affair of the queen's necklace. His friend the Cardinal de Rohan,
enamoured of the charms of Marie Antoinette, was in sore distress at her
coldness, and the displeasure she had so often manifested against him.
There was at that time a lady named La Motte in the service of the queen,
of whom the cardinal was foolish enough to make a confidant. Madame de la
Motte, in return, endeavoured to make a tool of the cardinal, and
succeeded but too well in her projects. In her capacity of chamber-woman,
or lady of honour to the queen, she was present at an interview between
her majesty and M. Boehmer, a wealthy jeweller of Paris, when the latter
offered for sale a magnificent diamond necklace, valued at 1,600,000
francs, or about 64,000l. sterling. The queen admired it greatly, but
dismissed the jeweller, with the expression of her regret that she was too
poor to purchase it. Madame de la Motte formed a plan to get this costly
ornament into her own possession, and determined to make the Cardinal de
Rohan the instrument by which to effect it. She therefore sought an
interview with him, and pretending to sympathise in his grief for the
queen's displeasure, told him she knew a way by which he might be restored
to favour. She then mentioned the necklace, and the sorrow of the queen
that she could not afford to buy it. The cardinal, who was as wealthy as
he was foolish, immediately offered to purchase the necklace, and make a
present of it to the queen. Madame de la Motte told him by no means to do
so, as he would thereby offend her majesty. His plan would be to induce
the jeweller to give her majesty credit, and accept her promissory note
for the amount at a certain date, to be hereafter agreed upon. The
cardinal readily agreed to the proposal, and instructed the jeweller to
draw up an agreement, and he would procure the queen's signature. He
placed this in the hands of Madame de la Motte, who returned it shortly
afterwards, with the words, "Bon, bon--approuvé--Marie Antoinette,"
written in the margin. She told him at the same time that the queen was
highly pleased with his conduct in the matter, and would appoint a meeting
with him in the gardens of Versailles, when she would present him with a
flower, as a token of her regard. The cardinal shewed the forged document
to the jeweller, obtained the necklace, and delivered it into the hands of
Madame de la Motte. So far all was well. Her next object was to satisfy
the cardinal, who awaited impatiently the promised interview with his
royal mistress. There was at that time in Paris a young woman named
D'Oliva, noted for her resemblance to the queen; and Madame de la Motte,
on the promise of a handsome reward, found no difficulty in persuading her
to personate Marie Antoinette, and meet the Cardinal de Rohan at the
evening twilight in the gardens of Versailles. The meeting took place
accordingly. The cardinal was deceived by the uncertain light, the great
resemblance of the counterfeit, and his own hopes; and having received the
flower from Mademoiselle D'Oliva, went home with a lighter heart than had
beat in his bosom for many a day.[50]
[50] The enemies of the unfortunate Queen of France, when the
progress of the Revolution embittered their animosity against
her, maintained that she was really a party in this
transaction; that she, and not Mademoiselle D'Oliva, met the
cardinal and rewarded him with the flower; and that the story
above related was merely concocted between her La Motte, and
others to cheat the jeweller of his 1,600,000 francs.
In the course of time the forgery of the queen's signature was discovered.
Boehmer the jeweller immediately named the Cardinal de Rohan and Madame de
la Motte as the persons with whom he had negotiated, and they were both
arrested and thrown into the Bastille. La Motte was subjected to a
rigorous examination, and the disclosures she made implicating Cagliostro,
he was seized, along with his wife, and also sent to the Bastille. A story
involving so much scandal necessarily excited great curiosity. Nothing was
to be heard of in Paris but the queen's necklace, with surmises of the
guilt or innocence of the several parties implicated. The husband of
Madame de la Motte escaped to England, and in the opinion of many took the
necklace with him, and there disposed of it to different jewellers in
small quantities at a time. But Madame de la Motte insisted that she had
entrusted it to Cagliostro, who had seized and taken it to pieces, to
"swell the treasures of his immense unequalled fortune." She spoke of him
as "an empiric, a mean alchymist, a dreamer on the philosopher's stone, a
false prophet, a profaner of the true worship, the self-dubbed Count
Cagliostro!" She further said that he originally conceived the project of
ruining the Cardinal de Rohan; that he persuaded her, by the exercise of
some magic influence over her mind, to aid and abet the scheme; and that
he was a robber, a swindler, and a sorcerer!
After all the accused parties had remained for upwards of six months in
the Bastille, the trial commenced. The depositions of the witnesses having
been heard, Cagliostro, as the principal culprit, was first called upon
for his defence. He was listened to with the most breathless attention. He
put himself into a theatrical attitude, and thus began:--"I am
oppressed!--I am accused!--I am calumniated! Have I deserved this fate? I
descend into my conscience, and I there find the peace that men refuse me!
I have travelled a great deal--I am known over all Europe, and a great
part of Asia and Africa. I have every where shewn myself the friend of my
fellow-creatures. My knowledge, my time, my fortune have ever been
employed in the relief of distress. I have studied and practised medicine;
but I have never degraded that most noble and most consoling of arts by
mercenary speculations of any kind. Though always giving, and never
receiving, I have preserved my independence. I have even carried my
delicacy so far as to refuse the favours of kings. I have given
gratuitously my remedies and my advice to the rich; the poor have received
from me both remedies and money. I have never contracted any debts, and my
manners are pure and uncorrupted." After much more self-laudation of the
same kind, he went on to complain of the great hardships he had endured in
being separated for so many months from his innocent and loving wife, who,
as he was given to understand, had been detained in the Bastille, and
perhaps chained in an unwholesome dungeon. He denied unequivocally that he
had the necklace, or that he had ever seen it; and to silence the rumours
and accusations against him, which his own secrecy with regard to the
events of his life had perhaps originated, he expressed himself ready to
satisfy the curiosity of the public, and to give a plain and full account
of his career. He then told a romantic and incredible tale, which imposed
upon no one. He said he neither knew the place of his birth nor the name
of his parents, but that he spent his infancy in Medina, in Arabia, and
was brought up under the name of Acharat. He lived in the palace of the
Great Muphti in that city, and always had three servants to wait upon him,
besides his preceptor, named Althotas. This Althotas was very fond of him,
and told him that his father and mother, who were Christians and nobles,
died when he was three months old, and left him in the care of the Muphti.
He could never, he said, ascertain their names, for whenever he asked
Althotas the question, he was told that it would be dangerous for him to
know. Some incautious expressions dropped by his preceptor gave him reason
to think they were from Malta. At the age of twelve he began his travels,
and learned the various languages of the East. He remained three years in
Mecca, where the cherif, or governor, shewed him so much kindness, and
spoke to him so tenderly and affectionately, that he sometimes thought
that personage was his father. He quitted this good man with tears in his
eyes, and never saw him afterwards; but he was convinced that he was, even
at that moment, indebted to his care for all the advantages he enjoyed.
Whenever he arrived in any city, either of Europe or Asia, he found an
account opened for him at the principal bankers' or merchants'. He could
draw upon them to the amount of thousands and hundreds of thousands; and
no questions were ever asked beyond his name. He had only to mention the
word 'Acharat,' and all his wants were supplied. He firmly believed that
the Cherif of Mecca was the friend to whom all was owing. This was the
secret of his wealth, and he had no occasion to resort to swindling for a
livelihood. It was not worth his while to steal a diamond necklace when he
had wealth enough to purchase as many as he pleased, and more magnificent
ones than had ever been worn by a queen of France. As to the other charges
brought against him by Madame de la Motte, he had but a short answer to
give. She had called him an empiric. He was not unfamiliar with the word.
If it meant a man who, without being a physician, had some knowledge of
medicine, and took no fees--who cured both rich and poor, and took no
money from either, he confessed that he was such a man, that he was an
empiric. She had also called him a mean alchymist. Whether he were an
alchymist or not, the epithet _mean_ could only be applied to those who
begged and cringed, and he had never done either. As regarded his being a
dreamer about the philosopher's stone, whatever his opinions upon that
subject might be, he had been silent, and had never troubled the public
with his dreams. Then, as to his being a false prophet, he had not always
been so; for he had prophesied to the Cardinal de Rohan, that Madame de la
Motte would prove a dangerous woman, and the result had verified the
prediction. He denied that he was a profaner of the true worship, or that
he had ever striven to bring religion into contempt; on the contrary, he
respected every man's religion, and never meddled with it. He also denied
that he was a Rosicrucian, or that he had ever pretended to be three
hundred years of age, or to have had one man in his service for a hundred
and fifty years. In conclusion, he said every statement that Madame de la
Motte had made regarding him was false, and that she was _mentiris
impudentissime_, which two words he begged her counsel to translate for
her, as it was not polite to tell her so in French.
Such was the substance of his extraordinary answer to the charges against
him; an answer which convinced those who were before doubtful that he was
one of the most impudent impostors that had ever run the career of
deception. Counsel were then heard on behalf of the Cardinal de Rohan and
Madame de la Motte. It appearing clearly that the cardinal was himself the
dupe of a vile conspiracy, and there being no evidence against Cagliostro,
they were both acquitted. Madame de la Motte was found guilty, and
sentenced to be publicly whipped, and branded with a hot iron on the back.
Cagliostro and his wife were then discharged from custody. On applying to
the officers of the Bastille for the papers and effects which had been
seized at his lodgings, he found that many of them had been abstracted. He
thereupon brought an action against them for the recovery of his Mss. and
a small portion of the powder of transmutation. Before the affair could be
decided, he received orders to quit Paris within four-and-twenty hours.
Fearing that if he were once more enclosed in the dungeons of the Bastille
he should never see daylight again, he took his departure immediately and
proceeded to England. On his arrival in London he made the acquaintance of
the notorious Lord George Gordon, who espoused his cause warmly, and
inserted a letter in the public papers, animadverting upon the conduct of
the Queen of France in the affair of the necklace, and asserting that she
was really the guilty party. For this letter Lord George was exposed to a
prosecution at the instance of the French ambassador, found guilty of
libel, and sentenced to fine and a long imprisonment.
Cagliostro and the countess afterwards travelled in Italy, where they were
arrested by the Papal government in 1789, and condemned to death. The
charges against him were, that he was a freemason, a heretic, and a
sorcerer. This unjustifiable sentence was afterwards commuted into one of
perpetual imprisonment in the Castle of St. Angelo. His wife was allowed
to escape severer punishment by immuring herself in a nunnery. Cagliostro
did not long survive. The loss of liberty preyed upon his
mind--accumulated misfortunes had injured his health and broken his
spirit, and he died early in 1790. His fate may have been no better than
he deserved, but it is impossible not to feel that his sentence for the
crimes assigned was utterly disgraceful to the government that pronounced
it.
PRESENT STATE OF ALCHYMY.
We have now finished the list of the persons who have most distinguished
themselves in this unprofitable pursuit. Among them are men of all ranks,
characters, and conditions: the truth-seeking but erring philosopher; the
ambitious prince and the needy noble, who have believed in it; as well as
the designing charlatan, who has not believed in it, but has merely made
the pretension to it the means of cheating his fellows, and living upon
their credulity. One or more of all these classes will be found in the
foregoing pages. It will be seen, from the record of their lives, that the
delusion was not altogether without its uses. Men, in striving to gain too
much, do not always overreach themselves; if they cannot arrive at the
inaccessible mountain-top, they may perhaps get half way towards it, and
pick up some scraps of wisdom and knowledge on the road. The useful
science of chemistry is not a little indebted to its spurious brother of
alchymy. Many valuable discoveries have been made in that search for the
impossible, which might otherwise have been hidden for centuries yet to
come. Roger Bacon, in searching for the philosopher's stone, discovered
gunpowder, a still more extraordinary substance. Van Helmont, in the same
pursuit, discovered the properties of gas; Geber made discoveries in
chemistry which were equally important; and Paracelsus, amidst his
perpetual visions of the transmutation of metals, found that mercury was a
remedy for one of the most odious and excruciating of all the diseases
that afflict humanity.
In our day little mention is made in Europe of any new devotees of the
science, though it is affirmed that one or two of our most illustrious men
of science do not admit the pursuit to be so absurd and vain as it has
been commonly considered in recent times. The belief in witchcraft, which
is scarcely more absurd, still lingers in the popular mind; but few are so
credulous as to believe that any elixir could make man live for centuries,
or turn all our iron and pewter into gold. Alchymy, in Europe, may be said
to be almost wholly exploded; but in the East it still flourishes in as
great repute as ever. Recent travellers make constant mention of it,
especially in China, Hindostan, Persia, Tartary, Egypt, and Arabia.
MODERN PROPHECIES.
[Illustration: A]
An epidemic terror of the end of the world has several times spread over
the nations. The most remarkable was that which seized Christendom about
the middle of the tenth century. Numbers of fanatics appeared in France,
Germany, and Italy at that time, preaching that the thousand years
prophesied in the Apocalypse as the term of the world's duration were
about to expire, and that the Son of Man would appear in the clouds to
judge the godly and the ungodly. The delusion appears to have been
discouraged by the Church, but it nevertheless spread rapidly among the
people.[51]
[51] See Gibbon and Voltaire for further notice of this subject.
The scene of the last judgment was expected to be at Jerusalem. In the
year 999, the number of pilgrims proceeding eastward, to await the coming
of the Lord in that city, was so great that they were compared to a
desolating army. Most of them sold their goods and possessions before they
quitted Europe, and lived upon the proceeds in the Holy Land. Buildings of
every sort were suffered to fall into ruins. It was thought useless to
repair them, when the end of the world was so near. Many noble edifices
were deliberately pulled down. Even churches, usually so well maintained,
shared the general neglect. Knights, citizens, and serfs, travelled
eastwards in company, taking with them their wives and children, singing
psalms as they went, and looking with fearful eyes upon the sky, which
they expected each minute to open, to let the Son of God descend in his
glory.
During the thousandth year the number of pilgrims increased. Most of them
were smitten with terror as with a plague. Every phenomenon of nature
filled them with alarm. A thunder-storm sent them all upon their knees in
mid-march. It was the opinion that thunder was the voice of God,
announcing the day of judgment. Numbers expected the earth to open, and
give up its dead at the sound. Every meteor in the sky seen at Jerusalem
brought the whole Christian population into the streets to weep and pray.
The pilgrims on the road were in the same alarm:
"Lorsque, pendant la nuit, un globe de lumière
S'échappa quelquefois de la voûte de cieux,
Et traça dans sa chûte un long sillon de feux,
La troupe suspendit sa marche solitaire."[52]
[52] _Charlemagne: Poëme épique par Lucien Buonaparte._
Fanatic preachers kept up the flame of terror. Every shooting star
furnished occasion for a sermon, in which the sublimity of the approaching
judgment was the principal topic.
The appearance of comets has been often thought to foretell the speedy
dissolution of this world. Part of this belief still exists; but the comet
is no longer looked upon as the sign, but the agent of destruction. So
lately as in the year 1832 the greatest alarm spread over the continent of
Europe, especially in Germany, lest the comet, whose appearance was then
foretold by astronomers, should destroy the earth. The danger of our globe
was gravely discussed. Many persons refrained from undertaking or
concluding any business during that year, in consequence solely of their
apprehension that this terrible comet would dash us and our world to
atoms.
During seasons of great pestilence, men have often believed the prophecies
of crazed fanatics, that the end of the world was come. Credulity is
always greatest in times of calamity. During the great plague, which
ravaged all Europe between the years 1345 and 1350, it was generally
considered that the end of the world was at hand. Pretended prophets were
to be found in all the principal cities of Germany, France, and Italy,
predicting that within ten years the trump of the archangel would sound,
and the Saviour appear in the clouds to call the earth to judgment.
No little consternation was created in London in 1736 by the prophecy of
the famous Whiston, that the world would be destroyed in that year, on the
13th of October. Crowds of people went out on the appointed day to
Islington, Hampstead, and the fields intervening, to see the destruction
of London, which was to be the "beginning of the end." A satirical account
of this folly is given in Swift's _Miscellanies_, vol. iii., entitled _A
true and faithful Narrative of what passed in London on a Rumour of the
Day of Judgment_. An authentic narrative of this delusion would be
interesting; but this solemn witticism of Pope and Gay is not to be
depended upon.
In the year 1761 the citizens of London were alarmed by two shocks of an
earthquake, and the prophecy of a third, which was to destroy them
altogether. The first shock was felt on the 8th of February, and threw
down several chimneys in the neighbourhood of Limehouse and Poplar; the
second happened on the 8th of March, and was chiefly felt in the north of
London, and towards Hampstead and Highgate. It soon became the subject of
general remark, that there was exactly an interval of a month between the
shocks; and a crack-brained fellow, named Bell, a soldier in the Life
Guards, was so impressed with the idea that there would be a third in
another month, that he lost his senses altogether, and ran about the
streets predicting the destruction of London on the 5th of April. Most
people thought that the _first_ would have been a more appropriate day;
but there were not wanting thousands who confidently believed the
prediction, and took measures to transport themselves and families from
the scene of the impending calamity. As the awful day approached, the
excitement became intense, and great numbers of credulous people resorted
to all the villages within a circuit of twenty miles, awaiting the doom of
London. Islington, Highgate, Hampstead, Harrow, and Blackheath, were
crowded with panic-stricken fugitives, who paid exorbitant prices for
accommodation to the housekeepers of these secure retreats. Such as could
not afford to pay for lodgings at any of those places, remained in London
until two or three days before the time, and then encamped in the
surrounding fields, awaiting the tremendous shock which was to lay their
high city all level with the dust. As happened during a similar panic in
the time of Henry VIII., the fear became contagious, and hundreds who had
laughed at the prediction a week before, packed up their goods, when they
saw others doing so, and hastened away. The river was thought to be a
place of great security, and all the merchant-vessels in the port were
filled with people, who passed the night between the 4th and 5th on board,
expecting every instant to see St. Paul's totter, and the towers of
Westminster Abbey rock in the wind and fall amid a cloud of dust. The
greater part of the fugitives returned on the following day, convinced
that the prophet was a false one; but many judged it more prudent to allow
a week to elapse before they trusted their dear limbs in London. Bell lost
all credit in a short time, and was looked upon even by the most credulous
as a mere madman. He tried some other prophecies, but nobody was deceived
by them; and, in a few months afterwards, he was confined in a lunatic
asylum.
A panic terror of the end of the world seized the good people of Leeds and
its neighbourhood in the year 1806. It arose from the following
circumstances. A hen, in a village close by, laid eggs, on which were
inscribed the words, "_Christ is coming_." Great numbers visited the spot,
and examined these wondrous eggs, convinced that the day of judgment was
near at hand. Like sailors in a storm, expecting every instant to go to
the bottom, the believers suddenly became religious, prayed violently, and
flattered themselves that they repented them of their evil courses. But a
plain tale soon put them down, and quenched their religion entirely. Some
gentlemen, hearing of the matter, went one fine morning, and caught the
poor hen in the act of laying one of her miraculous eggs. They soon
ascertained beyond doubt that the egg had been inscribed with some
corrosive ink, and cruelly forced up again into the bird's body. At this
explanation, those who had prayed, now laughed, and the world wagged as
merrily as of yore.
At the time of the plague in Milan, in 1630, of which so affecting a
description has been left us by Ripamonte, in his interesting work, _De
Peste Mediolani_, the people, in their distress, listened with avidity to
the predictions of astrologers and other impostors. It is singular enough
that the plague was foretold a year before it broke out. A large comet
appearing in 1628, the opinions of astrologers were divided with regard to
it. Some insisted that it was a forerunner of a bloody war; others
maintained that it predicted a great famine; but the greater number,
founding their judgment upon its pale colour, thought it portended a
pestilence. The fulfilment of their prediction brought them into great
repute while the plague was raging.