Lucifer by Maurice Magre is a novel written in the early 20th century. It probes the tangle of desire, mysticism, and moral doubt as an unnamed Parisian narrator is split between two sisters—Eveline, an austere mystic, and Laurence, a defiant sensualist—within occult circles and under the shadow of a diabolical pact from his youth. Expect a psychological, occult-tinged tale where love, jealousy, and esoteric ambition blur the lines between good and evil.
The opening of this novel follows the narrator on a sultry Paris night as he lingers outside the Saint-Aygulf home, confessing his divided love for Eveline and Laurence. When Laurence slips out, he tails her by taxi to Montmartre, watches her coolly search seedy cafés near the place Blanche, then lose her in the rue Ballu, suspecting a secret rendezvous. Soon after, he meets Michel Kotzebue, a spiritual leader of their Essene group, whose talk of desire and “Lucifer” revives the memory of a youthful pact with the Devil engineered by their former companion Lévy. The narrator recounts that rite and, shaken, spends the next day weighing whether the pact has warped his life—brooding over his luck, health, loves, and wartime role—while combing books on demonic contracts. A chance meeting with his former lover Irma Pascaud deepens the sense of fatal recurrence. The section closes with a shift to the South, where the Saint-Aygulf family, the narrator, Kotzebue, and Essene followers gather by the sea, poised for new “experiments.” (This is an automatically generated summary.)
