This is told by a man who for obvious reasons will not allow his name
to be used:
"I knew Mata-Hari in Paris. I called on her at her home at
Nieully-sur-Seine. The sinister character in Dumas' great romance was
not more cunning or adventurous nor played for higher stakes than did
Mlle. Mata-Hari. In many respects their histories should be printed in
parallel columns. But I believe that for adventure, for cunning, for
her great influence over the destiny of those with whom she came in
contact, Mlle. Mata-Hari was more dreadful than 'Miladi.'
"Her father was a subject of the Netherlands and her mother was a
Javanese. He died when she was an infant, and in order to protect
her from the dangers which beset a young girl of mixed blood in the
East her mother fled from Java with her when she was three years old
and entered Burma. There, to further protect her, she pledged her to
celibacy and placed her in a Buddhist temple to learn dancing. Then
it appeared that her destiny would be not unlike that of thousands of
other young girls in that country and similar in many respects to that
of the old vestals of ancient Greece. In Burma these dancers are called
bayadère.
"She told me that when she was twelve years old she was disgusted with
life and was determined to change it or end it. After a dance at a
great Buddhist festival in Burma, when she was about fourteen years
old, she saw a British officer and fell in love with him. It was her
first love affair. She managed to escape from the temple and joined
him. This man was a baronet and loved her. Finally they married. Two
children, a boy and a girl, were born of their union.
"I do not believe that she ever loved any man. It is certain that
she did not love her husband. At any event, the monotonous life of
a British official's wife was more than she could stand. The climax
came when a maid whom she had beaten and discharged caused one of her
gardeners to poison her infant son.
"The tragic sequence and scandal which followed the death of her
son still is remembered by old timers in India. She started an
investigation of the killing independent of the British authorities,
and finally, in her own mind, fixed the guilt on one of her gardeners.
She took a revolver, and, walking into the garden where the man was
working, shot him dead.
"She was arrested, but owing to the high position occupied by her
husband everything possible was done to suppress the scandal. Finally
she was told that she would have to leave British India. It was just
what she wanted to do. She left her home in the night, stealing her
daughter from her husband. She made her way to Marseilles and thence
to Holland, where she placed her daughter in a convent. Then she went
straight to Paris, where she learned that she was penniless, the
small fortune which her father had left her having, under the Dutch
law, passed to her child. Then she set about to captivate Paris. Not
satisfied with her conquest, she went to Berlin, to Petrograd, to
Vienna--she travelled over all Europe--and became one of the most
talked of women on the Continent.
"She met many men. One of them was a wealthy German, who was a high
official of the Berlin government. He bought a home for her at
Nieully-sur-Seine and furnished it in a style that was representative
of what was most truly Oriental splendor. There the two of them lived.
It was there that I first saw her.
"Soon she tired of this German. He was extremely jealous of her. Always
her art--her dancing--called to her. He would not let her dance. There
were many 'scenes' at home. Her life was not happy, despite the wealth
at her disposal.
"Then she met a one-time Minister of Finance, of France, and, through
him, his brother-in-law. He fell in love with her and she with him.
"This man was at that time the managing director of a great Paris bank.
He deserted his wife and bought a magnificent château in Touraine. For
two years they lived there. Then, one day, the police entered the bank
and arrested the managing director. He was charged with embezzling the
funds of the institution. He was tried and convicted and sentenced
to two years at hard labor. The woman then went back to the German
official at Neuilly-sur-Seine. They were living there when I left
France four years ago." (Told in the _New York Herald_.)