CHAPTER I

CAGLIOSTRO

[Illustration: _Count Cagliostro._]

CAGLIOSTRO

_THE SPLENDOUR AND MISERY

OF A MASTER OF MAGIC_

BY

W. R. H. TROWBRIDGE

AUTHOR OF

“SEVEN SPLENDID SINNERS,” “A BEAU SABREUR,” ETC.

_WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS_

NEW YORK

E. P. DUTTON & CO.

31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET

1910

RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,

BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND

BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

PREFACE

Though much has been written about Cagliostro, most of it is confined

to articles in encyclopedias and magazines, or to descriptive

paragraphs in works dealing with magic, freemasonry and the period

in which he lived.[1] This material may be described as a footnote

which has been raised to the dignity of a page of history. It is

based on contemporary records inspired by envy, hatred and contempt

in an age notoriously passionate, revengeful and unscrupulous. It

is, moreover, extremely superficial, being merely a repetition of

information obtained second-hand by compilers apparently too ignorant

or too lazy to make their own investigations. Even M. Funck-Brentano,

whose brilliant historical monographs have earned him a deservedly

high reputation, is not to be relied upon. In the sequel[2] to his

entertaining account of the affair of the Diamond Necklace, the brief

chapter he devotes to Cagliostro contains so many inaccuracies as to

suggest that, like the majority of his predecessors, he was content to

impart his information without previously taking the trouble to examine

the sources from which it was derived.

It has been said that every book on Cagliostro must be a book

_against_ him. With this opinion I totally disagree. In choosing

Cagliostro as the subject of an historical memoir I was guided at

first, I admit, by the belief that he was the arch-impostor he

is popularly supposed to be. With his mystery, magic, and highly

sensational career he seemed just the sort of picturesque personality

I was in search of. The moment, however, I began to make my researches

I was astonished to find how little foundation there was in point

of _fact_ for the popular conception. The deeper I went into the

subject--how deep this has been the reader may gather from the

Bibliography, which contains but a portion of the material I have

sifted--the more convinced I became of the fallacy of this conception.

Under such circumstances there seemed but two alternatives open to me:

either to abandon the subject altogether as unsuited for the purpose I

had in view, or to follow the line of least resistance and, dishonestly

adhering to the old method, which from custom had almost become _de

rigueur_, help to perpetuate an impression I believed to be unfounded

and unjust.

On reflection I have adopted neither course. Irritation caused by the

ignorance and carelessness of the so-called “authorities” awoke a fresh

and unexpected interest in their victim; and I decided to stick to

the subject I had chosen and treat it for the first time honestly. As

Baron de Gleichen says in his _Souvenirs_, “Enough ill has been said

of Cagliostro. I intend to speak well of him, because I think this is

always preferable providing one can, and at least I shall not bore the

reader by repeating what he has already heard.”

Such a statement made in connection with such a character as Cagliostro

is popularly supposed to be will, no doubt, expose me to the charge

of having “whitewashed” him. This, however, I emphatically deny.

“Whitewashing,” as I understand this term, is a plausible attempt to

portray base or detestable characters as worthy of esteem by palliating

their vices and attributing noble motives to their crimes. This manner

of treating historical figures is certainly not one of which I can be

accused, as those who may have read previous biographical books of mine

will admit. Whatever sympathy for Cagliostro my researches may have

evoked it has always been exceeded by contempt of those who, combining

an unreasoning prejudice with a slovenly system of compilation, have

repeated the old charges against him with parrot-like stupidity. The

object of this book is not so much an attempt to vindicate Cagliostro

as to correct and revise, if possible, what I believe to be a false

judgment of history.

W. R. H. TROWBRIDGE

_London, August 1910._

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The books and documents relating to Cagliostro are very numerous. Their

value, however, is so questionable that in making a critical choice it

is extremely difficult to avoid including many that are worthless.

In the French Archives:

A _dossier_ entitled _Documents à l’aide desquels la police de Paris a

cherché à établir, lors du procès du Collier, que Cagliostro n’était

autre qu’un aventurier nommé Joseph Balsamo, qui avait déjà séjourné à

Paris en 1772_:

Lettre adressée par un anonyme au commissaire Fontaine, remise de

Palerme, le 2 Nov., 1786.

Plainte adressée à M. de Sartine par J. Balsamo contre sa femme.

Ordre de M. de Sartine au commissaire Fontaine de dresser

procès-verbal de la capture de la dame Balsamo, 23 Janvier, 1773.

Procès-verbal de capture de la dame Balsamo, 1 Fevrier, 1773.

Interrogatoire de la dame Balsamo, 20 Fevrier, 1773.

Rapport au Ministre.

The above have also been printed in full in Emile Campardon’s _Marie

Antoinette et le Procès du Collier_.

The following documents are unprinted:

Procès-verbal de capture des sieur et dame Cagliostro.

Procès-verbal de perquisition fait par le commissaire Chesnon le 23

Août, 1785, chez le sieur Cagliostro.

Interrogatoire de Cagliostro le 30 Janvier, 1786.

Minute des confrontations des témoins de Cagliostro.

Procès-verbal de la remise faite à Cagliostro, lors de sa mise en

liberté, des effets saisis à son domicile le jour de sa mise en êtat

d’arrestation.

Journal du libraire Hardy.

Copie d’une lettre écrite de Londres par un officier français remise á

Paris le 19 Juillet 1786.

Lettre au peuple français.

Published Works:

Vie de Joseph Balsamo, connu sous le nom de Comte Cagliostro; extraite

de la procédure instruite contre lui à Rome, en 1790, traduite d’après

l’original italien, imprimé à la Chambre Apostolique.

Courier de l’Europe, gazette anglo-française, September, October,

November, 1786; also Gazette de Hollande, Gazette d’Utrecht, Gazette

de Leyde, Gazette de Florence, Courier du Bas-Rhin, Journal de Berlin,

Public Advertizer, Feuille Villageoise, and Moniteur Universel.

Cagliostro démasqué à Varsovie en 1780.

Nachricht von des berüchtigten Cagliostro aufenthalte in Mitau, im

jahre 1779 (Countess Elisa von der Recke).

Lettres sur la Suisse en 1781 (J. B. de Laborde).

Geschichten, geheime und räthselhafte Menschen (F. Bulau); or the

French translation by William Duckett _Personnages Énigmatiques_.

Souvenirs de Baron de Gleichen.

Souvenirs de la Marquise de Créquy.

Correspondance littéraire (Grimm).

Mémoires récréatifs, scientifiques, et anecdotiques du

physicien--aéronaute E. G. Roberson.

Mémoires authentiques de Comte Cagliostro (spurious, by the Marquis de

Luchet).

Mémoires de Brissot, Abbé Georgel, Baronne d’Oberkirch, Madame du

Hausset, Grosley, Bachaumont, Métra, Casanova, Comte Beugnot, and

Baron de Besenval.

Réflexions de P. J. J. N. Motus.

Cagliostro: La Franc-Maçonnerie et l’Occultisme au XVIIIᵉ siècle

(Henri d’Alméras).

Orthodoxie Maçonnique (Ragon).

La Franc-Maçonne, ou Révélations des Mystères des Francs-Maçons.

Annales de l’origine du Grand Orient en France.

Acta Latomorum (Thory).

Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du Jacobinisme (Abbé Barruel).

Histoire du Merveilleux (Figuier).

Histoire de la Franc-Maçonnerie (Clavel).

Histoire philosophique de la Maçonnerie (Kauffmann et Cherpin).

Les Sectes et les sociétés secrètes (Comte Le Couteulx de Canteleu).

Schlosser’s History of the Eighteenth Century.

Histoire de la Révolution Française: Les Révolutionnaires Mystiques

(Louis Blanc).

Histoire de France: XVIIIᵉ siècle (Henri Martin).

Histoire de France: L’Affaire du Collier (Michelet).

Recueil de toutes les pièces (31) qui out paru dans l’affaire de M. le

Cardinal de Rohan.

Marie Antoinette et le Procès du Collier (Emile Campardon).

L’Affaire du Collier (Funck-Brentano).

The Diamond Necklace (Henry Vizetelly).

Marie Antoinette et le Procès du Collier (Chaix d’Est-Ange).

La Dernière Pièce du fameux Collier.

Mémoire du Sieur Sacchi.

Lettre de Labarthe à l’archéologue Seguier.

Lettre d’un Garde du Roi (Manuel).

Lettres du Comte de Mirabeau à ... sur Cagliostro et Lavater.

Requête au Parlement par le Comte de Cagliostro.

Mémoire pour le Comte de Cagliostro, demandeur, contre M. Chesnon le

fils et le sieur de Launay.

Lettre au Peuple Anglais par le Comte de Cagliostro.

Theveneau de Morande (Paul Robiquet).

Liber Memorialis de Caleostro dum esset Roboretti.

Alessandro di Cagliostro. Impostor or Martyr? (Charles Sotheran).

Count Cagliostro (Critical and Miscellaneous Essays; Carlyle).

Vieux papiers, vieilles maisons (G. Lenôtre).

Italiänische Reise (Goethe).

CONTENTS

PART I

CHAP. PAGE

I THE POWER OF PREJUDICE 1

II GIUSEPPE BALSAMO 19

PART II

I CAGLIOSTRO IN LONDON 49

II EIGHTEENTH CENTURY OCCULTISM 74

III MASKED AND UNMASKED 111

IV THE CONQUEST OF THE CARDINAL 155

V CAGLIOSTRO IN PARIS 180

VI THE DIAMOND NECKLACE AFFAIR 214

VII CAGLIOSTRO RETURNS TO LONDON 253

VIII “NATURE’S UNFORTUNATE CHILD” 283

INDEX 309

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

_To face page_

COUNT CAGLIOSTRO _Frontispiece_

CARDINAL DE ROHAN 8

COUNTESS CAGLIOSTRO 14

MESMER 76

EMMANUEL SWEDENBORG 90

ADAM WEISHAUPT 104

COUNTESS ELISA VON DER RECKE 128

LAVATER 170

SAVERNE 182

HOUDON’S BUST OF CAGLIOSTRO 194

COUNTESS DE LAMOTTE 214

MARIE ANTOINETTE 224

LORD GEORGE GORDON 258

THEVENEAU DE MORANDE 266

A MASONIC ANECDOTE 277

PHILIP JAMES DE LOUTHERBOURG 280

SAN LEO 304

CAGLIOSTRO

PART I

CHAPTER I

THE POWER OF PREJUDICE

I

The mention of Cagliostro always suggests the marvellous, the

mysterious, the unknown. There is something cabalistic in the very

sound of the name that, considering the occult phenomena performed by

the strange personality who assumed it, is curiously appropriate. As

an _incognito_ it is, perhaps, the most suitable ever invented. The

name fits the man like a glove; and, recalling the mystery in which

his career was wrapped, one involuntarily wonders if it has ever

been cleared up. In a word, what was Cagliostro really? Charlatan,

adventurer, swindler, whose impostures were finally exposed by the

ever-memorable Necklace Affair in which he was implicated? Or “friend

of humanity,” as he claimed, whose benefactions excited the enmity of

the envious, who took advantage of his misfortunes to calumniate and

ruin him? Knave, or martyr--which?

This question is more easily answered by saying what Cagliostro was

_not_ than what he _was_. It has been stated by competent judges--and

all who have studied the subject will agree with them--that there

is, perhaps, no other equally celebrated figure in modern history

whose character is so baffling to the biographer. Documents and books

relating to him abound, but they possess little or no value. The

most interesting are frequently the most unreliable. The fact that

material so questionable should provide as many reasons for rejecting

its evidence--which is, by the way, almost entirely hostile--as for

accepting it, has induced theosophists, spiritualists, occultists,

and all who are sympathetically drawn to the mysterious to become

his apologists. By these amiable visionaries Cagliostro is regarded

as one of the princes of occultism whose mystical touch has revealed

the arcana of the spiritual world to the initiated, and illumined the

path along which the speculative scientist proceeds on entering the

labyrinth of the supernatural. To them the striking contrasts with

which his agitated existence was chequered are unimpeachable witnesses

in his favour, and they stubbornly refuse to accept the unsatisfactory

and contemptuous explanation of his miracles given by those who regard

him as an impostor.

Unfortunately, greater weight is attached to police reports than

to theosophical eulogies; and something more substantial than the

enthusiasm of the occultists is required to support their contention.

However, those who take this extravagant (I had almost said ridiculous)

view of Cagliostro may obtain what consolation they can from the

fact--which cannot be stated too emphatically--that though it is

utterly impossible to grant their prophet the halo they would accord

him, it is equally impossible to accept the verdict of his enemies.

In reality, it is by the evil that has been said and written of him

that he is best known. In his own day, with very few exceptions, those

whom he charmed or duped--as you will--by acts that in any case should

have inspired gratitude rather than contempt observed a profound

silence. When the Necklace Affair opened its flood-gates of ridicule

and calumny, his former admirers saw him washed away with indifference.

To defend him was to risk being compromised along with him; and, no

doubt, as happens in our own times, the pleasure of trailing in the mud

one who has fallen was too delightful to be neglected. It is from this

epoch--1785--when people were engaged in blighting his character rather

than in trying to judge it, that nearly all the material relating to

Cagliostro dates. With only such documents, then, to hand as have been

inspired by hate, envy, or simply a love of detraction, the difficulty

of forming a correct opinion of him is apparent.

The portrait Carlyle has drawn of Cagliostro is the one most familiar

to English readers. Now, though Carlyle’s judgments have in the main

been upheld by the latest historians (who have had the advantage

of information to which he was denied access), nevertheless, like

everybody else, he made mistakes. In his case, however, these mistakes

were inexcusable, for they were due, not to the lack of data, but to

the strong prejudices by which he suffered himself to be swayed to the

exclusion of that honesty and fairness he deemed so essential to the

historian. He approached Cagliostro with a mind already biassed against

him. Distasteful at the start, the subject on closer acquaintance

became positively repugnant to him. The flagrant mendacity of the

documentary evidence--which, discount it as he might, still left the

truth in doubt--only served to strengthen his prejudice. It could

surely be no innocent victim of injustice who aroused contempt so

malevolent, hatred so universal. The mystery in which he masqueraded

was alone sufficient to excite suspicion. And yet, whispered the

conscience of the historian enraged at the mendacity of the witnesses

he consulted, what noble ideals, what lofty aspirations misjudged,

misunderstood, exposed to ridicule, pelted with calumny, may not have

sought shelter under that mantle of mystery?

“Looking at thy so attractively decorated private theatre, wherein thou

actedst and livedst,” he exclaims, “what hand but itches to draw aside

thy curtain; overhaul thy paste-boards, paint-pots, paper-mantles,

stage-lamps; and turning the whole inside out, find _thee_ in the

middle thereof!”

And suiting the action to the word, he clutches with an indignant hand

at that metaphorical curtain; but in the very act of drawing it aside

his old ingrained prejudice asserts itself. Bah! what else but a fraud

can a Grand Cophta of Egyptian Masonry be? Can a Madame von der Recke,

a Baroness d’Oberkirch, whose opinions at least are above suspicion, be

other than right? The man is a shameless liar; and if he has been so

shamelessly lied about in turn, he has only got what he deserved. And

exasperated that such a creature should have been permitted even for a

moment to cross the threshold of history, Carlyle dropped the curtain

his fingers “itched to draw aside” and proceeded to empty all the vials

of his wrath on Cagliostro.

In his brilliant essay, in the _Diamond Necklace_, in the _French

Revolution_--wherever he meets him--he brands him as a “King of

Liars,” a “Prince of Scoundrels,” an “Arch-Quack,” “Count Front

of Brass-Pinch-beckostrum,” “Bubby-jock,” “a babbling, bubbling

Turkey-cock,” _et cetera_. But such violence defeats its intention.

When on every page the historian’s conscience is smitten with doubts

that prejudice cannot succeed in stilling, the critical and inquisitive

reader comes to the conclusion he knows less about the _real_

Cagliostro at the end than he did at the beginning. He has merely seen

Carlyle in one of his fine literary rages; it is all very interesting

and memorable, but by no means what he wanted. As a matter of fact, in

this instance Carlyle’s judgment is absolutely at sea; and the modern

biographers of Cagliostro do not even refer to it.

Nevertheless, these writers have come pretty much to the same

conclusion. M. Henri d’Alméras, whose book on Cagliostro is the best,

speaking of the questionable evidence that so incensed Carlyle,

declares “the historian, even in handling it with care, finds himself

willy-nilly adopting the old prejudice. That is to say, every book

written on Cagliostro, even under the pretext of rehabilitating him,

can only be a book _against_ him.” But while holding to the old

conventional opinion, he considers that “a rogue so picturesque disarms

anger, and deserves to be treated with indulgence.” D’Alméras pictures

Cagliostro as a sort of clown, which is certainly the most curious view

ever taken of the “Front of Brass,” and even more unjustifiable than

Carlyle’s.

“What a good-natured, amusing, original rascal!” he exclaims. “The

Figaro of Alchemy, more intelligent than Diafoirus, and more cunning

than Scapin. And with what imperturbable serenity did he lie in five

or six languages, as well as in a gibberish that had no meaning at

all. To lie like that gives one a great superiority over the majority

of one’s fellow-men. He did not lie because he was afraid to speak

the truth, but because, as in the case of many another, falsehood was

in him an excessive development of the imagination. He was himself,

moreover, the first victim of his lies. By the familiar phenomenon

of auto-suggestion, he ended by believing what he said from force of

saying it. If he was successful, in a certain sense, he deserved to be.”

From all of which it may be gathered that whether Cagliostro is

depicted as an Apostle of Light by his friends the occultists, or a

rank impostor by his enemies, of whom Carlyle is the most implacable

and d’Alméras the most charitably inclined, the real man has been as

effectually hidden from view by prejudice as by the mystery in which

he wrapped himself. But heavy though the curtain is that conceals him,

it is perhaps possible for the hand that “itches” to draw it aside. As

a matter of fact, no really honest attempt has ever been made to do

so. It is true it is only a fleeting, somewhat nebulous, glimpse that

can be obtained of this singular personality. There is, moreover, one

condition to be observed. Before this glimpse can be obtained it is

essential that some attempt should be made to discover, if possible,

_who_ Cagliostro was.

II

Considering that one has only to turn to the biographical dictionaries

and encyclopedias to find it definitely asserted that “Count

Cagliostro” was the best known of many _aliases_ assumed by Giuseppe

Balsamo, a Sicilian adventurer born in Palermo in 1743 or 1748, the

above statement would appear to be directly contrary to recorded

fact. For though biographical dictionaries and encyclopedias are

notoriously superficial and frequently misleading, they are perhaps in

this instance accurate enough for the purpose of casual inquiry, which

is after all what they are compiled for. Indeed, this Balsamo legend

is so plausible an explanation of the mystery of Cagliostro’s origin

that, for lack of any other, it has satisfied all who are entitled to

be regarded as authorities. The evidence, however, on which they have

based their belief is circumstantial rather than positive.

Now circumstantial evidence, as everybody knows, is not always to

be trusted. There are many cases on record of persons having been

condemned on the strength of it who were afterwards found to be

innocent. In this particular case, moreover, doubts _do_ exist, and

all “authorities” have admitted the fact. Those prejudiced against

Cagliostro have agreed to attach no importance to them, those

prejudiced in his favour the greatest. To the occultists they are the

rock on which their faith in him is founded. Their opinion, however,

may be ruled aside as untenable, for the doubts are entirely of a

negative character, and suggest no counter-theory of identity whatever.

Nevertheless, since they exist they are worth examining--not so much

for the purpose of questioning the accuracy of the “authorities” as to

show how the Balsamo legend, which plays so important a part in the

history of Cagliostro, originated.

It was not till Cardinal Rohan entangled him in the Diamond Necklace

Affair that the name of Cagliostro hitherto familiar only to a limited

number of people who, as the case might be, had derived benefit or

suffered misfortune from a personal experience of his fabulous powers,

acquired European notoriety.

The excitement caused by this _cause célèbre_, as is well known, was

intense and universal. The arrest of the Cardinal in the Oeil-de-Boeuf

at Versailles, in the presence of the Court and a great concourse of

people from Paris, as he was about to celebrate mass in the Royal

Chapel on Assumption Day, on the charge of having purchased a necklace

for 1,600,000 livres for the Queen, who denied all knowledge of

the transaction; the subsequent disappearance of the jewel and the

suspicion of intent to swindle the jeweller which attached itself to

both Queen and Cardinal; the further implication of the Countess de

Lamotte, with her strangely romantic history; of Cagliostro, with his

mystery and magic; and of a host of other shady persons--these were

elements sensational enough to strike the dullest imagination, fire

the wildest curiosity, and rivet the attention of all Europe upon the

actors in so unparalleled a drama.

[Illustration: CARDINAL DE ROHAN (_From an old French print_)]

After the Cardinal, whose position as Grand Almoner of France (a

sort of French Archbishop of Canterbury, so to speak) made him the

protagonist of this drama, the self-styled Count Cagliostro was the

figure in whom the public were most interested. The prodigies he

was said to have performed, magnified by rumour, and his strange

undecipherable personality gave him an importance out of all proportion

to the small part he played in the famous Affair of the Necklace.

Speculation as to his origin was naturally rife. But neither the police

nor the lawyers could throw any light on his past. The evidence of the

Countess de Lamotte, who in open court denounced him as an impostor

formerly known as Don Tiscio, a name under which she declared he

had fleeced many people in various parts of Spain, was too palpably

untrustworthy and ridiculous to be treated seriously. Cagliostro

himself did, indeed, attempt to satisfy curiosity, but the fantastic

account he gave of his career only served--as perhaps he intended--to

deepen its mystery.

The more it was baffled, the keener became the curiosity to discover

a secret so cleverly guarded. The “noble traveller,” as he described

himself with ridiculous pomposity on his examination, confessed that

Cagliostro was only one of the several names he had assumed in the

course of his life. An _alias_--he had termed it _incognito_--is

always suspicious. Coupled, as it was in his case, with alchemical

experiments, prognostications, spiritualist séances, and quack

medicines, it suggested rascality. From ridicule to calumny is but a

step, and for every voice raised in defence of his honesty there were a

dozen to decry him.

On the day he was set at liberty--for he had no difficulty in proving

his innocence--eight or ten thousand people came _en masse_ to offer

him their congratulations. The court-yard, the staircase, the very

rooms of his house in the Rue St. Claude were filled with them. But

this ovation, flattering though it was to his vanity, was intended

less as a mark of respect to him than as an insult to the Queen, who

was known to regard the verdict as a stigma on her honour, and whose

waning popularity the hatred engendered by this scandalous affair had

completely obliterated. Banished the following day by the Government,

which sought to repair the prestige of the throne by persecuting and

calumniating those who might be deemed instrumental in shattering it,

Cagliostro lost what little credit the trial had left him. _Who_ ever he

was, the world had made up its mind _what_ he was, and its opinion was

wholly unfavourable to the “noble traveller.”

From France, which he left on June 21, 1786, Cagliostro went to

England. It was here, in the following September, that the assertion

was made for the first time by the _Courier de l’Europe_, a French

paper published in London, that he was Giuseppe Balsamo. This

announcement, made with every assurance of its accuracy, was at once

repeated by other journals throughout Europe. It would be interesting,

though not particularly important, to know how the _Courier de

l’Europe_ obtained its information. It is permissible, however, to

conjecture that the Anglo-French journal had been informed of the

rumour current in Palermo at the time of Cagliostro’s imprisonment in

the Bastille that he was a native of that city, and on investigating

the matter decided there were sufficient grounds for identifying him

with Balsamo.

Be this as it may, it is the manner in which the statement made by the

_Courier de l’Europe_ appears to be confirmed that gives the whole

theory its weight.

On December 2, 1876--dates are important factors in the

evidence--Fontaine, the chief of the Paris police, received a very

curious anonymous letter from Palermo. The writer began by saying that

he had read in the _Gazette de Leyde_ of September 25 an article taken

from the _Courier de l’Europe_ stating that the “famous Cagliostro was

called Balsamo,” from which he gathered that the Balsamo referred to

was the same who in 1773 had caused his wife to be shut up in Sainte

Pélagie at Paris for having deserted him, and who had afterwards

applied to the courts for her release. To confirm Fontaine in this

opinion, he gave him in detail the history of this Balsamo’s career,

which had been imparted to him on June 2 by the said Balsamo’s uncle,

Antonio Braconieri, who was firmly convinced that his nephew, of whom

he had heard nothing for some years, was none other than Cagliostro. As

he learnt this the day after Cagliostro’s acquittal and release from

the Bastille, the news of which could not have reached Palermo in less

than a week, it proves that Braconieri’s conviction was formed long

before the Press began to maintain it.

In fact the anonymous writer stated that this conviction was prevalent

in Palermo as far back as the previous year, when the news arrived

there of the arrest of Cagliostro in connection with the Diamond

Necklace Affair.

He went on to say that he had personally ridiculed the report at

the time, but having reflected on the grounds that Braconieri had

given him for believing it “he had come to the conclusion that Count

Cagliostro was Giuseppe Balsamo of Palermo or that Antonio Braconieri,

his uncle, was a scoundrel worthy of being the uncle of M. le Comte de

Cagliostro.” As it was not till November 2 that this somewhat ingenuous

person sent anonymously to Fontaine the information he had received on

June 2 from Braconieri, his reflections on the veracity of the latter,

one suspects, were scarcely complimentary. However, such doubts as he

might still have cherished were finally set at rest on October 31, when

Antonio Braconieri met him in one of the chief thoroughfares of Palermo

and showed him a _Gazette de Florence_ which confirmed everything

Braconieri had told him more than four months before. Hereupon, the

anonymous individual, convinced at last beyond the shadow of a doubt

that the “_soi-disant_ Count Cagliostro was really Giuseppe Balsamo

of Palermo,” decided to inform the chief of the Paris police of his

discovery.

Such is the history of the proofs in favour of the Balsamo legend. Now

to examine the proofs.

As the late M. Émile Campardon was the first to unearth this anonymous

letter together with the official report upon it in the National

Archives, and as his opinion is the one commonly accepted, it will be

sufficient to quote what he has to say on the subject.

“The adventures,” he asks, “of Giuseppe Balsamo and those of Alessandro

Cagliostro--do they belong to the history of the same career? Was the

individual who had his wife shut up in Sainte Pélagie in 1773 the same

who in 1786 protested so vehemently against the imprisonment of his

wife?[3]

“Everything goes to prove it. The Countess Cagliostro was born in

Rome; Balsamo’s wife was likewise a Roman. The maiden name of both was

Feliciani.

“Madame Balsamo was married at fourteen; the Countess Cagliostro at the

time of her marriage was still a child.

“Cagliostro stated at his trial that his wife did not know how to

write; Madame Balsamo at _her_ trial also declared she could not write.

“Her husband at any rate could. At the time of his petition against

his wife Balsamo signed two documents which are still to be seen in

the Archives. By comparing--as Fontaine had done--these two signatures

with a letter written whilst in the Bastille by Cagliostro the

experts declared the writing of Balsamo and that of Cagliostro to be

identically the same.

“Furthermore, according to the statement of Antonio Braconieri, Balsamo

had frequently written him under the name of Count Cagliostro. Nor had

he invented the name, for Giuseppe Cagliostro of Messina, steward of

the Prince of Villafranca, was Braconieri’s uncle, and consequently

Giuseppe Balsamo’s great-uncle.

“If to these probabilities one adds certain minor resemblances--such

as Cagliostro’s declaration that Cardinal Orsini and the Duke of Alba

could vouch for the truth of the account he gave of himself, who

were personages by whom Balsamo was known to have been employed; the

fact that Cagliostro spoke the Sicilian dialect, and that Balsamo had

employed magic in his swindling operations--it is scarcely credible

that lives and characters so identical could belong to two different

beings.”

The arguments in favour of this hypothesis are very plausible and

apparently as convincing as such circumstantial evidence usually is. It

is possible, however, as stated above, to question the accuracy of the

conclusion thus reached for the following reasons.

(1) The basis of the supposition that the Countess Cagliostro and

Madame Balsamo were the same rests entirely on coincidence.

Granted that both happened to be Romans, that the maiden name of both

was Feliciani, that both were married extremely young, and that neither

could write. The fact that both were Romans is no argument at all.

Though their maiden name was Feliciani, it was a comparatively common

one--there were several families of Feliciani in Rome, and for that

matter all over Italy. Madame Balsamo’s father came from Calabria. Her

Christian name was Lorenza. The statement that the Countess Cagliostro

was likewise called Lorenza and changed her name to Seraphina, by which

she was known, is based entirely on supposition. That both were married

very young and that neither knew how to write, scarcely calls for

comment. Italian women usually married in early girlhood, and very few,

if any, of the class to which Seraphina Cagliostro and Lorenza Balsamo

belonged could write.

[Illustration: _SERAPHINIA FELICHIANI._

COMTESSE DE CAGLIOSTRO.

(_From a very rare French print_)]

(2) The testimony of the experts as to the remarkable similarity

between the writing of Balsamo and Cagliostro requires something

more than an official statement to that effect to be convincing. At the

time the experts made their report, the French Government were trying

to silence the calumnies with which Marie Antoinette was being attacked

by making the character of Cagliostro and others connected with the

Necklace Affair appear as bad as possible. The Parisian police in the

interest of the Monarchy, jumped at the opportunity of identifying the

mysterious Cagliostro with the infamous Balsamo. The experts’ evidence

is, to say the least, questionable.

(3) The fact that Giuseppe Balsamo had an uncle called Giuseppe

Cagliostro is the strongest argument in favour of the identification

theory. There is no reason to doubt Antonio Braconieri’s statement that

he had received letters from his nephew signed “Count Cagliostro.”

However, the writer of the anonymous letter declared that, desiring

to prove Braconieri’s word as to the existence of Giuseppe Cagliostro

of Messina, he discovered that there were _two_ families of the name

in that city. The prefix Cagli, moreover, is not unusual in Sicilian,

Calabrian and Neapolitan names. The selection of it by Cagliostro as

an _incognito_ may have been accidental, or invented because of its

peculiar cabalistic suggestion as suitable for the occult career on

which he embarked, or it may have been suggested to him by some one

of the name he had met when wandering about southern Italy. As his

identification with Balsamo is based principally on coincidence, it is

surely equally permissible to employ a coincidence as the basis of one

of the many arguments in an attempt at refutation.

(4) As to the minor points of resemblance between Cagliostro and

Balsamo given as “probabilities” for supposing them identical: in

considering that Cagliostro used as references the names of Cardinal

Orsini and the Duke of Alba, by whom Balsamo was known to have been

employed at one time, the fantastic account he gave of himself at

his trial should be remembered. One of the principal reasons for

disbelieving him was the fact that these personages were _dead_ and

so unable to verify or deny his statement. Again, though the Sicilian

dialect was undoubtedly Balsamo’s mother-tongue, no one could ever

make out to what _patois_ Cagliostro’s extraordinary abracadabra of

accent belonged. But nothing can be weaker than to advance their use of

magic and alchemy as a reason for identifying them. Magic and alchemy

were the common stock-in-trade of every adventurer in Europe in the

eighteenth century.

So much for criticism of the “official” proof.

There is, however, another reason for doubting the identity of the

two men. It is the most powerful of all, and has hitherto apparently

escaped the attention of those who have taken this singular theory of

identification for granted.

Nobody that had _known_ Balsamo ever _saw_ Cagliostro.

The description of Balsamo’s features given by Antonio Braconieri

resembles that which others have given of Cagliostro’s personal

appearance _as far as it goes_. Unfortunately, it merely proves that

both were short, had dark complexions, and peculiarly bright eyes. As

for their noses, Braconieri described Balsamo’s as being _écrasé_;

it is a much more forcible and unflattering term than has ever been

applied to the by no means uncommon shape of Cagliostro’s nasal organ.

There were many pictures of Cagliostro scattered over Europe at the

time of the Necklace Affair. In Palermo, where the interest taken

in him was great, few printsellers’ windows, one would imagine, but

would have contained his portrait. Braconieri certainly is likely to

have seen it; and had the resemblance to Balsamo been undeniable, he

would surely have attached the greatest importance to it as a proof of

the identity he desired to establish. As a matter of fact, he barely

mentions it.

Again, one wonders why nobody who had known Balsamo ever made the

least attempt to identify Cagliostro with him either at the time of

the trial or when the articles in the _Courier de l’Europe_ brought

him a second time prominently before the public. Now Balsamo was known

to have lived in London in 1771, when his conduct was so suspicious to

the police that he deemed it advisable to leave the country. He and

his wife accordingly went to Paris, and it was here that, in 1773, the

events occurred which brought both prominently under the notice of the

authorities. Six years after Balsamo’s disappearance from London, Count

Cagliostro appeared in that city, and becoming involved with a set of

swindlers in a manner that made him appear a fool rather than a knave,

spent four months in the King’s Bench jail. How is it, one asks, that

the London police, who “wanted” Giuseppe Balsamo, utterly failed to

recognize him in the notorious Cagliostro?

Now granting that the police, as well as the persons whom Balsamo

fleeced in London in 1771, had forgotten him in 1777, and that all

who could have recognized him as Cagliostro in 1786, when the

_Courier de l’Europe_ exposed him, were dead, is it probable that the

same coincidences would repeat themselves in Paris? If the Parisian

police, who were doing their best to discover traces of Cagliostro’s

antecedents in 1785 and 1786 had quite _forgotten_ the Balsamo who

brought the curious action against his wife in 1773, is it at all

likely that the various people the Balsamos had known in their

two-years’ residence in Paris would all have _died_ in the meantime?

People are always to be found to identify criminals and suspicious

characters to whom the attention of the police is prominently drawn.

But before the sort of Sherlock Holmes process of identification

employed by the _Courier de l’Europe_ and the Parisian police, not a

soul was ever heard to declare that Cagliostro and Balsamo were the

same.

* * * * *

To the reader who, knowing little or nothing of Cagliostro, takes up

this book with an unbiassed mind, the above objections to the Balsamo

legend may seem proof conclusive of its falsity. This would, however,

be to go further than I, who attach much greater importance to these

doubts than historians are inclined to do, care to admit. They merely

show that it is neither right nor excusable to treat as a conviction

what is purely a conjecture.

If this conclusion, wrapping as it does the origin and early life

of Cagliostro once more in a veil of mystery, be accepted, it will

go far to remove the prejudice which has hitherto made the answer

to that other and more important question “What was Cagliostro?” so

unsatisfactory.

CHAPTER II

GIUSEPPE BALSAMO

I

There could be no better illustration of the perplexities that confront

the biographer of Cagliostro at every stage of his mysterious career

than the uncertainty that prevails regarding the career of Giuseppe

Balsamo himself. For rightly or wrongly, their identity has so long

been taken for granted that the history of one has become indissolubly

linked to that of the other.

Now, not only is it extremely difficult, when not altogether

impossible, to verify the information we have concerning Balsamo, but

the very integrity of those from whom the information is derived, is

questionable. These tainted sources, so to speak, from which there

meanders a confused and maze-like stream of contradictory details and

unverifiable episodes, are (1) Balsamo’s wife, Lorenza, (2) the Editor

of the _Courier de l’Europe_, and (3) the Inquisition-biographer of

Cagliostro.

Lorenza’s statement is mainly the itinerary of the wanderings

of herself and husband about Europe from their marriage to her

imprisonment in Paris in 1773. Such _facts_ as it purports to give as

to the character of their wanderings are very meagre, and coloured so

as to depict her in a favourable light. The _dossier_ containing the

particulars of her arrest is in the Archives of Paris, where it was

_discovered_ by the French Government in 1786, and where it is still to

be seen. Query: considering the suspicious circumstances that led to

its discovery, is the _dossier_ a forgery?

Opposed to the evidence of the _Courier de l’Europe_ are the character,

secret motives, and avowed enmity of the Editor.

As to the life of Balsamo,[4] published anonymously in Rome in 1791,

under the auspices of the Inquisition, into whose power Cagliostro

had fallen, the tone of hostility in which it is written, excessive

even from an ultra-Catholic point of view, its lack of precision,

and the absence of dates which makes it impossible to verify its

statements, have caused critics of every shade of opinion, to consider

it partially, if not wholly, unauthenticated.

It purports to be the confession of Cagliostro, extracted either by

torture or the fear of torture, during his trial by the Inquisition.

That Cagliostro did indeed “confess” is quite likely. But what sort of

value could such a confession possibly have? The manner in which the

Inquisition conducted its trials has rendered its verdicts suspect the

world over. His condemnation was decided on from the very start, as

the charge on which he was arrested proves--as will be shown in due

course--and to escape torture, perhaps also in the hope of acquittal,

Cagliostro was ready enough to oblige his terrible judges and “confess”

whatever they wished.

It is, moreover, a question whether the adventures related in the _Vie

de Joseph Balsamo_ are those of one or of several persons. As it is

quite inconceivable that the Cagliostro of the Necklace Affair could

ever have been the very ordinary adventurer here depicted, it has

been suggested--and there is much to support the view--that Giuseppe

Balsamo, as known to history, is a sort of composite individual

manufactured out of all the rogues of whom the Inquisition-writer had

any knowledge.

One thing, however, may be confidently asserted: whether the exploits

of Giuseppe Balsamo were partially or wholly his, imaginary or real,

they are at any rate typical of the adventurer of the age.

Like Cagliostro, he boasted a noble origin, and never failed on the

various occasions of changing his name to give himself a title. There

is, however, no reason to suppose that he was in any way related to, or

even aware of the existence of the aristocratic family of the same name

who derived _their_ title from the little town of Balsamo near Monza

in the Milanese. As a matter of fact the name was a fairly common one

in Italy, and the Balsamos of Palermo were of no consequence whatever.

Nothing is known of Giuseppe’s father, beyond the fact that he was a

petty tradesman who became bankrupt, and died at the age of forty-five,

a few months after the birth of his son. Pietro Balsamo was _thought_

to be of mixed Jewish and Moorish extraction, which would account for

his obscurity and the slight esteem in which his name was held in

Palermo, where the Levantines were the scum of the population.

Such scant consideration as the family may have enjoyed was due

entirely to Giuseppe’s mother, who though of humble birth was of

good, honest Sicilian stock. Through her he could at least claim to

have had a great-grandfather, one Matteo Martello, whom it has been

supposed Cagliostro had in mind when in his fantastic account of

himself at the time of the Necklace Affair he claimed to be descended

from Charles Martel, the founder of the Carlovingian dynasty. This

Matteo Martello had two daughters, the youngest of whom Vincenza

married Giuseppe Cagliostro of Messina, whose name and relationship

to Giuseppe Balsamo is the chief argument in the attempt to prove the

identity of the latter with Cagliostro. Vincenza’s elder sister married

Giuseppe Braconieri and had three children, Felice, Matteo, and Antonio

Braconieri. The former was Giuseppe’s mother. He had also a sister

older than himself, Maria, who became the wife of Giovanni Capitummino.

On the death of her husband she returned with her children to live with

her mother, all of whom Goethe met when in Palermo in 1787.

The poverty in which Pietro Balsamo died obliged his widow to appeal

to her brother for assistance. Fortunately they were in a position and

willing to come to her relief. Matteo, the elder, was chief clerk in

the post-office at Palermo; while Antonio was bookkeeper in the firm of

J. F. Aubert & Co. Both brothers, as well as their sister, appear to

have been deeply religious, and it is not unlikely that the severity

and repression to which Giuseppe was continually subjected may have

fostered the spirit of rebellion, already latent in him, which was to

turn him into the blackguard he became.

It manifested itself at an early age. From the Seminary of San Rocco,

where he received his first schooling, he ran away several times.

As the rod, which appears to have played an important part in the

curriculum of the seminary, failed to produce the beneficial results

that are supposed to ensue from its frequent application, his uncles,

anxious to get rid of so troublesome a charge, decided to confide the

difficult task of coaxing or licking him into shape to the Benfratelli

of Cartegirone. Giuseppe was accordingly enrolled as a novice in this

brotherhood, whose existence was consecrated to the healing of the

sick, and placed under the supervision of the Convent-Apothecary. He

was at the time thirteen.

According to the Inquisition-biographer, it was in the laboratory of

the convent that Cagliostro learnt “the principles of chemistry and

medicine” which he afterwards practised with such astonishing results.

If so, he must have been gifted with remarkable aptitude, which both

his conduct and brief sojourn at Cartegirone belie. For whatever hopes

his mother and uncles may have founded on the effect of this pious

environment were soon dispelled. He had not been long in the convent

before he manifested his utter distaste for the life of a Brother of

Mercy. Naturally insubordinate and bold he determined to escape; but

as experience had taught him at the Seminary of San Rocco that running

away merely resulted in being thrashed and sent back, and as he had

neither the means nor the desire to go anywhere save home to Palermo,

he cunningly cast about in his mind to obtain his release from the

Brothers themselves. This was not easy to accomplish, but in spite of

the severe punishment his wilfully idle and refractory conduct entailed

he was persistent and finally succeeded in wearing out the patience of

the long-suffering monks.

From the manner in which he attained his object Carlyle detects in

him a “touch of grim humour--or deep world-irony, as the Germans call

it--the surest sign, as is often said, of a character naturally great.”

It was a universal custom in all religious associations that one of

their number during meals should read aloud to the others passages from

the Lives of the Saints. This dull and unpopular task having one day

been allotted to Giuseppe--probably as a punishment--he straightway

proceeded, careless of the consequences, to read out whatever came into

his head, substituting for the names of the Saints those of the most

notable courtezans of Palermo. The effect of this daring sacrilege

was dire and immediate. With fist and foot the scandalized monks

instantly fell upon the boy and having belaboured him, as the saying

is, within an inch of his life, indignantly packed him back to Palermo

as hopelessly incorrigible and utterly unworthy of ever becoming a

Benfratello.

No fatted calf, needless to say, was killed to celebrate the return

of the prodigal. But Giuseppe having gained his object, took whatever

chastisement he received from his mother and uncles philosophically,

and left them to swallow their mortification as best they could.

However, sorely tried though they were, they did not even now wash

their hands of him. Somehow--just how it would be difficult to say--one

forms a vague idea he was never without a plausible excuse for his

conduct. Adventurers, even the lowest, more or less understand the art

of pleasing; and many little things seem to indicate that with all his

viciousness his disposition was not unattractive. On the contrary

there is much in the character of his early villainies to suggest his

powers of persuasion were considerable.

Thus, after his expulsion from Cartegirone the Inquisition-biographer

tells us that he took lessons in drawing for which, no doubt, he must

have given some proof of talent and inclination. Far, however, from

showing any disposition to conform to the wishes of his uncles, who for

his mother’s sake, if not for his own, continued to take an interest

in him, the boy rapidly went from bad to worse. As neither reproof nor

restraint produced any effect on his headstrong and rebellious nature

he appears to have been permitted to run wild, perhaps because he had

reached an age when it was no longer possible to control his actions.

Nor were the acquaintances he formed of the sort to counteract a

natural tendency to viciousness. He was soon hand in glove with all the

worst characters of the town.

“There was no fight or street brawl,” says the indignant

Inquisition-biographer, “in which he was not involved, no theft of

which he was not suspected. The band of young desperadoes to which he

belonged frequently came into collision with the night-watch, whose

prisoners, if any, they would attempt to set free. Even the murder of a

canon was attributed to him by the gossips of the town.”

In a word Giuseppe Balsamo became a veritable “Apache” destined

seemingly sooner or later for the galleys or the gallows. Such a

character, it goes without saying, could not fail to attract the notice

of the police. He more than once saw the inside of the Palermo jail;

but from lack of sufficient proof, or from the nature of the charge

against him, or owing to the intercession of his estimable uncles, as

often as he was arrested he was let off again.

Even his drawing-lessons, while they lasted, were perverted to the most

ignoble ends. To obtain the money he needed he began, like all thieves,

with petty thefts from his relations. One of his uncles was his first

victim. In a similar way he derived profit from a love-affair between

his sister and a cousin. As their parents put obstacles in the way of

their meeting Giuseppe offered to act as go-between. In a rash moment

they accepted his aid, and he profited by the occasion to substitute

forged letters in the place of those he undertook to deliver, by means

of which he got possession of the presents the unsuspecting lovers were

induced to exchange. Encouraged by the skill he displayed in imitating

hand-writing and copying signatures--which seems to have been the

extent of his talent for drawing--he turned it to account in other and

more profitable ways. Somehow--perhaps by hints dropped by himself in

the right quarter--his proficiency in this respect, and his readiness

to give others the benefit of it for a consideration, got known. From

forging tickets to the theatre for his companions, he was employed to

forge leave-of-absence passes for monks, and even to forge a will in

favour of a certain Marquis Maurigi, by which a religious institution

was defrauded of a large legacy.

There is another version of this affair which the Inquisition-writer

has naturally ignored, and from which it would appear that it was the

marquis who was defrauded of the legacy by the religious institution.

But be this trifling detail as it may, the fact remains that the

forgery was so successfully effected that it was not discovered till

several years later, when some attempt was made to bring Balsamo to

justice, which the impossibility of ascertaining whether he was alive

or dead, rendered abortive.

Such sums of money, however, as he obtained in this way must of

necessity have been small. It could only have been in copper that his

“Apache” friends and the monks paid him for the theatre-tickets and

convent-passes he forged for them. Nor was the notary by whom he was

employed to forge the will, and who, we are told, was a relation,

likely to be much more liberal. In Palermo then, as to-day, scores of

just such youths as Giuseppe Balsamo were to be found ready to perform

any villainy for a fifty centime piece. He accordingly sought other

means of procuring the money he needed and as none, thanks to his

compatriots’ notorious credulity, was likely to prove so remunerative

as an appeal to their love of the marvellous, he had recourse to what

was known as “sorcery.”

It is to the questionable significance attached to this word that the

prejudice against Cagliostro, whose wonders were attributed to magic,

has been very largely due. For it is only of comparatively recent

date that “sorcery” so-called has ceased to be anathema, owing to

the belated investigations of science, which is always, and perhaps

with reason, suspicious of occult phenomena, by which the indubitable

existence of certain powers--as yet only partially explained--active in

some, passive in others, and perhaps latent in all human beings, has

been revealed. And even still, so great is the force of tradition, many

judging from the frauds frequently perpetrated by persons claiming

to possess these secret powers, regard with suspicion, if not with

downright contempt, all that is popularly designated as sorcery, magic,

or witchcraft.

But this is not the place to discuss the methods by which those who

work miracles obtain their results. Suffice it to say, there has been

from time immemorial a belief in the ability of certain persons to

control the forces of nature. Nowhere is this belief stronger than in

Sicily. There the “sorcerer” is as common as the priest; not a village

but boasts some sibyl, seer, or wonder-worker. That all are not equally

efficient, goes without saying. Some possess remarkable powers, which

they themselves would probably be unable to explain. Others, like

Giuseppe Balsamo, are only able to deceive very simple or foolish

people easy to deceive.

From the single instance cited of Giuseppe’s skill in this

direction one infers his magical gifts were of the crystal-gazing,

sand-divination kind--the ordinary kind with which everybody

is more or less familiar, if only by name. According to the

Inquisition-biographer, “one day whilst he and his companions were

idling away the time together the conversation having turned upon a

certain girl whom they all knew, one of the number wondered what she

was doing at that moment, whereupon Giuseppe immediately offered to

gratify him. Marking a square on the ground he made some passes with

his hands above it, after which the figure of the girl was seen in the

square playing at _tressette_ with three of her friends.” So great was

the effect of this exhibition of clairvoyance, thought-transference,

hypnotic suggestion, what you will, upon the amazed Apaches that they

went at once to look for the girl and “found her in the same attitude

playing the very game and with the very persons that Balsamo had shown

them.”

The fact that such phenomena are of quite common occurrence and to be

witnessed any day in large cities and summer-resorts on payment of

fees, varying according to the renown of the performer, has robbed

them if not of their attraction at least of their wonder. One has come

to take them for granted. Whatever may be the scientific explanation

of such occult--the word must serve for want of a better--power as

Giuseppe possessed, he himself, we may be sure, would only have been

able to account for it as “sorcery.” He was not likely to be a whit

less superstitious than the people with whom he associated. Indeed,

his faith in the efficacy of the magic properties attributed by vulgar

superstition to sacred things would appear to have been greater than

his faith in his own supernatural powers.

It is reported of him on one occasion that “under pretext of curing

his sister, who he said was possessed of a devil, he obtained from a

priest in the country a little cotton dipped in holy oil,” to which,

doubtless, he attached great importance as the means of successfully

performing some wonder he had no confidence in his own powers to

effect. Such cryptic attributes as he had been endowed with must have

been very slight, or undeveloped, for there is no reference whatever to

the marvellous in the swindles of his subsequent history in which one

would expect him to have employed it. Very probably whatever magnetic,

hypnotic, or telepathic faculty he possessed was first discovered

by the apothecary under whom he was placed in the laboratory at

Cartegirone, who, like all of his kind, no doubt, experimented in

alchemy and kindred sciences. If so, he certainly did not stay long

enough with the Benfratelli to turn his mysterious talent to account

or to obtain more than the merest glimpse of the “sorcery,” of which,

though banned by the Church, the monasteries were the secret nursery.

Be this as it may, needless to say those who had witnessed Giuseppe’s

strange phenomenon required no further proof of his marvellous power,

which rapidly noised abroad and exaggerated by rumour gave the young

“sorcerer” a reputation he only wanted an opportunity of exploiting

for all it was worth. How long he waited for this opportunity is not

stated, but he was still in his teens when it eventually turned up in

the person of a “certain ninny of a goldsmith named Marano,” whose

superstition, avarice, and gullibility made him an easy dupe.

One day in conversation with this man, who had been previously nursed

to the proper pitch of cupidity, as one nurses a constituency before an

election, Giuseppe informed him under pledge of the strictest secrecy

that he knew of a certain cave not far from Palermo, in which a great

treasure was buried. According to a superstition prevalent in Sicily,

where belief in such treasure was common, it was supposed to be guarded

by demons, and as it would be necessary to hire a priest to exorcize

them, Giuseppe offered to take Marano to the spot and assist him in

lifting the hidden wealth for the consideration of “sixty ounces of

gold.”[5]

Whatever objection Marano might have had to part with such a sum was

overcome by the thought of gaining probably a hundred times as much.

He accordingly paid the money and set out one night with Giuseppe, the

priest, and another man who was in the secret. On arriving at the cave,

preparatory to the ceremony of exorcism, the priest proceeded to evoke

the demons, which was done with due solemnity by means of magic circles

and symbols drawn upon the ground, incantations in Latin, _et cetera_.

Suddenly hideous noises were heard, there was a flash and splutter

of blue fire, and the air was filled with sulphur. Marano, who was

waiting in the greatest terror for the materialization of the powers of

darkness, in which he firmly believed, and who, he had been told, on

such occasions sometimes got beyond the control of the exorcist, was

commanded to dig where he stood. But scarcely had his spade struck the

ground when the demons themselves appeared with shrieks and yells--some

goat-herds hired for the occasion, as horrible as paint, burnt cork,

and Marano’s terrified imagination could paint them--and fell upon the

wretched man. Whereupon Giuseppe and his confederates took to their

heels, leaving their dupe in a fit on the ground.

Fool that he was, it did not take the goldsmith on recovering his

senses long to discover that he had been victimized. Indifferent to

the ridicule to which he exposed himself he lost no time in bringing

an action against Giuseppe for the recovery of the money of which he

had been defrauded, swearing at the same time to have the life of the

swindler as well. Under such circumstances Palermo was no longer a safe

place for the sorcerer, and taking time by the forelock he fled.

II

At this stage in Balsamo’s career even the Inquisition-biographer

ceases to vouch for the accuracy of what he relates.

“Henceforth,” he confesses, “we are obliged to accept Cagliostro’s own

assertions”--wrung from him in the torture chamber of the Castle of St.

Angelo, be it remembered--“without the means of verifying them, as no

further trace of his doings is to be found elsewhere.”

Considering that accuracy, to which no importance has been attached in

all previous books on Cagliostro, is the main object of this, after

such a statement the continuation of Balsamo’s history would appear to

be superfluous. Apart, however, from their romantic interest, Balsamo’s

subsequent adventures are really an aid to accuracy. For the character

of the man as revealed by them will be found to be so dissimilar to

Cagliostro’s as to serve more forcibly than any argument to prove how

slight are the grounds for identifying the two.

By relating what befell Balsamo on fleeing from Palermo one may

judge, from the very start, of the sort of faith to be placed in his

Inquisition-biographer. In Cagliostro’s own account of his life--which

will be duly reported in its proper place--his statements in regard to

the “noble Althotas,” that remarkable magician by whom he avowed he

was brought up, were regarded as absolutely ridiculous. Nevertheless

for the sole purpose apparently of proving Cagliostro’s identity

with Balsamo the Inquisition-biographer drags this individual

whose very existence is open to doubt into the life of the latter,

and unblushingly plunges the two into those fabulous and ludicrous

adventures, of which the description caused so much mirth at the time

of the Necklace Affair.

Thus the imaginative Inquisition-biographer declares it was at

Messina, whither he went on leaving Palermo, that Balsamo met the

“noble Althotas,” whose power “to dematerialize himself” was, to judge

from the last occasion on which he was reported to have been seen in

the flesh at Malta, only another way of saying that he was clever in

evading the police. But as Balsamo after having “overrun the whole

earth” with Althotas emerges once more into something like reality at

Naples, in the company of the renegade priest who had assisted in the

fleecing of Marano, it is not unreasonable to suppose that this city

and not Messina was his immediate destination on leaving Palermo.

He did not stay long, however, at Naples. Owing either to a quarrel

with the priest over their ill-gotten funds, or to a hint from the

police whose suspicions his conduct aroused, he went to Rome. The

statement that on his arrival he presented a letter of introduction

from the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta--one of his adventures

with Althotas--to the Baron de Bretteville, the envoy from Malta to

the Holy See, by whom in turn he was introduced to Cardinals York and

Orsini, is scarcely worth refuting. For if the Palermo Apache ever

entered the salon of a Roman noble it could of course only have been

via the _escalier de service_.

The Inquisition-biographer, however, quickly reduces him to a

situation much more in keeping with his character and condition. “Not

long,” he says, “after his arrival in Rome, Balsamo was sentenced to

three days in jail for quarrelling with one of the waiters at the sign

of the Sun, where he lodged.” On his release, he was, as is highly

probable forced to live by his wits, and instead of consorting with

Cardinals and diplomatists turned his attention to drawing. But as his

talent in this respect appears to have been as limited as his knowledge

of the occult, it is not surprising that the revenue he derived from

the sketches he copied, or from old prints, freshened up and passed off

as originals, was precarious.

Love, however, is the great consoler of poverty. About this time

Balsamo conceived a violent passion for Lorenza Feliciani, the

fourteen-year-old daughter of a “smelter of copper” who lived in an

alley close to the Church of the Trinita de’ Pellegrini--one of the

poorest quarters of Rome. Marriage followed the love-making, and

Lorenza, in spite of her tender years, in due course became his wife.

This event--which is one of the few authenticated ones in Balsamo’s

career--took place in “April 1769 in the Church of San Salvatore in

Campo.”

As the sale of her husbands pen-and-ink sketches, which in Lorenza’s

estimation at least were “superb,” was not remunerative at the best

of times, the young couple made their home at first with the bride’s

parents. And now for perhaps the only time in his life a decent

and comfortable existence was open to Balsamo. He had a young and,

according to all accounts, a beautiful wife, whom he loved and by

whom he was loved; he had a home, and the chance of adopting his

father-in-law’s more lucrative, if less congenial, trade--of settling

down, in a word, and turning over a new leaf. But he was a born

blackguard and under the circumstances it is not surprising that he

should have had the _nostalgie de la boue_. In other words his Apache

nature asserted itself, and he had no sooner married than he proceeded

with revolting cynicism to turn his wife’s charms to account.

But Lorenza, being at this stage of her career as innocent as she

was ignorant, very naturally objected to his odious proposal. By

dint, however, of persuasion and argument he finally succeeded in

indoctrinating her with his views, to the great indignation of her

parents, who, scandalized by such conduct, after frequent altercations

finally turned the couple out of the house. Whereupon Lorenza decided

to abandon any remaining scruples she had and assist her husband to the

best of her ability.

Among the acquaintances they made in this way were two Sicilians of

the worst character, Ottavio Nicastro, who finished on the gallows,

and a self-styled Marquis Agliata. The latter being an accomplished

forger was not long in discovering a similar talent in the husband of

Lorenza, by whose charms he had been smitten. He accordingly proposed

to take him into partnership, a proposition which Balsamo was ready

enough to accept. Nicastro, however, feeling himself slighted by the

close intimacy between the two, from which he was excluded, informed

the police of their doings; but as he was foolish enough to quarrel

with them beforehand, they suspected his intention, and defeated it by

a hurried flight.

If Lorenza is to be believed, their intention was to go to Germany,

and it was perhaps with this end in view that Agliata had, as the

Inquisition-biographer asserts, previously forged the brevet of a

Prussian colonelcy for Balsamo. At any rate, once out of the Papal

States they proceeded very leisurely, swindling right and left as they

went. At Loretto they obtained “fifty sequins” from the governor of the

town by means of a forged letter of introduction from Cardinal Orsini.

In this way they got as far as Bergamo, where the crafty Agliata

decided to adopt different tactics. He accordingly gave out that he

was a recruiting agent of the King of Prussia; but by some chance the

suspicions of the authorities were aroused, whereupon Agliata, having

somehow got wind of the fact, without more ado decamped, leaving

the Balsamos to shift for themselves. Scarcely had he gone when the

_sbirri_ arrived to arrest him. Not finding him, they seized the

Balsamos as his accomplices; they, however, succeeded in clearing

themselves, and on being released were ordered to leave the town. As

Agliata had gone off with all the money, they were obliged to sell

their effects to obey this injunction; and not daring to return to

Rome, they proceeded to Milan, where they arrived almost destitute.

Beggary was now their only means of existence, but even beggary may

be profitable providing one knows _how_ to beg. According to the

Countess de Lamotte, who spoke from experience, there was “only one

way of asking alms, and that was in a carriage.” In fine, “to get on”

as a beggar, as in every profession, requires ability. It is the kind

of ability with which Balsamo was abundantly gifted. Aware that the

pilgrims he saw wandering about Italy from shrine to shrine subsisted

on wayside charity, he conceived the ingenious expedient of imitating

them. As the objective of this expiatory vagabondage he selected St.

James of Compostella, one of the most popular shrines at the time in

Christendom, and consequently one to which a pilgrimage might most

easily be exploited.

So setting out from Milan, staff in hand, mumbling paternosters,

fumbling their beads, begging their way from village to village, from

presbytery to presbytery, and constantly on the alert for any chance

of improving their condition, the couple took the road to Spain. Of

this tour along the Riviera to Barcelona, where the “pilgrimage” ended,

Lorenza, on being arrested three years later in Paris, gave an account

which the Inquisition-biographer has embellished, and which in one

particular at least has been verified by no less a person than Casanova.

As it happened, this prince of adventurers--who in obedience to a

time-honoured convention is never mentioned in print, by English

writers _bien entendu_, without condemnation, though in private

conversation people wax eloquent enough over him--was himself wandering

about the South of France at the time. Arriving in Aix-en-Provence in

1770, he actually stopped in the same inn as the Balsamos, who excited

his curiosity by their lavish distribution of alms to the poor of the

town. Being a man who never missed a single opportunity of improving

any acquaintance that chance might throw in his way, he called upon the

couple, and recorded his impression in those fascinating Memoirs of

his, of which the authenticity is now fully established and, what is

more to the point, of which all the details have been verified.[6]

“I found the female pilgrim,” he says, “seated in a chair looking like

a person exhausted with fatigue, and interesting by reason of her youth

and beauty, singularly heightened by a touch of melancholy and by a

crucifix of yellow metal six inches long which she held in her hand.

Her companion, who was arranging shells on his coat of black baize,

made no movement--he appeared to intimate by the looks he cast at his

wife I was to attend to her alone.”

From the manner in which Lorenza conducted herself on this occasion she

appears to have had remarkable aptitude for acting the rôle her husband

had given her.

“We are going on foot,” she said in answer to Casanova’s questions,

“living on charity the better to obtain the mercy of God, whom I have

so often offended. Though I ask only a sou in charity, people always

give me pieces of silver and gold”--a hint Casanova did not take--“so

that arriving at a town we have to distribute to the poor all that

remains to us, in order not to commit the sin of losing confidence in

the Eternal Providence.”

Whatever doubts Casanova may have had as to her veracity, the

Inquisition-biographer most certainly had none. He declares that the

“silver and gold” of which she and her husband were so lavish at Aix

was a shameful _quid pro quo_ obtained from some officers at Antibes

whom she had fascinated.

Unfortunately there is no Casanova at Antibes to verify him or to

follow them to London via Barcelona, Madrid, and Lisbon. Lorenza

is very explicit as to where they went on leaving Aix, and as to

the time they remained in the various places they visited. The

Inquisition-biographer, _faute de mieux_, is obliged to confirm her

itinerary, but he has his revenge by either denying everything else

she says, or by putting the worst construction upon it. At all events,

between them one gets the impression that the pilgrims, for some reason

or other, abandoned their pilgrimage before reaching the shrine of St.

James of Compostella; that Lorenza was probably more truthful than she

meant to be when she says they left Lisbon “because the climate was

too hot for her”; and that however great the quantity of “silver and

gold” she was possessed of at Aix, she and her husband had divested

themselves of most of it by the time they reached London.

As to the character of their adventures by the way, it bears too close

a resemblance to those already related to be worth describing.

III

The Editor of the _Courier de l’Europe_--which journal, as previously

stated, was published in London--is the authority for the information

concerning the Balsamos in England. He ferreted out or concocted

this information _fourteen years_ later; and, as quite apart from

his motives, no one of the people he refers to as having known the

Balsamos in 1772 came forward to corroborate what he said or to

identify them with the Cagliostros, it is impossible to verify his

evidence. From the fact, however, that it was commonly accepted at the

time, and is still regarded as substantially trustworthy, _entirely

because Cagliostro absolutely denied any knowledge of the Balsamos_,

the reader may judge at once of the bitterness of the prejudice against

Cagliostro as well as of the value to be attached to such “proof.”

According to the _Courier de l’Europe_, Balsamo and his wife arrived in

London from Lisbon in 1771, and after living for a while in Leadenhall

Street moved to New Compton Street, Soho. They were, we are told, in

extreme poverty, which Lorenza--to whom vice had long ceased to be

repugnant--endeavoured to alleviate by the most despicable expedients.

As she had but indifferent success, Balsamo, having quarrelled with a

painter and decorator by name of Pergolezzi, by whom he had for a few

days been employed, assisted her in the infamous rôle of blackmailer.

Their most profitable victim appears to have been “a Quaker,” who, in

spite of the rigorous standard of morality prescribed by the sect to

which he belonged, occasionally deigned to make some secret concession

to the weakness of human nature. Decoyed by Lorenza, this individual

was discovered by her husband in so compromising a situation that

nothing short of the payment of one hundred pounds could mollify

Balsamo’s feigned indignation and avert the disgrace with which he

threatened the erring and terrified disciple of William Penn.

Their ill-gotten gains, however, did not last long; and while Lorenza

promenaded the streets in the vain quest for other victims, Balsamo

was once more obliged to have recourse to his artistic talents. But

Fortune remained hostile, and even went out of her way to vent her

spite on the couple. For a certain Dr. Moses Benamore, described as

“the envoy of the King of Barbary,” was induced to purchase some of

Balsamo’s drawings, payment of which the artist was obliged to seek

in the courts. The case, however, was decided against him, and since,

after paying the costs to which he was condemned, he was unable to pay

his rent, his landlord promptly had him arrested for debt.

To extricate him from this predicament, Lorenza adopted tactics which,

according to the Inquisition-biographer, had proved effective under

similar circumstances in Barcelona. Instead of endeavouring to excite

admiration in the streets, she now sought to stir the compassion of

the devout. Every day she was to be seen on her knees in some church

or other, with a weather-eye open for some gullible dupe whilst she

piously mumbled her prayers. In this way she managed to attract the

attention of the charitable Sir Edward Hales, or as she calls him “Sir

Dehels,” who not only procured Balsamo’s release from jail, but on

the strength of his pen-and-ink sketches employed him to decorate the

ceilings of some rooms at his country-seat near Canterbury--a task for

which he had not the least qualification. Four months later, after

ruining his ceilings, “Sir Dehels” caught his rascally _protégé_ making

love to his daughter, whereupon the Balsamos deemed it advisable to

seek another country to exploit.

IV

Fortune, like Nature, is non-moral. If proof of so palpable a fact

where required no more suitable example could be cited than the good

luck that came to the Balsamos at the very moment they least deserved

it.

Leaving England as poor as when they entered it, they found whilst

crossing the Channel between Dover and Calais, if not exactly a

fortune, what was to prove no mean equivalent in the person of a

certain M. Duplessis de la Radotte. This gentleman, formerly an

official in India, had on its evacuation by the French found an

equally lucrative post in his native country as agent of the Marquis

de Prie. Very susceptible to beauty, as Lorenza was quick to detect,

he no sooner beheld her on the deck of the Dover packet than he sought

her acquaintance. Lorenza, one imagines, must have been not only

particularly attractive and skilled by considerable practice in the art

of attraction, but a very good sailor; for in the short space of the

Channel crossing she so far succeeded in captivating Duplessis that

on reaching Calais he offered her a seat in his carriage to Paris.

Needless to say, it was not the sort of offer she was likely to refuse;

and while her husband trotted behind on horseback she turned her

opportunity to such account that Duplessis was induced to invite both

the husband and wife to be his guests in Paris.

But to cut a long story short: as the result of the acceptance of this

invitation Duplessis after a time quarrelled with Balsamo and persuaded

Lorenza to leave her husband and live under his “protection.” This

was not at all to Balsamo’s taste, and he appealed to the courts for

redress. He won his case, and Lorenza, according to the law in such

matters, was arrested and imprisoned in Sainte Pélagie, the most

famous--or infamous--penitentiary for women in France during the

eighteenth century.

* * * * *

This event occurred in 1773, if the _dossier_ discovered in the French

Archives in 1783, which contains the statement Lorenza made at the

time, is to be regarded as authentic. That _none_ of the numerous

people referred to in the _dossier_ with whom the Balsamos were very

closely connected should have come forward during the Necklace Affair

and identified Cagliostro, lays the genuineness of this celebrated

document open to doubt. Is it likely that _all_ these people had

died in the fourteen years that elapsed? If not, why did not those

who still lived attempt to satisfy the boundless curiosity that the

mysterious Cagliostro excited? He could not have changed out of all

recognition during this period, for according to Goethe, in Palermo

those who remembered Balsamo discovered, or thought they discovered, a

likeness to him in the published portraits of Cagliostro. In any case,

however much Cagliostro’s appearance may have changed, his wife’s most

certainly had not. At thirty the Countess Cagliostro possessed the

freshness of a girl of twenty. Had she been Lorenza Balsamo, she would

have been very quickly recognized.

* * * * *

But from these doubts which shake one’s faith, not only in the

_dossier_ to which so much importance has been attached, but in the

Balsamo legend itself, let us return to the still more unauthenticated

doings of our adventurers.

It was not long before Balsamo repented of his vengeance. On

his intercession his wife was released, and shortly afterwards,

to avoid arrest on his own score, the couple disappeared. The

Inquisition-biographer states vaguely that they went to “Brussels

and Germany.” But it is not a matter of any importance. A few months

later, however, Giuseppe Balsamo most unquestionably reappeared in his

native city, where he astonished all his kindred, to whom alone he made

himself known, by the splendour in which he returned.

Somewhere in the interval between his flight from Paris and his arrival

in Palermo he had metamorphosed himself into a Marchese Pellegrini,

and by the aid of Lorenza picked up a prince. Never before had they

been so flush. The Marchese Pellegrini had his carriage and valet, one

“Laroca,” a Neapolitan barber, who afterwards started business on his

own account as an adventurer. The “Marchesa” had her prince and his

purse, and what was to prove of even greater value, his influence to

draw upon. For a while, indeed, so great was his luck, Balsamo even had

thoughts of settling down and living on the fortune Lorenza had plucked

from her prince. He actually hired a house on the outskirts of Palermo

with this intention. But he counted without Marano, that “ninny of a

goldsmith,” from whose vengeance he had fled years before. For Marano

was still living, and no sooner did he become aware that the boy who

had made such a fool of him in the old treasure-digging business was

once more in Palermo than he had him seized and clapt into prison.

The matter, no doubt, must have had very serious consequences for

the Marchese Pellegrini had it not been for the powerful interest of

Lorenza’s prince. As this episode in Balsamo’s career is one of the

very few concerning which the information is authentic, it is worth

while describing.

“The manner of his escape,” says Goethe, who was told what he relates

by eye-witnesses, “deserves to be described. The son of one of the

first Sicilian princes and great landed proprietors, who had, moreover,

filled important posts at the Neapolitan Court, was a person that

united with a strong body and ungovernable temper all the tyrannical

caprice which the rich and great, without cultivation, think themselves

entitled to exhibit.

“Donna Lorenza had contrived to gain this man, and on him the

fictitious Marchese Pellegrini founded his security. The prince had

testified openly that he was the protector of this strange pair,

and his fury may be imagined when Giuseppe Balsamo, at the instance

of the man he had cheated, was cast into prison. He tried various

means to deliver him, and as these would not prosper, he publicly,

in the President’s ante-chamber, threatened Marano’s lawyer with

the frightfullest misusage if the suit were not dropped and Balsamo

forthwith set at liberty. As the lawyer declined such a proposal he

clutched him, beat him, threw him on the floor, trampled him with his

feet, and could hardly be restrained from still further outrages, when

the President himself came running out at the tumult and commanded

peace.

“This latter, a weak, dependent man, made no attempt to punish the

injurer; Marano and his lawyer grew fainthearted, and Balsamo was

let go. There was not so much as a registration in the court books

specifying his dismissal, who occasioned it, or how it took place.

“The Marchese Pellegrini,” Goethe adds, “quickly thereafter left

Palermo, and performed various travels, whereof I could obtain no clear

information.”

Nor apparently could anybody else, for on leaving Palermo this time the

Balsamos vanished as completely as if they had ceased to exist. The

_Courier de l’Europe_ and the Inquisition-biographer, however, were not

to be dismayed by any such trifling gap in the chain of evidence they

set themselves to string together. Unable to discover the least trace

of Balsamo, they seized upon two or three other swindlers, who may or

may not have been the creations of their distracted imagination, and

boldly labelled them Balsamo.

Lorenza’s honest copper-smelting father and brother are dragged from

Rome to join in the swindling operations of herself and husband. The

brother is whisked off with them to Malta and Spain, where he is

abandoned as an incubus, apparently because he objected to exploit his

good looks after the manner of his sister. Then, as it is necessary in

some way to account for Cagliostro’s occult powers, Balsamo suddenly

takes up the study of alchemy, and in the moments he snatches from

the preparation of “beauty salves” and “longevity pills,” picks an

occasional pocket.

But the most bare-faced of all these problematic Balsamos is the Don

Tiscio one, for whose existence “Dr.” Sacchi is responsible. Of Sacchi,

be it said, nothing is known to his credit. Having some knowledge of

surgery, and being in very low water, he appealed for assistance to

Cagliostro, who found some work for him in his private hospital at

Strasburg. But within a week he was dismissed for misconduct. Hereupon

Sacchi published a book, or was said to have done so--for no one

apparently but the Countess de Lamotte’s counsel in the Necklace Trial

ever saw it--in which he denounced Cagliostro as a swindler by name of

Don Tiscio who had adorned the pillory in Spain, and suffered other

punishments of a kind Sacchi preferred not to mention. Notwithstanding,

though no credence was attached to this statement when cited by the

Countess de Lamotte, it was raked up again by the _Courier de l’Europe_

with the addition that Balsamo now becomes Sacchi’s Don Tiscio.

Thus, after having been forger, swindler, blackmailer, _souteneur_,

quack, pickpocket--all of the commonest type--Balsamo, on the word

of a disreputable Sacchi, supported by a few singular coincidences,

is saved without rhyme or reason from the gallows in Cadiz, on which

he very probably perished, in order to be brought back to London as

Count Cagliostro, a highly accomplished charlatan and past-master in

wonder-working. An improbability that even the Inquisition-biographer

is unable to pass over in silence.

“How,” he exclaims in amazement, “could such a man without either

physical or intellectual qualities, devoid of education, connections,

or even the appearance of respectability, whose very language was a

barbarous dialect--how could he have succeeded as he did?”

How, indeed! The transformation is obviously so improbable that the

puzzled reader will very likely come to the conclusion that, whoever

Cagliostro may have been, he could certainly never have been Giuseppe

Balsamo.

But enough of speculation; let us now turn our belated attention to the

man whose career under the impenetrable _incognito_ of Count Cagliostro

is the subject of this book.

PART II

CHAPTER I

CAGLIOSTRO IN LONDON

I

Some time in July 1776--the exact date is unascertainable--two

foreigners of unmistakable respectability, to judge by their

appearance, if not of distinction, arrived in London and engaged a

suite of furnished apartments in Whitcombe Street, Leicester Fields.

They called themselves Count and Countess Cagliostro; and their

landlady, who lost no time in letting everybody in the house, as well

as her neighbours, know she had people of title as lodgers, added that

she believed they were Italian, though so far as she could understand

from the Count’s very broken English they had last come from Portugal.

A day or two later she was able to inform her gossips, which no doubt

she did with even greater satisfaction, that her foreign lodgers were

not only titled but undoubtedly rich, for the Countess had very fine

jewels and the Count was engaged in turning one of the rooms he had

rented into a laboratory, as he intended to devote himself to the study

of physics and chemistry, subjects, it seemed, in which he was keenly

interested.

Their first visitor was a Madame Blevary, a lady in reduced

circumstances who lodged in the same house. Hearing they had come from

Portugal, and being herself a native of that country, she sought their

acquaintance in the hope of deriving some personal benefit from it. In

this she was not disappointed; for the Countess, who knew no English,

required a companion, and as Madame Blevary was conversant with several

languages and had the manners of a gentlewoman, she readily obtained

the post on the recommendation of the landlady.

Among the acquaintances Madame Blevary informed of her good fortune,

which she was no doubt induced to dilate upon, was a certain Vitellini,

an ex-Jesuit and professor of languages. Like her, he too had fallen

on hard times; but in his case the love of gambling had been his

ruin. He was also, as it happened, almost equally devoted to the

study of chemistry, on a knowledge of which he particularly piqued

himself. No sooner, therefore, did he learn that Count Cagliostro had

a similar hobby, and a laboratory into the bargain, than he persuaded

Madame Blevary to introduce him to the Count, in the hope that he

too might profit by the acquaintance as she had done. As a result of

this introduction, Vitellini succeeded in ingratiating himself into

the favour of Cagliostro, who employed him in the laboratory as an

assistant.

Stinginess was a quality of which neither the Count nor his wife was

ever accused. On the contrary, as even those most prejudiced against

them have been obliged to admit, they were exceedingly generous.

With them, however, generosity was one of those amiable weaknesses

that are as pernicious in their effect as a vice. There were few who

experienced it but abused it in some way. It was so in this instance.

Vitellini, who was at bottom more of a fool than a knave, in the first

flush of excitement over the sudden turn of tide in his fortunes which

had long been at the lowest ebb, began to brag to his acquaintances in

the gambling-dens and coffee-houses he frequented of his connection

with Cagliostro, whom he described as “an extraordinary man, a true

adept, whose fortune was immense, and who possessed the secret of

transmuting metals.”

Such praise naturally excited the curiosity of Vitellini’s

acquaintances, who in their turn were eager to meet the benevolent

foreigner. Thus by the indiscretion of Vitellini, Cagliostro was

soon besieged by a crowd of shady people whose intentions were so

apparent that he was obliged in the end to refuse to receive them when

they called. But this only exasperated them; and one in particular,

Pergolezzi--the painter and decorator by whom the reader will recall

Balsamo was for a time employed--“threatened to blast the reputation

of the Count by circulating a report throughout London that he was

ignorant and necessitous, of obscure birth, and had once before resided

in England.”[7]

Vitellini, needless to say, perceiving the effect of his folly, now

hastened to put a curb on his tongue lest he too should be shown the

door. But as the sequel will prove, discretion came to him too late

to benefit him. For Madame Blevary, who also entertained in secret a

similar opinion of her patron’s wealth and knowledge, was one of those

whose cupidity had been excited by Vitellini’s gossip. She at least had

the advantage of being on the inner side of the Count’s door, and she

determined while she had the chance to profit by it.

To this effect she bethought herself of “one Scott, a man of ambiguous

character, and the pliability of whose principles was such that he was

ever ready to convert them to the interest of the present moment.” It

was accordingly arranged between them that Scott should impersonate a

Scotch nobleman, in which guise it was hoped the Cagliostros would be

effectually deceived as to his intentions. A severe illness, however,

with which she was suddenly seized, and during which the Cagliostros

“supplied her with every necessary comfort,” prevented Madame Blevary

from personally introducing her confederate. Nevertheless she did not

abandon the idea she had conceived, and ill though she was, she sent

word to Cagliostro that “Lord Scott, of whom she had often spoken

to him, had arrived in town and proposed to himself the honour of

introduction that afternoon.”

Entirely unsuspicious of the treachery of a woman who owed so much to

their generosity, the Count and Countess received “Lord Scott” on his

arrival. His appearance, it seems, did not exactly tally with such

notions as Cagliostro had formed either of the man or his rank. But

Scott succeeded in dispelling his disappointment, and swindling him

into the bargain, by way of gentle beginning, out of £12 in Portuguese

money which he undertook to get exchanged for its English equivalent,

afterwards declaring with well-feigned mortification “he had lost it

through a hole in his pocket.”

A Giuseppe Balsamo, one imagines, would have been the last person

in the world to be taken in by such a story. Cagliostro, however,

swallowed it without hesitation; and begging Scott, who confusedly

regretted he was in no position to make good the loss, to think no more

about it, invited him to come to dinner the next day.

Whether Madame Blevary got a share of these or subsequent spoils is

not known, for at this point she disappears from the scene altogether.

Perhaps she died of that severe illness in which she received from the

Cagliostros while betraying them so many “proofs of their generosity

and humanity.” In any case, her place was most completely filled

by “Lady Scott,” who was at this period presented by Scott to the

Cagliostros, and from whom in an incredibly short time she managed to

borrow on her simple note of hand £200.

II

Owing to the prejudice against Cagliostro, a construction wholly

unfavourable to him has been placed upon the extraordinary series of

events that now ensued. This construction, however, cannot be allowed

to pass unchallenged. For it is based solely on the accusations of

the Editor of the _Courier de l’Europe_, who was the bitter enemy of

Cagliostro. Now though it may be the custom in France for the accused

to be considered guilty till he proves his innocence, the contrary

is the custom in England, where fortunately it requires something

more than the mere word of a single and professedly hostile witness

to condemn a man. The Editor of the _Courier de l’Europe_ declared

that “upwards of twenty persons” would confirm his statements. None,

however, offered to do so. Under such circumstances, as we are reduced

to dealing with prejudices, I shall in this particular instance confess

to one in favour of an ancient English principle of justice, and give

Cagliostro the benefit of the doubt. His word at least is as much

entitled to respect as that of the Editor of the _Courier de l’Europe_.

There is, moreover, much in his spirited defence even worthy of

credence.

* * * * *

Having found him so easy to dupe, the crew by whom he was surrounded

naturally devoted their attention to increasing the friendship they had

formed with him and his wife. Not a day passed but “Lord” Scott and his

lady paid the Count and Countess a visit, and as it was their habit to

drop in just before dinner or supper they soon managed to obtain their

meals at the expense of the hospitable foreigners.

On one of these occasions the conversation having turned on a lottery

in which his guests were interested, Cagliostro was reminded of “a

manuscript he had found in the course of his travels which contained

many curious cabalistic operations by aid of which the author set

forth the possibilities of calculating winning numbers.” But since

the matter was not one in which he had hitherto taken any particular

interest, he was unwilling to express an opinion as to the value of

these calculations, “having long contracted the habit of suspending his

judgment on subjects he had not investigated.” On being urged, however,

he consented to consult the manuscript; whereupon, to test its system,

Scott “risked a trifle” and won upwards of a hundred pounds.

But whatever opinion Cagliostro may now have formed as to the value to

be attached to these “cabalistic operations,” he refused to put them

to further test. Gambling would appear to have had no attraction for

him. Not only, if we are to believe him, did he risk nothing himself,

or benefit in any way by the winning numbers he predicted on this

occasion, but _never afterwards_ is there to be found any allusion

to gambling in the records that relate to his career. His aversion,

however, which others--notably Mirabeau--have also shared, is not

necessarily to be regarded as a virtue. There are many who, without

objecting to gambling on moral grounds, are unable to find any pleasure

in it.

Apart from all other considerations, Cagliostro had a strong personal

motive for his refusal to make a business of predicting winning

numbers for Scott. He was too completely absorbed in his alchemical

experiments to find an interest in anything else. Of what value was

the most perfect betting system in the world compared with the secret

of transmuting metals, making diamonds, and prolonging life? To the

man who is wrapped up in such things, lotteries and the means of

winning them are beneath contempt. He has not only got something more

profitable to do than waste his time in calculating lucky numbers, but

he is on a plane above the ordinary gambler.

This, however, was a distinction that Scott, who was merely a vulgar

sharper, was incapable of either making himself or appreciating when

made. After his success in testing the system he believed it to be

infallible. To be refused so simple a means of making a fortune was

intolerable. In his exasperation he dropped the rôle of Scotch nobleman

altogether and appeared in his real character as the common rogue he

was, whereupon Cagliostro promptly showed him the door and refused to

have any further intercourse with him.

“Lady” Scott, however, a few days later forced herself upon the

Countess, and endeavoured to excite her compassion with the relation

of a pitiful story, in which she declared that Scott, by whom she had

been betrayed, had decamped with the profit arising from the lottery,

leaving her and three children entirely destitute. The Countess,

touched by this imaginary tale, generously interceded in her behalf

with the Count, who sent her “a guinea and a number for the following

day.” Miss Fry, to give her her real name, no sooner obtained this

number than she and Scott risked every penny they could raise upon it.

Fortune once more favoured them and they won on this occasion the sum

of fifteen hundred guineas.

In the first moment of exultation Miss Fry at once rushed off to the

Cagliostros with the whole of her winnings, which she offered to the

Count as a token of her gratitude and confidence in him. But Cagliostro

was not to be caught in this cunningly laid snare. He received her very

coldly and refused to concern himself in her affairs.

“If you will take my advice,” he said, “you will go into the country

with your three children and live on the interest of your money. If I

have obliged you, the only return I desire is that you will never more

re-enter my doors.”

But Miss Fry was not to be got rid of in this fashion. Dazzled by the

golden shower the Count’s predictions had caused to rain upon her,

she sighed for more numbers, and to obtain them she had recourse to

Vitellini, in the hope that as he was still employed by the Count he

might succeed in getting them for her. So eager was she to procure them

that she gave Vitellini twenty guineas in advance as an earnest of her

sincerity and to increase his zeal in the matter.

But though Vitellini was, needless to say, only too eager to oblige

her, Cagliostro was not to be persuaded to gratify him. Hereupon,

Miss Fry, repenting of her liberality, made a debt of her gift, and

had Vitellini, who was unable to repay her, imprisoned. Cagliostro,

however, generously came to the rescue, and obtained his release. This

action awoke a belated sense of gratitude in the fellow, which he

afterwards ineffectually attempted to prove.

But to return to Miss Fry. Having failed to turn Vitellini to account,

she determined to approach the Countess and lay her, if possible, under

an obligation. After considering various schemes by which this was to

be effected, she “purchased of a pawnbroker a diamond necklace for

which she paid £94.” She then procured a box with two compartments, in

one of which she placed the necklace, and in the other some snuff of

a rare quality that she knew the Countess liked, and watching for an

opportunity of finding her alone, managed to get access to her.

In the hands of a Miss Fry, the Countess, who was the most amiable,

pliable, and insignificant of creatures, was like wax. Cleverly turning

the conversation so as to suit her purpose, Miss Fry casually produced

the box and opening the compartment containing the snuff prevailed

upon the Countess to take a pinch. After this it was an easy matter to

persuade her to keep the box. Two days later the Countess discovered

the necklace. As she had been forbidden to receive any presents from

Miss Fry, she at once reported the matter to her husband. He was for

returning the necklace at once, but as the Countess, who doubtless had

no desire to part with it, suggested that to do so after having had

it so long in her possession would appear “indelicate,” Cagliostro

foolishly consented to let her keep it. As to retain the gift without

acknowledging it would have been still more indelicate, Miss Fry was

accordingly once more permitted to resume her visits.

Fully alive to the fact that she was only received on sufferance, she

was naturally very careful not to jeopardize the position she had

recovered with so much difficulty by any indiscretion. She by no means,

however, lost sight of the object she had in view. Hearing that the

Cagliostros were moving to Suffolk Street, she hired a room in the same

house where it was impossible to avoid her. As she had told Cagliostro

that she intended to follow his advice and live in the country

with her three children--a fiction to which she still adhered--he

naturally inquired the reason of her continued residence in London.

She gave a lack of the necessary funds as her excuse, and hinted, as

he had broached the subject, that he should “extricate her from her

embarrassment by giving her numbers for the French lottery.”

The Count ignored the hint. But in consideration of the necklace she

had given the Countess, and with the hope of being entirely rid of her,

he gave her £50 to defray the expense of her journey into the country.

This was, however, not at all to Miss Fry’s taste. She wanted numbers

for the French lottery, and meant to have them too, or know the reason

why, as the saying is. Accordingly, the next day she trumped up some

fresh story of debts and absconding creditors, and, appealing to the

compassion of the Countess, implored her to intercede with the Count to

give her the numbers she wanted.

Cagliostro was now thoroughly annoyed. To settle the matter once for

all, he told her that “he believed the success of the system was due

more to chance than to calculation; but whether it was effected by the

one or the other he was resolved to have no further concern in anything

of that nature.” The manner in which these words were uttered was too

emphatic to permit Miss Fry to continue to cherish the least hope of

ever being able to induce Cagliostro to change his mind. Still, even

now she refused to accept defeat. The numbers had become to her like

morphia to a _morphineuse_; and precisely as the latter to obtain the

drug she craves will resort to the most desperate stratagems, so Miss

Fry determined to execute a scheme she had long premeditated by which

Cagliostro was to be _compelled_ to give her the numbers.

III

This scheme, described by an ardent defender of Cagliostro against the

violent denunciations of the Editor of the _Courier de l’Europe_ as

“the most diabolic that ever entered into the heart of ingratitude,”

was nothing more nor less than a sort of muscular blackmail. Taking

advantage of his ignorance of English, Cagliostro was to be arrested on

a false charge and simultaneously robbed of the precious manuscript by

which he predicted the numbers.

To assist in the execution of her plan Miss Fry, who was the life and

soul of the conspiracy, had the help of a barrister named Reynolds,

“who, notwithstanding his expertness in the pettifogging finesse of the

low law, could not preserve himself from an ignominious exhibition in

the pillory”; a rough known as Broad; and, of course, Scott.

When everything was arranged, Miss Fry brought an action against

Cagliostro to recover £190, the writ for which was served by Reynolds,

apparently by bribing the sheriff’s officer. Thus armed, he proceeded

to Cagliostro’s house accompanied by the others, and while he explained

to the amazed Count, who had never seen him before, the object of his

visit and the authority for what he did, Scott and Broad broke into the

laboratory, where they found and took possession of the manuscript and

the note-of-hand for the two hundred pounds the Count had lent Miss

Fry, who during these highly criminal proceedings had the shrewdness

to “wait on the stairs” without. Reynolds then conducted Cagliostro

to a sponging-house, from which he was released the following day by

depositing with Saunders, the sheriffs officer, “jewels worth three or

four hundred pounds.”

The conspirators, however, baffled by the release of Cagliostro, from

whom they had obtained nothing but the note-of-hand and the manuscript,

of which they could make neither head nor tail, at once renewed their

persecution. This time they procured a warrant for the arrest of

both himself and his wife on the charge of practising _witchcraft_.

The fact that it was possible to obtain a warrant on so ridiculous a

charge, which both those who made it, as well as the official by whom

the warrant was granted, were perfectly aware would be dismissed with

contempt the moment it was investigated, explains how easy it was,

under the corrupt and chaotic state of the legal system of the period,

to convert the protection of the law into a persecution. Indeed,

unauthenticated though they are, none of the legal proceedings in which

Cagliostro was now involved are improbable. On the contrary their

probability is so great as almost to guarantee their credibility.

By a bribe--for it can scarcely be termed bail--Cagliostro and his

wife escaped the inconvenience of being taken to jail before the

investigation of the charge on which they were apprehended. Seeing

that their victim was not to be terrified, his persecutors tried other

tactics. Reynolds was deputed to persuade him, if possible, to explain

the system by which he predicted the winning numbers. But Cagliostro

indignantly refused to gratify him when he called, whereupon Scott,

who had remained without the door, his ear glued to the key-hole,

perceiving that the eloquence of Reynolds failed to produce the desired

effect, suddenly burst into the room, and “presenting a pistol to the

breast of the Count, threatened to discharge it that instant unless he

consented to reveal the secrets they demanded.”

This species of bluff, however, was equally futile. Cagliostro regarded

the bully and his pistol with contemptuous composure--particularly

as he did not discharge it. He assured him that nothing was to be

accomplished by solicitations or threats, but as he desired to be

left in peace he was ready “to think no more of the note-of-hand

they had robbed him of, and would even let them have the effects he

had deposited with Saunders, the sheriffs officer, on condition the

proceedings against him were dropped and the manuscript returned.”

Seeing there was no better alternative, Reynolds and Scott decided

to accept the proposition, and immediately went with Cagliostro to

Saunders’ house to settle the matter. But Saunders, realizing that

Cagliostro’s troubles were due to his gullibility, ignorance of

English, and apparent fortune, was tempted to reserve the plucking of

so fat a bird for himself. He accordingly advised the Count not to

compromise the matter, but to bring in his turn an action for robbery

against the crew of sharpers into whose power he had fallen. Cagliostro

was easily induced to accept this advice, and with the aid of Saunders

procured four warrants for the arrest of Scott, Reynolds, Broad, and

Miss Fry. The last, however, aware that the charge against her could

not be substantiated, as she had not personally been present at the

time of the robbery, made no attempt to escape, and was taken into

custody--from which, as she had foreseen, she soon freed herself. As

for the other three, perceiving that the game was up, they took time by

the forelock and disappeared while they had the chance.

But Cagliostro had yet to realize what a vindictive fury he had to

deal with in Miss Fry. The two actions she had instituted against him

had not been quashed, as she took care daily to let him know in ways

studiously calculated to render the reminder particularly harassing.

Saunders, with whom he had now become intimate, was “much concerned at

this persecution, and repeatedly advised him to take an apartment in

his house.”

Now little as Cagliostro was acquainted with English customs, he was

not so ignorant, as he himself confesses, as not to understand that

such a proposition was “singular”; but as Saunders had been kind

to him, “kept his carriage,” and appeared in every way worthy of

respect, the Count, being desirous of purchasing tranquillity, without

hesitation accepted the invitation.

Because no Englishman would have done so, and it appears absurd to

picture even a foreigner passing six weeks of his own accord in a

sponging-house, the visit Cagliostro now paid to Saunders is generally

regarded as anything but voluntary. But how much more absurd is the

assertion of the Editor of the _Courier de l’Europe_--the _only_

other source of information beside Cagliostro in regard to these

proceedings--that the Count was “constrained from _poverty_” to reside

with Saunders! Even if foreigners in distress would be likely to seek

refuge in a sponging-house, is it at all likely that they would be

admitted just because of their _poverty_?

“I occupied,” says Cagliostro, “the finest apartment in the house.

There was always a seat at my table for a chance comer. I defrayed the

expenses of the poor prisoners confined there, and even paid the debts

of some, who thus obtained their freedom.” Of these, one “Shannon, a

chemist,” is quoted by him as being ready to testify to the truth of

the statement. Be this as it may, after six weeks Cagliostro once more

returned to his rooms in Suffolk Street to the “sensible regret of

Saunders.”

But scarcely had he arrived when he was served for the third time with

a writ issued at the instigation of Miss Fry for “a debt of £200.” At

the instance of Saunders, an Italian merchant named Badioli was induced

to be his surety. Saunders, whose interest in his affairs was inspired

by the profit he calculated on deriving from them, also recommended him

to engage as counsel to defend him a certain Priddle whom Cagliostro

had met in the sponging-house. Thus supported, and conscious of

innocence, he awaited his trial with comparative composure.

The case came on in due course at the King’s Bench, but Priddle,

discovering that it was to be tried by Lord Mansfield, whom he dared

not face, backed out of it altogether. Left without counsel at the

last moment, Cagliostro was driven in desperation to defend his cause

himself. As his knowledge of English was very imperfect, he was obliged

to have an interpreter, and, none other apparently being available,

he employed Vitellini. But as Vitellini, either owing to excitement

caused by the responsibility he was suddenly called upon to assume, or

to an equally imperfect knowledge of English, could not make himself

understood, Lord Mansfield, to avoid further confusion, and perceiving

from the charge of witchcraft that the case was trivial, suggested

a compromise and recommended a Mr. Howarth as arbitrator. To this

proposal Cagliostro was compelled, and Miss Fry was only too glad, to

consent.

The first thing Howarth had to decide was Miss Fry’s first claim to

£190, which she alleged she had lent the Count. As she had no proof

whatever to advance in support of her claim, it was at once set aside.

The charge of witchcraft was also with similar expedition dismissed as

“frivolous.”

In her attempt to substantiate her other claim to £200, Miss Fry

and her witness Broad very nearly perjured themselves. They both

asserted that the money had been expended “in purchasing sequins”

for Cagliostro. Questioned by Howarth as to how he had obtained the

sequins, Broad replied that he had “bought them of a merchant whose

name he could not recollect.” At this Howarth, whose suspicions

were naturally aroused by such a reply, observed that “it must have

been a very large amount of sequins to represent £200, and he did

not believe any merchant would have such a quantity on hand.” Broad

hereupon declared he had not bought them of one merchant, “but of about

_fourscore_.” But on being pressed by Howarth he could not remember the

names or places of abode of any of them.

Nor could Miss Fry assist him to disentangle himself. She stated that

“a Jew of whose name she was ignorant had brought the sequins to

her.” After this there was nothing for Howarth to do but dismiss the

charge, which he did with “a severe reprimand.” Miss Fry, however,

was not to be beaten without a further effort. She demanded that the

necklace should be returned to her, which she declared she had only

_lent_ to the Countess. To this Cagliostro saw fit to protest, but as

Vitellini failed to express his reasons intelligibly, Howarth came to

the conclusion that the necklace at least belonged to Miss Fry. He

therefore ordered the Count to return it to her, and pay the costs of

the arbitration into the bargain.

This decision, however, by no means put an end to the troubles of

Cagliostro.

Whether at his own request, or by order of Howarth, he seems to

have been given a few days in which to conform to the ruling of the

arbitrator. But Badioli, his surety, no sooner learnt the result of

the case than, dreading lest Cagliostro should decamp and leave him to

pay the costs and compensate Miss Fry, he resolved to release himself

from his obligations by surrendering the Count. Keeping his intention

a profound secret, he paid a friendly visit to Cagliostro, and at

the close carried him off for a drive in the park. “On their way,”

says an anonymous author of the only contemporary book in defence of

Cagliostro, “they alighted at a judge’s chambers, where Mr. Badioli

said he had business to settle. They then again entered the coach,

which in a short time stopped before an edifice of which the Count was

ignorant. However, his companion entering, he followed his example;

when Mr. Badioli, making a slight apology, desired him to wait there a

few minutes, saying which he left him.

“Minutes and hours elapsed, but no Mr. Badioli appeared. The Count

then endeavoured to return through the door at which they had entered,

but found himself repulsed, though he was ignorant of the cause. He

remained till evening in the greatest agitation of mind, roving from

place to place, when he attracted the observation of a foreigner, who

having heard his story, and made the necessary inquiries, informed him

that he was a prisoner in the King’s Bench.

“Two days had elapsed before the Countess was able to obtain any

information concerning him.”

IV

The conduct of Badioli, who had taken so treacherous an advantage of

his ignorance of the English language and law, was to Cagliostro the

unkindest cut of all. After such convincing proofs of its hostility,

to continue to struggle against adversity seemed no doubt futile.

He accepted the situation apathetically. More than a month elapsed

before he apparently took steps to procure his release--even then the

proceedings which resulted in his liberation from the King’s Bench

prison do not appear to have been instituted by himself, but by a

certain O’Reilly. Now as this good Samaritan was previously unknown to

him, there is reason to suppose that he was delegated by the Esperance

Lodge of Freemasons, of which the Count was a member, to assist him.

For O’Reilly was the proprietor of the “King’s Head in Gerard Street

where the Esperance Lodge assembled.”[8]

Through the instrumentality of O’Reilly, for whose kindness on this

occasion Cagliostro was ever after grateful, fresh bail was procured.

But as the summer vacation had commenced, Miss Fry had the right--which

she was only too glad to avail herself of--to refuse to accept the bail

offered till the end of the vacation. O’Reilly, however, was not a

Saunders; his interest in the Count was not mercenary, and being fully

conversant with the intricate workings of the law, he applied directly

to Lord Mansfield, who at once ordered Miss Fry’s attorney to accept

the bail.

Considering the evidences Cagliostro had had of this woman’s fury, it

was not surprising that he should have attributed the extraordinary

circumstances that now occurred to her vindictive ingenuity. As he was

preparing to leave the King’s Bench, “Mr. Crisp, the under-marshal of

the prison, informed him that one Aylett had lodged a detainer against

him by name of Melisa Cagliostro, otherwise Joseph Balsamo, for a debt

of £30.” The Count demanded with the utmost surprise the meaning of

this new intrigue. Crisp replied that Aylett declared the sum specified

was due to him as his fee, with interest added, from “one Joseph

Balsamo, by whom he had been employed in the year 1772 to recover a

debt of a Dr. Benamore.”

It mattered not in the least that Cagliostro protested “he had never

seen Aylett, and did not believe Aylett had ever seen him,” or that

Aylett himself did not appear in person. As the law then stood, Crisp’s

statement was sufficient to detain the unfortunate Count, whom he in

his turn was anxious to bleed while he had the chance. Accordingly,

while admitting that without Aylett’s consent he was not empowered to

accept the bail which Cagliostro eagerly offered him, Crisp was only

ready to let him go “if he could deposit in his hand thirty pounds to

indemnify him.”

To this proposition Cagliostro consented, but as he had not the cash

upon him he asked Crisp if he would accept its equivalent in plate,

promising to redeem it the next day. His request was granted, and

Cagliostro remained in King’s Bench while O’Reilly went to the Countess

for the plate in question, which consisted of “two soup-ladles, two

candlesticks, two salt-cellars, two pepper-castors, six forks, six

table-spoons, nine knife-handles with blades, a pair of snuffers and

stand, all of silver.”

The next day, true to his promise, the Count paid Crisp thirty pounds.

Crisp, however, instead of giving back the plate, declared that Aylett

had been to him in the meantime, and on learning that he had freed

the prisoner was highly exasperated and demanded the plate, which

had consequently been given him. As Aylett, on the other hand, when

questioned, declared that Crisp “was a liar,” “it was impossible,” says

Cagliostro, “for me to ascertain by whom I was plundered.”

Of all the incidents in this series of “injustices,” as he termed

it, of which he was the victim the most curious is undoubtedly

the unexpected advent of Aylett upon the scene in a rôle totally

unconnected with the development, so to speak, of the plot of the

play. Considering that he was the first person on record to state that

Cagliostro was Giuseppe Balsamo, it is worth while inquiring into his

reason for doing so and the value to be attached to it.

Aylett’s reputation, to begin with, was such as to render the truth of

any statement he might make extremely doubtful, if not to invalidate it

altogether. Like Reynolds and Priddle, he was a rascally attorney who

had been “convicted of perjury and exposed in the pillory.” Granting

that he had defended Balsamo in his action against Dr. Benamore, and

was sufficiently struck by the resemblance of Cagliostro to his old

client as to believe them to be the same person, his conduct on the

present occasion was decidedly ambiguous. According to his statement,

“happening one day in 1777 to be in Westminster Hall, he perceived

a person that he immediately recognized as Balsamo, whom he had not

seen since 1772.” Instead of accosting him then and there, he decided

to find out where he lived; and after much difficulty learnt that the

person he had seen and believed to be Balsamo was in the King’s Bench

prison and that his name was Cagliostro; whereupon, _without taking the

least step to ascertain whether he was right or not in his surmise_, he

laid a detainer against him for the money Balsamo owed him. No record

of any kind exists as to what passed between Aylett and Cagliostro when

they finally met, or in fact whether they met at all.

That Aylett would, after having received Cagliostro’s plate or

money from Crisp, have admitted he had made a mistake is, judging

from the man’s character, not to be credited. But what renders this

singular matter still more questionable is the fact that the Editor

of the _Courier de l’Europe_ nine years later, when publishing his

“incontestable proofs” of the identity of Balsamo with Cagliostro,

should have accepted the statement of Aylett and _ignored_ that of

Dr. Benamore, who was also living at the time and whose position as

representative in England for thirty years of the various Barbary

States would, to say the least, have given the weight of respectability

to his word. Now as there is no doubt at all that the Editor of the

_Courier de l’Europe_ passionately desired that his proofs should

really be “incontestable,” there is only one explanation of his conduct

in this matter possible: Dr. Benamore must have _refused to make the

statement requested of him_.

On the other hand, Cagliostro--and his word, even prejudice must admit,

is to be trusted quite as much as that of an Aylett or the Editor of

the _Courier de l’Europe_--asserts in the most emphatic language that

Dr. Benamore was ready to testify in _his_ behalf to a total ignorance

of the very name of Balsamo.

As it is impossible to verify either one or the other of these

statements, the reader must be left to form his own conclusions.

Having once more regained his liberty, Cagliostro very wisely sought

safety from further molestation by taking up his abode with his wife

“in O’Reilly’s hotel,” where he resided during the remainder of his

stay in London. On the recommendation of his friend he employed a

lawyer by the name of James, through whom he succeeded in recovering

the jewels which, it will be remembered, he had deposited with Saunders

as bail in the first suit brought against him by Miss Fry. As he

could, no doubt, have managed to decamp without returning the necklace

or paying the costs of his trial as ordered by the arbitrator--the

date named for the settlement was still some weeks off--it is, under

the circumstances and considering all that has been said against him,

decidedly to his credit that he remained and fulfilled his obligations.

He states--and there is no reason to disbelieve him--that O’Reilly and

James, after the final settlement of his case, tried hard to persuade

him “to commence an action against Aylett for perjury, another against

Crisp for swindling, and one of blackmail against Fry, Scott, Reynolds

and Broad,” He was, however, not to be beguiled into any such costly

and uncertain undertakings.

“The injustices,” he says, “I had experienced rendered me unjust

to myself, and attributing to the whole nation the faults of a few

individuals I determined to leave a place in which I had found neither

laws, justice, nor hospitality.”

Accordingly, having given O’Reilly, with whom he continued in close

communication, a power of attorney to use in case of need, he left for

Brussels “with no more than fifty pounds in cash and some jewels.”

He afterwards asserted that during the eighteen months he had resided

in London he had been defrauded of 3000 guineas.

In this a hostile writer--with sheep-like fidelity to popular

prejudice--sees “the native excellence of English talent, when the

most accomplished swindler of the swindling eighteenth century was so

hobbled, duped, and despoiled by the aid of the masterly fictions of

English law.”

It is possible, however, to draw another and more sensible inference

from this legal _escroquerie_ of which Cagliostro was the dupe, than

one based on mere prejudice. As his fame, needless to say, lies not in

proved charges of embezzlement, but in the secrets of the crucible and

the mysteries of Egyptian Masonry, it is clearly by his adventures in

the laboratory and the lodge rather than by those which led him to the

King’s Bench and the Bastille that he is to be judged. Since it is a

question of swindling, it is perhaps just as well to bear in mind the

_character_ of these accomplished impostures to which so much obloquy

has been attached. Accordingly, before attempting to draw aside the

figurative curtain which conceals him, as Carlyle’s “hand itched” to

do, it is essential to examine the fabric, so to speak, of the curtain

itself--in other words, to get some idea of what was understood by the

Occult in Cagliostro’s day.

As I have no intention of entering this labyrinth of perpetual darkness

which none but an adept is capable of treading, I shall merely stand on

the threshold. There, at any rate, it is light enough for the reader to

see as much as is necessary for the present purpose.