as the 'home of liberty';
there the ethics and society of the West had been formed, and its university had been
the model of all others. But in a letter to Swami Turiyananda, dated September 1, 1900,
he also wrote: 'The people of France are mere intellectualists. They run after worldly
things and firmly believe God and souls to be mere superstitions; they are extremely
loath to talk on such subjects. This is truly a materialistic country.'
After the Congress of the History of Religions was concluded, the Swami spent a few
days at Lannion in Brittany, as the guest of Mrs. Ole Bull. Sister Nivedita, who had
just returned from America, was also in the party. There, in his conversations, the
Swami dwelt mostly on Buddha and his teachings. Contrasting Buddhism with
Hinduism, he one day said that the former exhorted men to 'realize all this as illusion,'
while Hinduism asked them to 'realize that within the illusion is the Real.' Of how this
was to be done, Hinduism never presumed to enunciate any rigid law. The Buddhist
command could only be carried out through monasticism; the Hindu might be fulfilled
through any state of life. All alike were roads to the One Real. One of the highest and