obliged to content himself with such fleet coursers as the _maîtres de
poste_ along the line of road to the capital could provide him with.
So, well wrapped up in furs, and snugly ensconced in the corner of a
comfortable close travelling carriage, he is soon rolling rapidly over
the two hundred and eighty miles of frost-bound road that intervene
between the episcopal palace of Saverne and the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles;
and, no sooner has he learned the solution of the enigma, and procured
from the countess the address of the crown jewellers—at the sign of the
“Grand Balcony,” Rue Vendôme—than, puffed up with the importance of the
commission intrusted to him, he hies to Böhmer and Bassenge to open
negotiations with them for the purchase of the costly gem. The cardinal
had not far to go, for the Rue Vendôme (now the Rue Béranger) was only
some ten minutes’ walk from his hôtel, being situated but a single
street from the junction of the Rue Vieille-du-Temple with the Rue St.
Louis (now the Rue Turenne). At the present day many of the houses have
been rebuilt, and of those which were in existence at the time of our
narrative[115] only a couple in any way answer to the sign “_Au Grand
Balcon_,” adopted by the crown jewellers. These are Nos. 11 and 22;
the former—for the time being the Mairie of the 3rd Arrondissement—is
a handsome building with an ornamental ironwork balcony in front, and
having before it an open court, which one has no difficulty in picturing
filled with the grand equipages and liveried lacqueys of the customers of
our friends Böhmer and Bassenge.
In the excitement of conversation the grand almoner indiscreetly blurted
out what he believed to be the fact, although he had been strictly
enjoined to keep it secret, namely, that the queen was the actual
purchaser of the jewel, but her name was on no account to transpire
in the business. The price eventually agreed upon for the Necklace was
1,600,000 livres (£64,000), to be paid in four instalments of equal
amount at intervals of six months: the first instalment of 400,000 livres
to fall due in August. But the crown jewellers, who had been advised to
be cautious in dealing with the cardinal, required that the contract
should be authorized by the royal signature. To account for this demand,
they explained to the cardinal that they had heavy debts and liabilities
which prevented them from parting with an asset of so much value without
replacing it with adequate vouchers to satisfy their creditors—notably M.
Baudard de Saint-James, treasurer-general of the navy, to whom they were
indebted in no less a sum than 800,000 livres,[116] and who had waited so
long and so patiently.
Strange to say, the person who had cautioned the jewellers to act so
guardedly was the great _intrigante_ herself. Accompanied by her husband
she had called upon Böhmer and Bassenge at seven o’clock on a raw January
morning, a couple of hours or so before the cardinal, to announce his
coming, when, after having reminded them that she had been no party to
the transaction, she proceeded to recommend them not to come to terms
without binding down the cardinal in such a manner as to make themselves
secure.[117] That she took this step, so likely to frustrate her own
object, was afterwards proved at the trial. Most persons would have
thought that the probability of such a proceeding being fatal to her
plans would have prevented her, if she meditated a fraud, acting in the
way she did; but does not the reader perceive that this most subtle of
impostors had thereby secured, by anticipation, a strong plea in her
favour to disprove her guilt?
The obtaining the queen’s signature to the contract necessarily gave
rise to some delay. The cardinal sent the deed as he believed to
Marie-Antoinette through Madame de la Motte, with the intimation that
it was only a form, and would be merely shown to the jewellers, and
not delivered up to them. The countess, however, returns with the deed
unsigned. Royalty is in dudgeon at its sacred name having been made use
of. The grand almoner was greatly distressed at this new obstacle, which
he thought her majesty was inclined to aggravate; but what was to be done?
Madame de la Motte returns a second time from Versailles, and pretends to
have had a second audience with Marie-Antoinette. The queen, she says,
was very angry with the cardinal for having introduced her name into the
transaction, but had insinuated:
“If inspiring confidence is all that is requisite, could not the cardinal
have devised some other mode? The cardinal is perhaps not aware of it,
but I may tell you that I have bound myself by a formal engagement with
the king not to sign any deed without his knowledge. So the thing you see
is impossible. Contrive between you what you can do, or else renounce
the purchase altogether.... It seems to me that, as this document is
only a formality, and as these people do not know my handwriting.... But
you will reflect upon it; still, once for all, I cannot sign it. At all
events, tell the cardinal that the first time I shall see him I will
communicate to him the arrangements I intend to make with him.”[118]
The countess then explains that, returning home after this interview, and
not reflecting on the serious consequences of using the queen’s name in
the manner suggested, she resolves to counterfeit the royal signature,
and for that purpose applies to Rétaux de Villette, the forger of the
letters which to the last the countess always maintained to be genuine.
“I explained to M. de Villette,” she says, “the new aspect which
this affair had assumed, the cardinal’s perplexity, the queen’s
dissatisfaction, the interview I had had with her majesty, and the
meaning I attached to her expression that the jewellers were unacquainted
with her handwriting.
“Villette said, if I was certain that the queen had made use of the
express words I had just repeated, it would appear to him, as it had
appeared to me, that she wished me to understand it did not much signify
whose hand inscribed the attestation, since the jewellers did not know
her handwriting. ‘But,’ added he, ‘neither the queen nor yourself
suspect the risk a person runs by counterfeiting writings. That is an
act which the law has included in the list of crimes under the name of
forgery. We can however do this. Taking for granted the statement of the
queen, that these people do not know her handwriting, it may be fairly
supposed that they are equally ignorant of her form of signature. To sign
_Marie-Antoinette_ alone, according to your idea, would be a positive
forgery; but the metamorphosis of an Austrian princess into a French
one—to say, for instance, _Marie-Antoinette de France_—would really be
unmeaning. If our object was to obtain this Necklace by a swindle, when
the imposture came to be exposed such a signature would serve as a proof
of it; but as we have no reasonable doubt but that the jewellers will be
paid, since they will have the cardinal’s guarantee privately supported
by that of the queen, I think we may, without much fear of committing
ourselves, submit to the necessity; I will therefore do what I now
explain to you.
“‘First, I shall not disguise my own writing; and, secondly, I will
give the queen the incorrect title of _Marie-Antoinette de France_. The
contract being exhibited by the cardinal to Böhmer and Bassenge, they
will not examine it too minutely, I’ll be bound; and you must promise
me to burn it in my presence when the jewellers have been paid and the
matter is at end.’
“I gave him my word of honour that I would do this, and he signed the
deed according to our covenant. I left him directly afterwards and drove
at once to the cardinal. At first I intended to give him the contract
approved and signed, without telling him how I had settled matters; but I
reflected that Villette and I were not the safest judges; that the affair
might be more serious than we imagined, and that if such were the case
the cardinal might be placed in an embarrassing position. So I resolved
to tell him all.”
Thereupon, according to Madame de la Motte’s version, the cardinal was
informed of the forgery, and of the _incorrectness_ of the signature,
after he had seen the contract without detecting either. He acquiesced,
we are told by the countess, in the fraud, merely observing that “since
he had been deceived by it, it would be the same with the jewellers.”[119]
Such is the specious explanation given by Madame de la Motte of the
forgery of the queen’s signature to the contract. But amidst this farrago
of falsehood—for there can be no doubt the queen’s signature was appended
in the absurd form described, owing to the ignorance of this pair of
sharpers[120] the simple truth remains that the deluded cardinal, hoping
thereby to please the queen, had bought the Necklace of the jewellers on
his own guarantee for one million six hundred thousand francs, backed
with this fraudulent signature of Marie-Antoinette’s. The contract had
been drawn up with great care by the cardinal himself, and was written
with his own hand, since the matter was of course of too secret a nature
to be intrusted to a professional engrosser; and, after having been
exhibited to Böhmer and Bassenge for their private satisfaction, it was
left in the cardinal’s keeping. The unfortunate dupe of course believed
he still held possession of the royal guarantee, the grotesque inventions
to the contrary of Madame de la Motte, which we have just laid before
the reader, being of no further moment than to expose her own duplicity.
The confidence and mental satisfaction of the jewellers when they read
the contract, ratified by majesty itself, was equal to that felt by the
cardinal. “They read it,” says the Rohan memorial, “and appeared full
of joy; they then returned it, but the cardinal requested them to take
a copy of it, which they had not thought of doing. This copy they made
themselves without the slightest doubt being raised in their minds by the
strangeness of the signature.”
We may instance as another proof of the countess’s prompt mode of action,
that by the end of January, 1785, the whole affair was settled—in fact
within six weeks after she had promised “to see if she could not contrive
indirectly to render the jewellers some service;” the famous Diamond
Necklace which had been to them a source of grave anxiety for years was
off their hands.
XVII.
1781–1785.
CHARLATAN COUNT CAGLIOSTRO.
When, in the autumn of the year 1781, the De la Mottes were chasing the
Marchioness de Boulainvilliers, who they had heard was at Strasbourg,
the notorious Cagliostro was astonishing the good people of that famous
town as much by his singular conduct as by the extraordinary cures he
was represented to have performed. “Curious to behold so remarkable
a personage, the cardinal,” who was then at his episcopal palace of
Saverne, “went over to Strasbourg, but found it necessary to use interest
to get admitted into the presence of the illustrious charlatan. ‘If
monseigneur the cardinal is sick,’ said he, ‘let him come to me and I
will cure him. If he is well, he has no business with me nor I with him.’
This reply, far from offending the cardinal’s vanity, only increased the
desire he had to become acquainted with this new Esculapius. Having at
length gained admission to his sanctuary, the cardinal fancied he saw
impressed on the countenance of this mysterious and taciturn individual,
a dignity so imposing that he felt himself penetrated with an almost
religious awe, and the very first words he uttered were inspired by
reverence. The interview, which was but brief, excited more strongly
than ever in the mind of the cardinal the desire of a more intimate
acquaintance. This gradually came about, the crafty empiric timing his
conduct and his advances so skilfully, that without seeming to desire
it he gained the grand almoner’s entire confidence, and obtained the
greatest ascendency over him.”[121]
During the next two years or so, Cagliostro seems to have made the
episcopal palace at Saverne his home whenever he felt so inclined. When
the cardinal happened to be there, the count amused him by performing
experiments in the laboratory which had been fitted up in a private part
of the palace for his especial use—making, so the cardinal maintained,
not only gold, but diamonds, under his very eyes.[122] But when the
cardinal was away the crucibles were no longer in request, and the count
would indulge in carousals, prolonged far into the night, with the Baron
de Planta, the cardinal’s equerry and confidant, and a black sheep of the
choicest breed, carousals at which his eminence’s matchless Tokay flowed
like water.[123]
In the memorial published in his behalf at the time of the Necklace
trial, Cagliostro gives a most romantic account of himself. He is
ignorant, he says, of the place of his birth, but was brought up while a
child in the city of Medina, where he went by the name of Acharat, and
lived attended by servants in a style of great splendour in apartments
in the palace of the Mufti Salahayn, the chief of the Mussulmans. From
Medina, he pretends, he was taken when quite a youth to Mecca, where
he remained for three years petted by the scherif. He is next taken
to Egypt, visits the chief cities of Africa and Asia, and eventually
sails from Rhodes for Malta, where apartments are provided for him in
the palace of the grand master. Here, he says, he assumed the name of
Cagliostro and the title of count. From Malta he proceeds to Sicily
and Naples, thence to Rome, where he makes the acquaintance of several
cardinals, and is admitted to frequent audiences of the Pope. He
professes to have next visited Spain, Portugal, Holland, Russia, and
Poland, and gives a list of the nobles of these countries with whom
he had become acquainted. At length, in September, 1780, he goes to
Strasbourg, where his fame as a physician had already preceded him.
Here, he asserts, with perfect truth, he cured the poor generally,
and particularly sick soldiers and prisoners, without fee or reward.
Strasbourg was soon crowded with strangers, who came either to see him or
to consult him. It is now that he makes the acquaintance of the Cardinal
de Rohan, whom he accompanies to Paris to prescribe for the Prince de
Soubise, suffering at the time from an accident to his leg. After a short
sojourn in the capital he returns to Strasbourg, when being persecuted by
a party in the town, it is quite certain that letters are written to the
authorities in his behalf by the Count de Vergennes, minister for foreign
affairs, the Marquis de Miroménil, keeper of the seals, and the Marquis
de Ségur, minister of war, who desire that every protection shall be
afforded him.
Cagliostro’s story about his residence in Medina and Mecca, and Egypt,
Rhodes and Malta, was a tissue of impudent lies. The truth is, his real
name was Joseph Balsamo, and he was the son of a small tradesman of
Palermo, in which city he was born in 1743. The family were of Jewish
origin, and he derived the name of Cagliostro from a great uncle. In his
early youth he belonged to the religious order of Charitable Brethren,
and as he grew older became remarkable for his intelligence, cleverness,
and cunning. Later on, he appears to have studied medicine with advantage.
Growing tired of the obscurity of his lot, he forged the title-deed to
some considerable estate, and on the fraud being discovered precipitately
embarked for Catalonia where he married a young and pretty girl. With her
he proceeded to Rome, and having conferred on himself the title of Prince
Pellegrini, with that audacity which never deserted him, he returned
to Palermo under this assumed appellation. There a genuine prince
became infatuated with Donna Lorenza and took her husband under his
powerful protection. The false Pellegrini, however, was soon recognised
as the escaped forger and arrested. But on the day appointed for his
examination, his friend the prince forced the doors of the tribunal,
assaulted the counsel for the prosecution, and overwhelmed the president
with reproaches. The consequence was that the terrified court set the
prisoner at liberty, and Cagliostro, leaving his wife in the care of
the prince, again started on his travels,[124] in the course of which
he visited many of the chief cities of the Continent. He was picked
up, it is commonly asserted, while still a young man—being little over
thirty years of age—by the sect of Illuminati, who thought, and correctly
thought, that they had discovered in him a willing and able instrument
for the dissemination of their doctrines. His initiation into the
mysteries of Illuminism took place in a cave some little distance from
Frankfort-on-the-Main, when he learnt for the first time that the object
of the society of which he was now a member, was to overturn the thrones
of Europe, and that the first blow was to be struck in France; that after
the fall of the French monarchy it was proposed to attack Rome; that the
society had extensive resources, and was in the possession of enormous
funds, dispersed among the banks of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Basle, Lyons,
London, Venice, and Genoa, the proceeds of the annual subscriptions of
its members. A considerable sum of money, which he afterwards pretended
he had acquired by the practice of alchemy, was at once placed at his
disposal, to enable him to propagate the doctrines of the sect in France.
This was the origin of his first visit to Strasbourg in the autumn of the
year 1780, when he adopted for his device the letters L. P. D. signifying
_Lilia pedibus destrue_—Trample the lilies under foot.[125]
Cagliostro was one of those individuals who, for reasons of their own,
envelop themselves in a maze of mystery, and are rarely seen through
during their lives, because they address themselves to men’s imaginations
alone. By exciting wonder they disarm reason. He laid claim to many gifts
and acquirements; had studied medicine, was an adept at alchemy, and knew
something of natural magic. The acts which he performed were so contrived
by his arts and wiles, that all his visitors (and they comprised
persons of the highest rank and the utmost intellectual attainments)
considered them to be marvellous, whilst the gaping multitude magnified
every feat until it went far beyond this ideal. He set no price on his
public exhibitions, and darted looks of wounded honour at those who,
he pretended, degraded him by offering him gold; whilst his hand was
constantly open to the indigent, whom he waited on in their humble homes
with advice, medicine, and money. His widespread acts of benevolence,
and the luxurious style in which he lived, proved him to be rich, and
yet none were able to discover the sources of his wealth. The houses of
the most opulent citizens were thrown open to him, and without seeking
the great, but seeming rather to avoid them, he constantly found himself
in their company. Among this class he had many proselytes, but none who
believed in him so implicitly as the Cardinal Prince de Rohan, who,
spite of the count’s “perfect quack face,” seems to have worshipped him
as a being something more than human. Indeed in one of the _salons_ of
the Palais-Cardinal there was a marble bust of Cagliostro, with a Latin
inscription on the pedestal signifying “God of the Earth.”[126]
A friend of the grand almoner’s, the Baroness d’Oberkirche, who met
Cagliostro at Saverne at this epoch, sketches his portrait for us in
her “Memoirs,” and furnishes us with convincing proofs of the singular
influence which the count had succeeded in acquiring over his credulous
patron. “Cagliostro was anything but handsome,” she observes, “still
I have never seen a more remarkable physiognomy; above all, he had
a penetrating look which seemed almost supernatural. I know not how
to describe the expression of his eyes: it was at once fire and ice;
attracted and repelled you at the same time; made you afraid and inspired
you with an irrepressible curiosity. One might draw two different
portraits of him, both resembling him, and yet totally dissimilar. He
wore on his shirt-front, on his watch-chain, and on his fingers, diamonds
of large size, and apparently of the purest water. If they were not
paste, they were worth a king’s ransom. He pretended that he had made
them himself. All this frippery showed the charlatan miles off.
“When Cagliostro perceived me he saluted me very respectfully. I returned
his salutation without affecting either hauteur or condescension. There
were fifteen of us at dinner; nevertheless, the cardinal occupied himself
almost exclusively with me, using a sort of refined coquetry to bring
me over to his way of thinking with regard to Cagliostro, with whom he
was perfectly infatuated. I was placed on the cardinal’s right hand, and
during dinner he tried by every means to enforce his convictions upon me.
I resisted, politely but firmly; he grew impatient, and on leaving table
volunteered me his confidence. Had I not heard him with my own ears I
could never have believed that a prince of the Roman church, a Rohan, an
intelligent and honourable man in so many respects, could have allowed
himself to be brought to the point of abjuring both his dignity and free
will at the bidding of a _chevalier d’industrie_.
“‘In truth, baroness, you are very hard to convince,’ remarked the
cardinal; ‘what! has not all that he has told you, all that I have just
related, satisfied you? I must then avow everything. Understand, at
least, that I am about to confide to you a secret of importance.’ I was
greatly embarrassed. I did not wish to be the depositary of any of the
cardinal’s secrets, and was about to excuse myself when, divining my
intention, the prince exclaimed: ‘Do not say no! but listen to me. You
see this?’
“The cardinal showed me a large solitaire which he had on his little
finger, engraved with the arms of the house of Rohan; it was a ring worth
20,000 francs at least. ‘It is a fine stone, my lord,’ observed I; ‘I
have been already admiring it.’ ‘Well, it was he who made it; created it
out of nothing. I saw him myself. I was present, with eyes fixed upon the
crucible, and assisted at the operation. Is this science? What do you
think of it, baroness? They tell me that he is only luring me on, that he
cheats me; the jeweller and engraver have valued this brilliant at 25,000
francs. You will at least admit that he is a strange sort of sharper to
make such presents as this.’
“I acknowledge I was stupefied. The Prince de Rohan perceived it, and
continued, certain of his victory: ‘But this is not all: he makes gold;
he has made in my presence, in the crucibles of the palace, five or six
thousand francs’ worth. I shall have more of it—I shall, in fact, have
any quantity—he will make me the richest prince in Europe. These are
not dreams, madam, these are certainties. Think, too, of his prophecies
fulfilled; of the miraculous cures he has performed. I tell you that
he is not only a most extraordinary, but a sublime man, and one whose
goodness has never been equalled; the charities he bestows, the benefits
he confers, pass all imagination.’
“‘Am I to understand your eminence,’ inquired I, ‘that you have given
him nothing for all this—have not made him the smallest advance, have
made him no promise, given him no written document which compromises you?
Pardon my curiosity, but since you wish to make me a confidant of these
mysteries, I——’ ‘You are right, madam,’ replied the prince, ‘but I can
assure you that he has asked nothing, has received nothing from me.’ ‘Ah!
my lord,’ I exclaimed, ‘it must be that this man reckons on obtaining
from you many dangerous sacrifices since he buys your unbounded
confidence so dearly. Were I in your place I should be extremely
cautious; one of these days he will lead you too far.’ The cardinal only
answered by an incredulous smile; but I am certain that later, at the
time of the Necklace affair, when Cagliostro and the Countess de la Motte
had cast him to the bottom of the abyss, he recalled my words.”[127]
Singularly enough, Cagliostro arrived in Paris just at the time the
cardinal was making the final arrangements with the crown jewellers for
the purchase of the Necklace. Whether or no he was summoned thither by
the cardinal himself we are unable to say, but if the Abbé Georgel’s
statement is to be relied on, it is quite certain that the grand almoner
consulted Cagliostro respecting the business of the Necklace prior to
concluding the negotiations. The abbé says: “This Python mounted his
tripod; the Egyptian invocations were made at night in the cardinal’s
own saloon, which was illuminated by an immense number of wax tapers.
The oracle, under the inspiration of its familiar demon, pronounced that
the negotiation was worthy of the prince, that it would be crowned with
success, that it would raise the goodness of the queen to its height, and
bring to light that happy day which would unfold the rare talents of the
cardinal for the benefit of France and of the human race.”[128]