MASKED AND UNMASKED
I
Before leaving England, during an interlude in the persecution to which
he had been subjected, Cagliostro had become a Freemason. This event,
innocent enough in itself, though destined years later to have such
terrible consequences for him, occurred on April 12, 1777. The lodge
he joined was the Esperance, which met in a room of the King’s Head in
Gerard Street, Soho.
According to the Editor of the _Courier de l’Europe_, who professed to
have obtained the particulars of his admission and initiation from an
eye-witness, the Count on this occasion described himself as “Joseph
Cagliostro, Colonel of the 3rd Regiment of Brandenburg.”[10] Three
other members were received at the same time: Pierre Boileau, a valet;
Count Ricciarelli, “musician and alchemist, aged seventy-six”; and the
Countess Cagliostro.
There was a full attendance of members, “Brother” Hardivilliers, an
upholsterer, presiding. Out of courtesy to her sex the Countess was
received first. Her initiation consisted in taking the prescribed oath,
after which “she was given a garter on which the device of the lodge,
_Union, Silence, Virtue_, was embroidered, and ordered to wear it on
going to bed that night.”
The ceremony, however, of making the “Colonel of the 3rd Regiment of
Brandenburg” a Freemason was characterized by the horseplay usual
on such occasions. By means of a rope attached to the ceiling the
“Colonel” was hoisted into the air, and allowed to drop suddenly to the
floor--an idiotic species of buffoonery that entailed unintentionally
a slight injury to his hand. His eyes were then bandaged, and a loaded
pistol having been given him, he was ordered by “Brother” Hardivilliers
to blow out his brains. As he not unnaturally manifested a lively
repugnance to pull the trigger he was assailed with cries of “coward”
by the assembly. “To give him courage” the president made him take the
oath. It was as follows--
“I, Joseph Cagliostro, in presence of the great Architect of the
Universe and my superiors in this respectable assembly, promise to do
all that I am ordered, and bind myself under penalties known only to
my superiors to obey them blindly without questioning their motives or
seeking to discover the secret of the mysteries in which I shall be
initiated either by word, sign, or writing.”
The pistol--an unloaded one this time--was again put into his hand.
Reassured, but still trembling, he placed the muzzle to his temple and
pulled the trigger. At the same time he heard the report of another
pistol, received a blow on the head, and tearing the bandage from his
eyes found himself--a Freemason![11]
To make these perfectly harmless particulars, which were published by
the Editor of the _Courier de l’Europe_ with the express purpose of
damaging Cagliostro, appear detrimental, their malignant author cites
the menial occupations of the members of the Esperance Lodge, who were
chiefly petty tradesmen and servants of foreign birth, as indicative of
the low origin and questionable status of the self-styled Count. Such
a reproach from its manifest absurdity is scarcely worth repeating. If
any inference is to be drawn from Cagliostro’s association with the
hairdressers and upholsterers, the valets and shoemakers, of whom the
Esperance Lodge chiefly consisted, it is to be drawn from the character
of his lodge, and certainly not from the occupations of his brother
masons.
The Order of Strict Observance, to which the Esperance Lodge was
affiliated, was one of the many secret societies grafted on to
Freemasonry in the eighteenth century. It had been founded in the
middle of the century in Germany by a Baron von Hundt with the object
of reviving the Order of the Knights Templar, who were regarded by the
seditious as classic victims of papal and monarchical tyranny.[12]
Hundt’s Order of Strict Observance, however, at the beginning at any
rate, was the very opposite of a revolutionary character; though to
the Church of Rome, aware that it perpetuated the tradition of the
Templars, it was none the less anathema. To this fact the stories
may be traced which caused Freemasonry as a whole to be suspected of
conspiring to “trample the lilies under-foot.”
In England the Order of Strict Observance was purely philanthropic and
social, though there, as elsewhere, it was steeped in occultism--a fact
which of itself is quite sufficient to explain why Cagliostro joined
the Esperance Lodge. The importance, moreover, acquired by this masonic
order, whose lodges were scattered all over Europe, also explains the
comparative ease with which he afterwards exploited the curiosity his
remarkable faculties aroused.
The precise manner, however, in which he laid the foundations of his
fame can only be conjectured. Between November 1777, when Cagliostro
left England unknown and impoverished, and March 1779, when he arrived
in Courland to be received into the highest society, his movements are
wrapped in mystery.
“My fifty guineas,” he says, “which was all that I possessed on leaving
London, took me as far as Brussels, where I found Providence waiting to
replenish my purse.”
As he did not deign to enlighten the public as to the guise in
which Providence met him, his Inquisition-biographer, who is always
prejudiced and generally unreliable, was of the opinion that it was
highly discreditable. This authority states that he procured money
from a credulous man whom he duped into believing he could predict the
winning number in a lottery, and that without waiting to learn the
result of his prediction--which, on this occasion, in spite of his
previous uniform success in London, was a failure--fled to the Hague.
Whilst here, so it was rumoured years later, he was admitted as a
Freemason into a lodge of the Order of Strict Observance, to the
members of which he made a speech on Egyptian Masonry. As a result
of the interest he aroused, a lodge was founded in accordance with
the Egyptian Rite, open to both sexes, and of which the Countess was
appointed Grand Mistress.
The Inquisition-biographer professes to discover him next in Venice,
“from which he fled after swindling a merchant out of one thousand
sequins.” But as he is described as calling himself at the time Marquis
Pellegrini--one of the _aliases_ under which Giuseppe Balsamo had
masqueraded some years previously, he may be acquitted of the charge.
If Cagliostro was really Balsamo it is inconceivable that he would
have returned to Italy under a name he had rendered so notorious. The
incident, if it has any foundation in fact, must have occurred several
years before this date. Moreover, if Cagliostro and Balsamo are the
same, Freemasonry must have wrought a most remarkable and unprecedented
spiritual reformation in the character of the Sicilian crook, for under
the name of Count Cagliostro he most certainly ceased to descend to the
vulgar villainies formerly habitual to him.
Much more in keeping with Cagliostro’s character is the following
adventure reported to have befallen him at Nuremburg, whither rumour
next traces him. Being asked his name by a Freemason who was staying
at the same hotel, and to whom he had communicated the fact that he
was also a member of the same fraternity by one of the secret signs
familiar to the initiated, he replied by drawing on a sheet of paper
a serpent biting its tail. This cryptic response, coupled with the
air of mystery Cagliostro habitually gave to his smallest action,
deeply impressed the inquisitive stranger, who with the characteristic
superstition of the century at once jumped to the conclusion that
he was in the presence of the chief of one of the secret societies
attached to Freemasonry who, fleeing from persecution, was obliged to
conceal his identity. Accordingly, with a sentimental benevolence--from
which it may be inferred he was both a Mason and a German--“he drew
from his hand a diamond ring, and pressing it upon Cagliostro with
every mark of respect, expressed the hope that it might enable him more
easily to elude his enemies.”
From Nuremburg rumour follows the Count to Berlin, where the
interpretation the unsentimental police of Frederick the Great put
upon the mystery in which he enveloped himself was so hostile that he
hastened to Leipsic. In this town, veritable home of occultism and
stage on which Schröpfer a few years before had persuaded his audience
to believe in him in spite of his impostures, any mysterious person was
sure of a welcome. The voice of rumour, hitherto reduced to a whisper,
now becomes audible. The Freemasons of the Order of Strict Observance
are said to have given a banquet in Cagliostro’s honour “at which three
plates, three bottles, and three glasses were set before each guest in
commemoration of the Holy Trinity.”
After the repast the Count made a speech, to the eloquence of which and
its effect on his hearers the mystic triad of bottles would appear to
have contributed. As at the Hague, he discoursed on Egyptian Masonry;
praised the superiority of its ideals and rites to those of the lodge
of which he was the guest; and carried away by bibulous enthusiasm,
which caused him to ignore the rules of politeness and good breeding,
he turned impressively to the head of the lodge--one Scieffort--and in
impassioned accents informed him that if he did not adopt the Egyptian
Rite “he would feel the weight of the hand of God before the expiration
of the month.”
The fact that Scieffort[13] committed suicide a few days later was
regarded as a fulfilment of this prophecy, which from the strange
manner and appearance of the mysterious person who uttered it produced
a deep impression. At once all Leipsic began to ring with the name of
Count Cagliostro and his gift of prophecy. It was his first step on the
road to fame. “On leaving the city,” says the Inquisition-biographer,
“not only did his admirers pay his hotel bill, but they presented him
with a considerable sum of money.”
Henceforth, wherever he went he was sure of a cordial reception in
the lodges of the Order of Strict Observance. By the Freemasons of
Dantzic and Königsberg he appears to have been treated as a person of
great distinction. As the lodges of the Order in these cities were
wholly given up to the practice and study of occult phenomena he must,
no doubt, have furnished them with some proof of his possession of
“supernatural” faculties.
In this way, recommended from lodge to lodge, he reached Mittau, the
capital of the Duchy of Courland, in March 1779. Here the cloud of
uncertainty in which he had been enveloped since leaving England was
completely dispelled.
II
Now one does not go to Courland without a reason, and a powerful one.
Marshal Saxe, the only other celebrity one recalls in connection with
this bleak, marshland duchy of Germanized Letts on the Baltic, was
lured thither by its crown. Cagliostro too had his reason--which was
not Saxe’s; though the ridiculous Inquisition-biographer, remembering
that the crown of Courland had been worn by more than one adventurer
within the memory of the generation then living, declares that there
was a project to depose the reigning duke and put Cagliostro in his
place.
As a matter of fact, Cagliostro went to Courland to further his great
scheme of founding the Order of Egyptian Masonry. This was the thought
uppermost in his mind from the time he left England, or at least the
one most frequently expressed.
The idea of Egyptian Masonry is said to have been suggested to him by
some unpublished manuscripts that he purchased while in London. He
himself, on the contrary, professed to have conceived it in Egypt
during his travels in the East, of which he gave such an amazing
account at his trial in the Diamond Necklace Affair. It is the spirit,
however, in which the idea was conceived that is of chief importance,
and this seems to have been wholly creditable to him.
For in spite of the vanity and ostentation he exhibited when his star
was in the ascendant Cagliostro, whose “bump of benevolence” was
highly developed, was inspired with a genuine enthusiasm for the cause
of humanity. Egyptian Masonry had for its aim the moral regeneration
of mankind. As the revelations made to men by the Creator (of whom
he never failed to speak with the profoundest respect) had, in his
opinion, been altered to subserve their own purposes by the prophets,
apostles, and fathers of the Church, the regeneration of mankind was
only to be accomplished by restoring the knowledge of God in all its
purity. This Cagliostro professed was only to be effected by Egyptian
Masonry, which he declared had been founded by the patriarchs, whom he
regarded as the last and sole depositaries of the truth, as the means
of communicating with the invisible world.
That he really believed it was his mission to re-establish this
communication there can be no doubt. Even Carlyle’s conception of
him as a “king of liars” only serves to emphasize this. For since it
is generally admitted that the habitual liar is in the end persuaded
of the truth of what he says, there is no reason why the “king” of
the tribe should be an exception. Had Cagliostro, therefore, _in the
beginning_ known that the religion he preached was a lie--of which I
can find no evidence whatever--he was most certainly convinced of its
truth _in the end_. In France, where his following was most numerous,
the delegates of the French lodges, after hearing him, declared in
their report that they had seen in him “a promise of truth which none
of the great masters had so completely developed before.”
If it be true that a man’s works are the key to his character, nothing
reveals that of Cagliostro more clearly than his system of Egyptian
Masonry. Never did the welfare of humanity, sublimest of ideals, find
more ridiculous expression. But to describe in detail the astonishing
_galimathias_ of this system for the regeneration of mankind would be
as tedious as it is unnecessary, and the following rough outline must
serve to illustrate the constitution and ceremonies of the Egyptian
Rite.
Both sexes were alike eligible for admission to the Egyptian Rite, the
sole conditions being belief in the immortality of the soul and--as
regards men--previous admission to some Masonic Lodge. There were,
as in ordinary Freemasonry, three grades: apprentice, companion, and
master Egyptian. The master Egyptians were called by the names of the
Hebrew prophets, while the women of the same grade took those of sibyls.
Cagliostro himself assumed the title of Grand Cophta, which he declared
to be that of Enoch, the first Grand Master of Egyptian Masonry. His
wife, as Grand Mistress, was known as the Queen of Sheba.
The initiations of the neophytes consisted of being “breathed upon”
by the Grand Master or Grand Mistress, according to their sex. This
proceeding was accompanied by the swinging of censers and a species of
exorcism that served as a preparation for moral regeneration. The Grand
Cophta then made a short speech, which he also addressed to the members
on their promotion from one grade to the other, ending with the words
“Helios, Mene, Tetragammaton.”
Concerning the apparent gibberish of these words, the Marquis de
Luchet, a clever writer of the day who never hesitated to sacrifice
truth to effect, and found in Cagliostro a splendid target for his wit,
pretends that “the Grand Cophta borrowed them from a conjurer, who in
his turn had been taught them by a spirit, which spirit was no other
than the soul of a cabalistic Jew who had murdered his own father.” As
a matter of fact they are often employed in Freemasonry and signify
the Sun, the Moon, and the four letters by which God is designated in
Hebrew.
The ceremony of initiation concluded with a sort of spiritualistic
séance, for which a very young boy or girl, known respectively as a
_pupille_ or _colombe_ was chosen as the medium, whom the Grand Cophta
rendered clairvoyant by “breathing on its face from the brow to the
chin.”
The same rites were observed for both sexes. At the initiation of
women, however, the _Veni Creator_ and _Miserere mei Deus_ were
chanted. On these occasions the Grand Mistress drank “a draught of
immortality,” and “the shade of Moses was evoked.” Moses, however,
persistently refused to be evoked, because--so the Countess is reported
to have confessed to the Inquisitors--“Cagliostro considered him a
thief for having carried off the treasures of the Egyptians.”
As the promise of spiritual health was not of itself sufficient to
ensure the success of Egyptian Masonry, Cagliostro in the course of
time found it expedient to heighten its attraction by holding out hopes
of bodily health, and infinite wealth as well. It was by his ability
to cure the sick that the majority of his followers were recruited;
and as he gave to his marvellous cures the same mysterious and absurd
character as he gave to all his actions, his enemies--of whom he had
many--unable to explain or deny them, endeavoured to turn the “physical
regeneration” that Egyptian Masonry was said to effect into ridicule.
According to a curious and satirical prospectus entitled “The Secret
of Regeneration or Physical Perfection by which one can attain to the
spirituality of 5557 years (Insurance Office of the Great Cagliostro),”
he who aspired to such a state “must withdraw every fifty years in the
month of May at the full of the moon into the country with a friend,
and there shutting himself in a room conform for forty days to the most
rigorous diet.”
The medical treatment was no less heroic. On the seventeenth day after
being bled the patient was given a phial of some “white liquid, or
primitive matter, created by God to render man immortal,” of which he
was to take a certain number of drops up to the thirty-second day. The
candidate for physical regeneration was then bled again and put to bed
wrapped in a blanket, when--if he had the courage to continue with the
treatment--he would “lose his hair, skin, and teeth,” but would recover
them and find himself in possession of youth and health on the fortieth
day--“after which he need not, unless he liked, shuffle off the mortal
coil for 5557 years.”
Perhaps nothing better illustrates the boundless credulity which
characterized the period immediately preceding the French Revolution
than the belief that this report, intended as a _conte pour rire_
by the Marquis de Luchet, its author, obtained. As Cagliostro and
his followers were very likely aware that any attempt to deny such a
statement would but serve to provide their enemies with fresh weapons
of attack, they endured the ridicule to which this malicious invention
subjected them in silence. This attitude, however, was not only
misunderstood by the public, but has even misled historians of a later
date, very few of whom, like Figuier in his _Histoire du Merveilleux_,
have had the wit to see the humour of the lampoon which they have been
too careless or too prejudiced to explain.
As a matter of fact, the mumbo-jumbo of the Egyptian Rite was no
more grotesque than the Swedenborgian, Rosicrucian, or any other
of the numerous rites that were grafted onto Freemasonry in the
eighteenth century. If the Baron von Gleichen, whose integrity was
as irreproachable as his experience was wide, is to be credited,
“Cagliostro’s Egyptian Masonry was worth the lot of them, for he tried
to render it, not only more wonderful, but _more honourable_ than any
other Masonic order in Europe.”
Considered as the key to Cagliostro’s character, Egyptian Masonry so
far fits the lock, so to speak. To turn the key, it is necessary to
explain the means he employed to realize the sublime ideal he expressed
so ridiculously.
It is characteristic of the tyranny of ideals to demand their
realization of the enthusiast, if need be at the cost of life, honour,
or happiness. All reformers magnetic enough to attract any notice have
been obliged to face this lion-like temptation at some time in their
careers. The perfervid ones almost always yield to it, and may count
themselves lucky if the sacrifice of their happiness is all that is
asked of them. The nature of the surrender is governed entirely by
circumstances. Cagliostro paid for his attempt to regenerate mankind
with his honour. It was an excessive price, and--considering the result
obtained--useless.
As he did not hesitate to recruit his followers by imposture when
without it he would have failed to attract them, many writers--and
they are the most hostile--have denied that he ever had a lofty ideal
at all. To them Egyptian Masonry is merely a device of Cagliostro
to obtain money. Such an opinion, however, is as untenable as it is
intentionally unjust.
_There is not a single authenticated instance in which he derived
personal profit by imposture._
Had he _succeeded_, like Swedenborg--who had a precisely similar ideal,
and also had recourse to imposture when it suited his purpose--his
reputation, like the Swede’s, would have survived the calumny that
assailed it.[14] For though Cagliostro debased his ideal to realize it,
his impostures did not make him an impostor, any more than Mirabeau can
be said to have been bought by the bribes he accepted from the Court.
His impostures consisted (1) in exhibiting his occult powers--which in
the beginning he had not developed--on occasions and under conditions
he knew to be opposed to their operation, whereby to obtain results he
was obliged to forge them, and (2) in attributing to a supernatural
cause _all_ the wonders he performed as well as the “mysteries” of the
Egyptian Rite, in which mesmerism, magnetism and ordinary conjuring
tricks were undoubtedly employed.
As the establishment of Egyptian Masonry was the object he had in view,
he no doubt believed with his century that the end justifies the means.
But to those who shape their conduct according to this passionate maxim
it becomes a two-edged sword that seldom fails to wound him who handles
it. The end that is justified by the means becomes of necessity of
secondary importance, and eventually, perhaps, of no importance at all.
This was the case with Cagliostro’s ideal. In rendering it subservient
to the magic which it was originally part of its object to suppress,
the latter gained and kept the upper hand. The means by which his ideal
was to be realized became thus, as justifying means are capable of
becoming, ignoble; and by robbing their end of its sublimity made that
end appear equally questionable. That Cagliostro perceived the danger
of this, and struggled hard to avert it, is abundantly proved by his
conduct on numerous occasions.
At the start, indeed, imposture was the very last thing he
contemplated. His strong objection to predicting winning numbers in
lotteries was the cause of all his trouble in London. From the Hague
to Mittau--wherever a glimpse of him is to be had--there is a reference
to the “eloquence with which he denounced the magic and satanism to
which the German lodges were addicted.” It was not till he arrived in
Courland that his repugnance for the _supercheries_ of supernaturalism
succumbed to the stronger forces of vanity and ambition.
III
If “Providence waited for Cagliostro at Brussels,” it was certainly
Luck that met him on his arrival at Mittau.
As hitherto the cause of Egyptian Masonry does not appear to have
derived any material benefit from the great interest he is said to have
excited in Leipsic and other places, it seems reasonable to infer that
the lodges he frequented were composed of _bourgeois_ or uninfluential
persons. At Mittau, however, the lodge to which he was admitted,
addicted like the others to the study of the occult, consisted of
people of the highest distinction who, advised in advance of the coming
of the mysterious Count, were waiting to receive him with open arms.
The great family of von Medem in particular treated him with the
greatest consideration, and in them he found at once congenial and
influential friends. Marshal von Medem was the head of the Masonic
lodge in Mittau, and from boyhood had made a special study of magic
and alchemy, as had his brother Count von Medem. This latter had two
very beautiful and accomplished daughters, the youngest of whom was
married to the reigning Duke of Courland--a fact that could not fail
to impress a regenerator of mankind in quest of powerful disciples.
It was, however, her sister Elisa, Count von Medem’s eldest daughter,
who became the _point d’appui_ of Cagliostro’s hopes.
The mystical tendencies of Elisa were entirely due to environment. She
had grown up in an atmosphere in which magic, alchemy, and the dreams
of Swedenborg were the principal topics of conversation. Familiarity,
however, as the saying is, bred contempt. In her childhood she declared
that the wonders of the supernatural which she heard continually
discussed around her, “made less impression on her than the tale of
Blue Beard, while a concert was worth all the ghosts in the world.”
Nevertheless, the occult was not without a subtle effect on her mind.
As a girl she had a decided preference for books of a mystic or
religious character, her favourites being “Young’s _Night Thoughts_ and
the works of Lavater.”
Gifted with an exceptionally brilliant intellect, of which she
afterwards gave unmistakable proof, she also possessed a most
enthusiastic and affectionate nature--qualities that her husband, a
Count von der Recke, alone appears to have neither recognized nor
appreciated. Their union was of short duration: after six years of
wedlock the Countess von der Recke, who had married at seventeen to
please her father, obtained a divorce. She was amply compensated for
what she had suffered by the affection she obtained from her family.
Father, uncles, aunts, cousins seemed only to exist to study her
wishes. Her sister, the Duchess of Courland, constantly sought her
advice in political matters, and regarded her always as her dearest
friend. But it was to her young brother to whom she was most deeply
attached. Nor was he less devoted to her. Nearly of the same age, and
possessing the same temperament and talents, the sympathy between them
was such that “one was but the echo of the other.” They differed only
in one respect. Equally serious and reflective, each longed to solve
the “problems of existence”; but while the Countess von der Recke
was led to seek their solution in the Bible, in the gospel according
to Swedenborg, or in the correspondence she formed with Lavater, her
brother thought they were to be found “in Plato and Pythagoras.” Death,
however, prematurely interrupted his quest, carrying with him to the
grave the ambition of his father and the heart of his sister.
It was at this moment, when she was overwhelmed with grief, that Count
Cagliostro arrived in Mittau, with the reputation of being able to
transmute metals, predict the future, and communicate with the unseen
world. Might he not also evoke the spirits of the dead? In any case,
such a man was not to be ignored. Mittau was a dead-and-alive place at
the best of times, the broken-hearted Countess was only twenty-five,
the “problems of existence” might still be solved--and workers of
wonders, be they impostors or not, are not met every day. So the
Countess von der Recke was determined to meet the “Spanish” Count,
and--what is more to the point--to believe in him.
[Illustration: COUNTESS ELISA VON DER RECKE
(_After Seibold_)]
As usual, on his arrival in Mittau, Cagliostro had denounced the
excessive rage for magic and alchemy that the Freemasons of Courland,
as elsewhere, displayed. But though he found a sympathetic listener
in the Countess von der Recke while he discoursed mystically on the
moral regeneration of mankind and the “Eternal Source of all Good,”
her father and uncle, who were devoted to magic and manifestations
of the occult, demanded practical proofs of the power he was said to
possess. As he was relying on their powerful patronage to overcome the
opposition unexpectedly raised to the foundation of an Egyptian Lodge
at Mittau by some persons whose suspicions were excited by the mystery
he affected, he did not dare disoblige them.
One day, after conversing on magic and necromancy with the von
Medems, he gave them and a certain Herr von Howen a proof of his
occult powers. Apart from his “miraculous” cures, nearly all the
prodigies performed by Cagliostro were of a clairvoyant nature. As
previously stated, in these exhibitions he always worked through a
medium, known as a _pupille_ or _colombe_, according to the sex--the
_pupilles_ being males and the _colombes_ females. From the fact that
they were invariably very young children, he probably found that they
responded more readily to hypnotic suggestion than adults. Though these
exhibitions were often impostures (that is, arranged beforehand with
the medium) they were as often undoubtedly genuine (that is, _not_
previously arranged, and baffling explanation). In every case they were
accompanied by strange rites designed to startle the imagination of the
onlooker and prepare it to receive a deep and durable impression of
mystery.
On this occasion, according to the Countess von der Recke, Cagliostro
selected as _pupille_ the little son of Marshal von Medem, “a child of
five.” “Having anointed the head and left hand of the child with the
‘oil of wisdom,’ he inscribed some mystic letters on the anointed hand
and bade the _pupille_ to look at it steadily. Hymns and prayers then
followed, till little von Medem became greatly agitated and perspired
profusely. Cagliostro then inquired in a stage whisper of the Marshal
what he desired his son to see. Not to frighten him, his father
requested he might see his sister. Hereupon the child, still gazing
steadfastly at his hand, declared he saw her.
“Questioned as to what she was doing, he described her as placing her
hand on her heart, as if in pain. A moment later he exclaimed, ‘now
she is kissing my brother, who has just come home.’ On the Marshal
declaring this to be impossible, as this brother was leagues away,
Cagliostro terminated the séance, and with an air of the greatest
confidence ordered the doubting parent ‘to verify the vision.’ This
the Marshal immediately proceeded to do; and learnt that his son, whom
he believed so far away, had unexpectedly returned home, and that
shortly before her brother’s arrival his daughter had had an attack of
palpitation of the heart.”
After proof so conclusive Cagliostro’s triumph was assured. Those who
mistrusted him were completely silenced, and all further opposition to
the foundation of his lodge ceased.
But the appetite of the von Medem brothers only grew by what it
fed upon. They insisted on more wonders, and to oblige them “the
representative of the Grand Cophta”--later he found it simpler to
assume in person the title and prerogatives of the successor of
Enoch--held another séance. Aware that he had to please people over
whose minds the visions of Swedenborg had gained such an ascendency
that everything that was fantastic appeared supernatural to them, he
had recourse to the cheap devices of magic and the abracadabra of black
art.
At a meeting of the lodge he declared that “he had been informed
by his chiefs of a place where most important magical manuscripts
and instruments, as well as a treasure of gold and silver, had been
buried hundreds of years before by a great wizard.” Questioned as
to the locality of this place, he indicated a certain heath on the
Marshal’s estate at Wilzen whereon he had been wont to play as a boy,
and which--extraordinary coincidence!--he remembered the peasants of
the neighbourhood used to say contained a buried treasure guarded by
ghosts. The Marshal and his brother were so astonished at Cagliostro’s
description of a place which it seemed improbable he could have heard
of, and certainly had never seen, that they set out at once for Wilzen
with some friends and relatives to find the treasure with the occult
assistance of their mysterious guest.
Now the Countess’s interest in the occult was of quite a different
character from that of her father and uncle. Deeply religious, she had
turned in her grief to mysticism for consolation. From the commencement
of her acquaintance with Cagliostro, she had been impressed as much
by the nobility of the aims he attributed to his Egyptian Masonry,
of which he spoke “in high-flown, picturesque language,” as by his
miraculous gifts. While others conversed with him on magic and
necromancy, which she regarded as “devilish,” she talked of the “union
of the physical and spiritual worlds, the power of prayer, and the
miracles of the early Christians.” She told him how the death of her
brother had robbed her life of happiness, and that in the hope of
seeing him once more she had often spent a long time in prayer and
meditation beside his grave at night. And she also gave the Grand
Cophta to understand that she counted on him to gratify this desire.
As to confess his utter inability to oblige her would have been to
rob him at one fell swoop of the belief in his powers on which he
counted to establish a lodge of Egyptian Masonry at Mittau, Cagliostro
evaded the request. His great gifts, he explained, were only to be
exercised for the good of the world, and if he used them merely for
the gratification of idle curiosity, he ran the risk of losing them
altogether, or of being destroyed by evil spirits who were on the watch
to take advantage of the weakness of such as he.
But as the exhibitions he had given her father and uncle of his powers
were purely for the benefit of idle curiosity, the Countess had not
unnaturally reproached him with having exposed himself to the snares of
the evil spirits he was so afraid of. Whereupon the unfortunate Grand
Cophta, in his desire to reform Freemasonry and to spread his gospel of
regeneration, having left the straight and narrow path of denunciation
for the broad road of compromise, sought to avoid the quagmire to which
it led by taking the by-path of double-dealing.
Conscious that his success at Mittau depended on keeping the Countess’s
esteem, he assumed an air of mystery and superiority when talking of
the occult calculated to impress her with the utter insignificance
of her views in matters of which, as she admitted, she was ignorant.
Having made her feel as small as possible, he endeavoured to reconcile
her to the phenomena he performed for the benefit of her relations by
holding out to her a hope that by similar means it might be possible to
evoke the shade of the brother she so yearned to see. When next she met
him, he assured her that “Hanachiel,” as he called his “chief” in the
spiritual world to whom he owed his marvellous gifts, “had informed him
that her intention was good in wishing to communicate with her brother,
and that this was only to be accomplished by the study of the occult
sciences, in which she might make rapid progress if she would follow
his directions unquestioningly.”
In this way, like another Jason steering his Argos-ship of Egyptian
Masonry clear of the rocks and quicksands, he sought to round the
cape of suspicion and come to a safe anchorage in port. But though
he handled the helm with consummate skill, as the Countess herself
afterwards acknowledged, it was a perilous sea on which he sailed.
Unquestioning obedience, the Countess declared, she could not promise
him.
“God Himself,” she said, “could not induce me to act against what my
conscience tells me is right and wrong.”
“Then you condemn Abraham for offering up his son?” was Cagliostro’s
curious rejoinder. “In his place, what would you have done?”
“I would have said,” replied the Countess: “‘O God, kill Thou my son
with a flash of Thy lightning if Thou requirest his life; but ask me
not to slay my child, whom I do not think guilty of death.’”
With such a woman, what is a Cagliostro to do? Prevented, so to speak,
by this flaw in the wind from coming to anchor in the harbour of her
unquestioning faith in him, he sought to reach port by keeping up
her hopes. To reconcile her to the magical operations he was obliged
to perform in order to retain his influence upon the von Medems, he
finally promised her a “magic dream” in which her brother would appear
to her.
From the manner in which Cagliostro proceeded to perform this
phenomenon, one may obtain an idea of the nature and extent of his
marvellous powers. As heretofore his effects had been produced by
hypnotic suggestion, accompanied by every accessory calculated to
assist it, so now he proceeded on similar lines. That the thoughts of
others besides himself should be concentrated on the “magic dream,” the
relations of the Countess, as well as herself, were duly agitated by
its expectation. With an air of great mystery, which Cagliostro could
make so impressive, he delivered to Count von Medem a sealed envelope
containing, he said, a question, which he hoped by the dream to have
answered. At night, before the Countess retired, he broke the silence
which he had imposed on her and her relations during the day to refer
once more to the dream, with the object of still further exciting the
imagination of all concerned, whose thoughts were fixed upon the coming
apparition of the dead, until the prophecy, like many another, worked
its own fulfilment.
But this cunningly contrived artifice, familiar to magicians in all
ages, and frequently crowned with success, was defeated on the present
occasion by the health of the Countess, whose nerves were so excited
by the glimpse she expected to have of her dearly beloved brother as to
prevent her sleeping at all.
This eventuality, however--which Cagliostro had no doubt allowed
for--far from complicating his difficulties, was easily turned to
advantage. For, upbraiding the Countess for her weakness and lack of
self-control, he declared she need not any longer count on seeing
her brother. Nevertheless, he dared not deprive her of all hope. In
response to her pleading, and urged by her father and uncle, he was
emboldened to promise her the dream for the ensuing night, trusting
that in the condition of body and mind to which he perceived she was
reduced by the overwrought state of her nerves she might even _imagine_
she had seen her brother.
But though the slippery road along which, impelled by vanity and
ambition, he travelled was beset with danger, Cagliostro proceeded
undaunted. When his second attempt to evoke the dead failed like
the first, he boldly asserted that he himself had prevented the
apparition, “being warned by Hanachiel that the vision of her brother
would endanger the Countess’s life in her excitable state.” And to
render this explanation the more convincing he gave the von Medems,
who were plainly disappointed by the failure of the “magic dream,”
one of those curious exhibitions of second sight which he was in the
habit of knocking off--no other word expresses it--so frequently and
successfully for their benefit.
Though aware that the Countess at the moment was ill in bed, he
declared that, if a messenger were sent to her house at a certain hour,
he would find her seated at her writing-table in perfect health. This
prediction was verified in every particular.
Such was the state of affairs when Cagliostro accompanied the von
Medems to Wilzen to prove the existence of the buried treasure he had
so craftily located. In spite of his great confidence in himself, he
must have realized that the task he had so rashly undertaken at Wilzen
was one that would require exceptional cunning to shirk. For the chance
of finding a treasure said to have been buried hundreds of years before
was even smaller than that on which he counted of evoking the spirit of
the Countess’s brother. But in this case, strange to say, it was not
his failure to produce the treasure, but the “magic” he successfully
employed to conceal his failure that was to cause him the most concern.
IV
Conscious that the Countess’s faith in him was shaken by his failure to
give her the consolation she so greatly desired, Cagliostro requested
they should travel in the same carriage in order that he might have the
opportunity to clear himself of her suspicions as to his sincerity.
The very boldness of such a request was sufficient to disarm her. She
herself has confessed, in the book from which these details have been
drawn, that “his conversation was such as to create in her a great
reverence for his moral character, whilst his subtle observations on
mankind in general astonished her as greatly as his magical operations.”
From the manner, however, in which he faced the difficulty, he does
not appear to have been in the least apprehensive of the consequences
of failing to surmount it. The Countess was once more his ardent
disciple; the von Medems’ belief in magic was proof against
unsuccessful experiments; and Hanachiel--invaluable Hanachiel--was
always on hand to explain his failures as well as his successes.
On arriving at Alt-Auz, as the von Medem estate at Wilzen was named,
Cagliostro produced from his pocket “a little red book, and read aloud
in an unknown tongue.” The Countess, who believed him to be praying,
ventured to interrupt him as they drove through the haunted forest in
which the treasure was said to be buried. Hereupon he cried out in wild
zeal, “Oh, Great Architect of the Universe, help me to accomplish this
work.” A bit of theatricality that much impressed his companion, and
which was all the more effective for being natural to him.
The von Medems were eager to begin digging for the treasure as soon as
they alighted. Cagliostro, however, “after withdrawing to commune in
solitude with Hanachiel,” declared that the treasure was guarded by
very powerful demons whom it was dangerous to oppose without taking
due precautions. “To prevent them from spiriting it away without his
knowledge” he performed a little incantation which was supposed to bind
Hanachiel to keep an eye on them. The next day, to break the fall, so
to speak, of the high hopes the von Medems had built on the buried
treasure, he held a séance in which the infant medium was again the
chief actor. The child--“holding a large iron nail,” and with only a
screen between it and the other members of the party, having presumably
been hypnotized[15] by Cagliostro--described the site of the buried
treasure, the demon that guarded it, the treasure itself, and “seven
angels in long white robes who helped Hanachiel keep an eye on the
guardian of the treasure.” At the command of Cagliostro the child
kissed, and was kissed by, these angels. And to the amazement of those
in the room, with only the screen between them and the child, the sound
of the kisses, says the Countess von der Recke, could be distinctly
heard.
Similar séances took place every day during the eight days the von
Medem party stayed at Alt-Auz. At one the Countess herself was induced
to enter the “magic circle holding a magic watch in her hand,” while
the little medium, assisted by the representative of the Grand Cophta,
in his turn assisted by Hanachiel, read her thoughts.
But, unlike her father and uncle, while the impression these phenomena
made upon her mind was profound, it was also unfavourable. Though
curiosity caused her to witness these séances, the Countess von der
Recke strongly disapproved of them on “religious grounds.” Like
many another, what she could not explain, she regarded as evil. The
phenomena she witnessed appeared so uncanny that she believed them
to be directly inspired by the powers of darkness. At first, in her
admiration of Cagliostro, she prayed that he might escape temptation
and be preserved from the demons with which it was but too evident to
her he was surrounded. When at last he declared that he was informed
by the ever-attendant Hanachiel that the demon who guarded the
buried treasure was not to be propitiated without much difficulty and
delay, it did not occur to her to doubt him. The wonders he had been
performing daily had convinced her, as well as the others, of his
occult powers. But from regarding him with reverence, she now regarded
him with dread.
Cagliostro, who never lost sight of the aims of Egyptian Masonry in
the deceptions to which the desire to proselytize led him, was in the
habit, “before each of his séances, of delivering lectures that were a
strange mixture of sublimity and frivolity.” It was by these lectures
that he unconsciously lost the respect of the Countess he strove so
hard to preserve. One day, while expatiating on the times when the sons
of God loved the daughters of men, as described in the Bible--which, he
predicted, would return when mankind was morally regenerate--carried
away by his subject he declared that, “not only the demi-Gods of
Greece, and Christ of Nazareth, but he himself were the fruit of such
unions.”
Such a statement inexpressibly shocked the Countess; and considering
that the evil spirits from whom she prayed he might be preserved had
completely taken possession of him, she resolved to have no more to
do with him. At her father’s entreaty, however, she was persuaded to
attend another séance, but as Cagliostro, not suspecting her defection,
prefaced his phenomena by a discourse on “love-potions,” the Countess
was only confirmed in her resolution.
Nevertheless, he was not the man to lose so influential an adherent
without a protest. On returning to Mittau he managed to a certain
extent to regain her confidence in his sincerity. He perceived,
however, that the interest he excited was on the wane, and wisely took
advantage of what he knew to be the right moment to depart.
Hoping by the aristocratic connections he had made in Mittau to gain
access to the highest circles in Russia, he decided to go to St.
Petersburg. His intention was received with dismay by those whom his
magical phenomena had so astonished. The von Medems heaped presents on
him. “From one he received a gift of 800 ducats, from the other a very
valuable diamond ring.” Even the Countess von der Recke herself, though
she made no attempt to detain him, proved that she at least believed
him to be a man of honour.
A day or two before his departure, being at some Court function, “he
recognized old friends in some large and fine pearls the Duchess of
Courland was wearing,” which, he said, reminded him of some pearls
of his wife’s that he had increased in size by a process known to
himself and sold for the benefit of a bankrupt friend in Holland. The
Countess von der Recke hereupon desired him to do the same with hers.
Cagliostro, however, “refused, as he was going away, and the operation
would take too long.” Nor would he take them with him to Russia, as
the Countess urged, and return them when the process was complete. A
striking instance of his integrity, from an authentic source, that his
prejudiced biographers have always seen fit to ignore.
If the above is characteristic of Cagliostro’s honesty, the following
episode, also related by the Countess, is equally characteristic of his
vanity. Informing him once that she was writing to Lavater and wished
to give him the details of a certain conversation, he objected.
“Wait twelve months,” said he, “and when you write call me only Count
C. Lavater will ask you, ‘Is not this the Great Cagliostro?’ and you
will then be able to reply, ‘It is.’”
* * * * *
As the unfavourable opinion the Countess von der Recke subsequently
formed of Cagliostro, whose path never crossed hers again, has, on
account of her deservedly high reputation, been largely responsible
for the hostility with which history has regarded him, it is but fair
to explain how she came to reverse the favourable opinion she had
previously entertained.
The value of her evidence, indeed, rests not so much on her _word_,
which nobody would dream of questioning, but on the _manner_ in which
she obtained her evidence. It was not till 1784--five years after
Cagliostro had left Mittau--that the Countess von der Recke came to
regard him as an impostor. To this opinion she was converted by one
Bode whom she met in Weimar and who, she says, gave her “the fullest
information concerning Cagliostro.”
Bode was a Freemason of the Order of Strict Observance who had joined
the Illuminés and was intimately acquainted with Weishaupt, the
founder of the sect. As it is generally assumed that Cagliostro was
also an Illuminé, Bode no doubt had excellent means of observing him.
The value of his opinion, however, is considerably lowered by the
fact that Cagliostro afterwards withdrew from the Illuminés when he
had succeeded in turning his connection with them to the account of
Egyptian Masonry. Under the circumstances Bode, who afterwards became
the leader of the Illuminés, would not be likely to view Cagliostro in
a favourable light.
The fact, moreover, that it took the Countess von der Recke five years
to make up her mind that her “apostle of light” was an impostor, was
perhaps due less to any absolute faith in Bode than to the changes that
had taken place in herself during this period.
On recovering her health she became as pronounced a rationalist as she
had formerly been a mystic. As this change occurred about the period of
her meeting with Bode, it may possibly account for the change in her
opinion of Cagliostro.
But if the manner in which the Countess came to regard Cagliostro
as an impostor somewhat detracts from the importance to be attached
to her opinion, the manner in which she made her opinion public was
unworthy of a woman to whose character this opinion owes the importance
attributed to it. For this “born fair saint” as Carlyle calls her,
waited till the Diamond Necklace Affair, when Cagliostro was thoroughly
discredited, before venturing to “expose” him.
V
Very curious to relate, all that is known of Cagliostro’s visit to
St. Petersburg is based on a few contradictory rumours of the most
questionable authenticity. This is all the more remarkable considering,
as the Countess von der Recke herself states, that he left Mittau in
a blaze of glory, regretted, honoured, and recommended to some of
the greatest personages in Russia by the flower of the nobility of
Courland.[16]
According to report, Cagliostro’s first act in St. Petersburg, as
everywhere else he went, was to gain admission to one of the lodges
of Strict Observance and endeavour to convert the members to the
Egyptian Rite. As experience had taught him the futility of attempting
to recruit adherents merely by expounding his lofty ideal of the
regeneration of mankind, he had recourse to the methods he had adopted
with such success in Mittau; but with the most humiliating result. For,
being apparently unable to procure a suitable medium, he was forced to
resort to an expedient which was discreditable in itself and unworthy
of his remarkable faculties.
On this occasion his medium was a _colombe_, “the niece of an actress”
in whose house the séance was held. There was the usual mumbo-jumbo,
sword-waving passes, stamping of the feet, _et cetera_. The medium
behind a screen gazed into a carafe of water and astonished the
assembled company with what she saw there. But later in the evening
while Cagliostro, covered with congratulations, was discoursing on the
virtue of Egyptian Masonry and dreaming of fresh triumphs, the medium
suddenly declared that she had seen nothing and that her rôle had been
prepared beforehand by the Grand Cophta!
Cagliostro, as has been seen, was bold and resourceful when his
situation seemed utterly untenable. That he would have seen his
prestige destroyed in this way without attempting to save it is far
from likely, and though the fact that St. Petersburg is the only city
in which Cagliostro failed to establish a lodge of Egyptian Masonry
may be regarded as proof of the futility of his efforts, the nature of
other rumours concerning him leads one to suppose that he strove hard
to regain the ground he had lost.
It was, no doubt, with this object that he turned his knowledge of
medicine and chemistry to account. It is in St. Petersburg that he is
heard of for the first time as a “healer.” According, however, to the
vague and hostile rumours purporting to emanate from Russia at the time
of the Diamond Necklace Affair he was a quack devoid of knowledge or
skill.
“A bald major,” says the Inquisition-biographer, “entrusted his head to
his care, but he could not make a single hair grow. A blind gentleman
who consulted him remained blind; while a deaf Italian, into whose ears
he dropped some liquid, became still more deaf.”
As a few months later Cagliostro was performing the most marvellous
cures at Strasburg, and was for years visited by invalids from all over
Europe, may we not assume that in this instance malice only published
his failures and suppressed his successes?
These rumours, however, were by no means damaging enough to please
the Marquis de Luchet, who had no scruples about inventing what he
considered “characteristic” anecdotes. The following story drawn from
his spurious _Mémoires Authentiques_ is worth repeating, less as an
illustration of his inventive powers than for the sake of nailing a
popular lie.
“Death,” he writes, “threatened to deprive a Russian lady of an
idolized infant aged two. She promised Cagliostro 5000 louis if he
saved its life. He undertook to restore it to health in a week if
she would suffer him to remove the babe to his house. The distressed
mother joyfully accepted the proposal. On the fifth day he informed her
there was a marked improvement, and at the end of the week declared
that his patient was cured. Three weeks elapsed, however, before he
would restore the child to its mother. All St. Petersburg rang with
the news of this marvellous cure, and talked of the mysterious man who
was able to cheat death of its prey. But soon it was rumoured that the
child which was returned to the mother was not the one which had been
taken away. The authorities looked into the matter, and Cagliostro was
obliged to confess that the babe he restored was substituted for the
real one, which had died. Justice demanded the body of the latter, but
Cagliostro could not produce it. He had burnt it, he said, ‘to test
the theory of reincarnation.’ Ordered to repay the 5000 louis he had
received, he offered bills of exchange on a Prussian banker. As he
professed to be a colonel in the service of the King of Prussia,[17]
the bills were accepted, but on being presented for payment were
dishonoured. The matter was therefore brought to the notice of Count
von Goertz, the Prussian Envoy at St. Petersburg, who obtained an order
for his arrest. This is the true explanation of his sudden departure.”
Rumour, however, differed widely from de Luchet. For at the same time
that de Luchet declared Cagliostro to be posing as a Prussian colonel
he is also said to have donned the uniform of a colonel in the Spanish
service, and assumed the title of Prince de Santa Cruce. But far from
being treated with the respect usually paid to any high-sounding
title and uniform in Russia, this prince-colonel doctor excited the
suspicions of M. de Normandez, the Spanish chargé d’affaires at the
Russian Court, who demanded his passport as proof of his identity. To
forge one would have been easy for Giuseppe Balsamo, who had a talent
in that line, one would think. As he failed, however, to adopt this
very simple expedient, M. d’Alméras, his latest and least prejudiced
biographer, is forced to the conclusion that “he had long given up
the profession of forger”--Freemasonry being responsible for his
renunciation! The conception of Cagliostro as Balsamo reformed by
Freemasonry is the most singular and unconvincing explanation ever
offered of this strange man.
At any rate, the Prince de Santa Cruce could neither produce a passport
nor forge one, and, hearing that a warrant was about to be issued
for his arrest, he made haste to disappear. That such an adventurer
was actually in St. Petersburg when Cagliostro was there is highly
probable, and no doubt accounts for rumour confounding them several
years later. But that Cagliostro, bearing letters of introduction from
the greatest families in Courland, should have adopted any other name
than that which he bore in Mittau is inconceivable.
Still more absurd is the rumour that the Empress Catherine, jealous
of the attention that her favourite the great Potemkin--“a train-oil
prince,” as Carlyle contemptuously styles him--paid to the Countess
Cagliostro, offered her 20,000 roubles to quit the country. Catherine
would certainly never have _paid_ any one to leave her dominions; she
had a much rougher way of handling those whose presence offended her.
The Cagliostros, moreover, who went to Warsaw from St. Petersburg,
arrived there in anything but an opulent condition.
There is yet another rumour, which is at least probable, to the
effect that Cagliostro was forced to leave Russia by the intrigues
of Catherine’s Scotch doctors, Rogerson and Mouncey, who were “so
enraged that a stranger, and a pretended pupil of the school of Hermes
Trismegistus to boot, should poach upon their preserves, that they
contemplated a printed exposure of his quackery.” It was not the last
time, as will be seen, that Cagliostro excited the active hostility of
the medical faculty.
Strange to say, the Countess von der Recke, who, if any one, would
have known the truth concerning his visit to St. Petersburg, fails to
give any particulars. Perhaps there were none, after all, to give. She
merely says: “On his way from St. Petersburg to Warsaw, Cagliostro
passed through Mittau, but did not stop. He was seen by a servant of
Marshal von Medem, to whom he sent his greeting.”
VI
In any case, the disgrace in which Cagliostro is supposed to have
left St. Petersburg by no means injured him in the opinion of his
former admirers in Courland, who, from their high position and close
connection with the Russian official world, would have been well
informed of all that befell him. For by one of them, as we are told
on the best authority, he was furnished with introductions to Prince
Adam Poninski and Count Moczinski, which he presented on his arrival in
Warsaw.
Now Warsaw society, like that of Mittau, was on the most intimate terms
with the great world of St. Petersburg. Had Cagliostro masqueraded
in Russia as a bogus Prince de Santa Cruce or a swindling Prussian
colonel, or had his wife excited the jealousy of the Empress Catherine,
the fact would have been known in Warsaw--if not before he arrived
there, certainly before he left. Of one thing we may be absolutely
sure, the anonymous author of _Cagliostro démasqué à Varsovie_ would
not have failed to mention a scandal so much to the point. As a matter
of fact, while denouncing Cagliostro as an impostor, this hostile
witness even speaks of the “marvels he performed in Russia.”
Nothing could have been more flattering to Cagliostro than the welcome
he received on his arrival in Warsaw in May 1780. Poland, like
Courland, was one of the strongholds of Freemasonry and occultism.
Prince Poninski, who was as great a devotee to magic and alchemy as the
von Medems, insisted on the wonder-worker and his wife staying at his
house. Finding the soil so admirably adapted to the seed he had to sow,
Cagliostro began at once to preach the gospel he had so much at heart.
The conversion of Poninski to Egyptian Masonry was followed by that of
the greater part of Polish society. Within a month of his arrival he
had established at Warsaw a Masonic lodge in which the Egyptian Rite
was observed.
It was not, however, by Cagliostro’s ideals that Poninski and his
friends were attracted, but by his power to gratify their craving for
sensation. No speculations in pure mysticism _à la_ Saint-Martin for
them: they were occult materialists, and demanded of the supernatural
practical, tangible manifestations.
As under similar circumstances at Mittau, Cagliostro had found it
convenient to encourage the abuses he had professed to denounce, he
had no compunction about following the same course at Warsaw. But it
evidently did not come easy to him to prostitute his ideal, judging
from the awkwardness with which he adapted himself to the conditions it
entailed.
At first, apart from certain remarkable faculties he possessed and a
sort of dilettante knowledge of magic and alchemy, he lacked both skill
and experience. In Mittau, where his career as a wonder-worker may
first fairly be said to begin, he failed as often as he succeeded. That
the phenomena he faked were not detected at the time was due to luck,
which, to judge from rumour, appears almost entirely to have deserted
him in St. Petersburg.
In Warsaw, too, he was still far from expert. Here, in spite of
the precautions he took, he found himself called upon to pass an
examination in alchemy, a subject for which he was unprepared, and
failed miserably.
In the opinion of the indignant Pole who caught him “cribbing,” so to
speak, “if he knew a little more of optics, acoustics, mechanics, and
physics generally; if he had studied a little the tricks of Comus and
Philadelphus, what success might he not have with his reputed skill
in counterfeiting writing! It is only necessary for him to go into
partnership with a ventriloquist in order to play a much more important
part than he has hitherto done. He should add to the trifling secrets
he possesses by reading some good book on chemistry.”
But it is by failure that one gains experience. As Cagliostro was
quick and intelligent, and had a “forehead of brass that nothing could
abash,” by the time he had reached Strasburg he was a past-master of
the occult, having brought his powers to a high state of perfection, as
well as being able, on occasion, to fake a phenomenon with consummate
skill.
There are two accounts of his adventures in Warsaw--one favourable,
the other unfavourable. The latter, it is scarcely necessary to say,
is the one by which he has been judged. It dates, as usual, from the
period of the Necklace Affair--that is, six years after the events it
describes. It is by an anonymous writer, who obtained his information
second-hand from an “eye-witness, one Count M.” Even Carlyle refuses to
damn his “Arch-Quack” on such evidence. This vial of vitriol, flung by
an unknown and hostile hand at the Grand Cophta of Egyptian Masonry in
his hour of adversity, is called _Cagliostro démasqué à Varsovie_.
Nevertheless, contemptible and questionable though it is, the
_impression_ it conveys, if not the actual account, is confirmed by
Madame Böhmer, wife of the jeweller in the Necklace Affair. Madame
Böhmer’s testimony is the more valuable in that it was given _before_
the anonymous writer flung his vitriol.
One night in “April 1785”--Cagliostro then at the height of his
fame--at a dinner-party at Madame Böhmer’s, the conversation turned
on mesmerism. The Countess de Lamotte, who was present, declared she
believed in it--an opinion that her hostess did not share.
“Such people,” said Madame Böhmer, “only wish to attract attention,
like Cagliostro, who has been driven out of every country in which he
has tried to make gold. The last was Poland. A person who has just
come from there told me that he was admitted to Court on the strength
of his knowledge of the occult, particularly of the philosopher’s
stone. There were some, however, who were not to be convinced without
actual proof. Accordingly, a day was set for the operation, and one
of the incredulous courtiers, knowing that he had as an assistant a
young girl, bribed her. I do not say this was the Countess Cagliostro,
because I am informed that he had several [mediums] who travelled with
him. ‘Keep your eye,’ said the girl to the courtier, ‘on his thumb,
which he holds in the hollow of his hand to conceal the piece of gold
he will slip into the crucible.’ All attention, the courtier heard the
gold and, immediately seizing Cagliostro’s hand, exclaimed to the King,
‘Sire, didn’t you hear?’ The crucible was searched, and a small lump of
gold was found, whereupon Cagliostro was instantly and very roughly, as
I was told, flung out of the palace.”
The anonymous writer’s “eye-witness, Count M.,” described in
detail the particulars of Cagliostro’s quest for the philosopher’s
stone. According to this authority, he made his début at Prince
Poninski’s with some magical séances similar to those at Mittau,
adding sleight-of-hand tricks to his predictions and “divinations by
_colombes_.”
Unfortunately, the occultists of Warsaw were principally interested in
the supernatural properties of the crucible. They were crazy on the
subject of alchemy, and the pursuit of the secret of the transmutation
of base metals into gold. Having bent the knee to magic, in which at
least, by virtue of his own occult gifts, he could appear to advantage,
Cagliostro rashly--compelled by necessity, perhaps, rather than vanity
in this instance--assumed a knowledge of which he was ignorant, relying
on making gold by sleight-of-hand.
Alas! “Count M.” had devoted his life to the subject, of which it
did not take him long to discover Cagliostro knew next to nothing.
Indignant that one who had not even learnt the alphabet of alchemy
should undertake to instruct him of all people, he laid the trap
described by Madame Böhmer. It was not, however, at the Royal Palace
that the exposure took place that caused Cagliostro to leave Poland,
but at a country seat near Warsaw. Moreover, if we are to believe
“Count M.,” Cagliostro did not wait to be exposed, but suspecting what
was a-foot, “decamped during the night.”
* * * * *
Now, on the strength of Madame Böhmer’s evidence--not given by her in
person, by the way, but _quoted_ by the Countess de Lamotte in her
defence at the Necklace trial--while there seems to be little doubt
that the statement of the anonymous “Count M.” is substantially
correct, there is, nevertheless, another--and a favourable--account of
Cagliostro in Poland. It has the advantage of being neither anonymous
nor dated, like the Countess von der Recke’s book, years after the
events it relates. It is from a letter written by Laborde, the
Farmer-General, who happened to be in Warsaw when Cagliostro was there.
The letter bears the date of 1781, which was that of the year after the
following episodes occurred.
“Cagliostro,” writes Laborde, “was some time at Warsaw, and several
times had had the honour of meeting Stanislas Augustus. One day, as
this monarch was expressing his great admiration for his powers,
which appeared to him supernatural, a young lady of the Court who had
listened attentively to him began to laugh, declaring that Cagliostro
was nothing but an impostor. She said she was so certain of it that she
would defy him to tell her certain things that had happened to her.
“The next day the King informed the Count of this challenge, who
replied coldly that if the lady would meet him in the presence of
His Majesty, he would cause her the greatest surprise she had ever
known in her life. The proposal was accepted, and the Count told the
lady all that she thought it impossible for him to know. The surprise
this occasioned her caused her to pass so rapidly from incredulity to
admiration that she had a burning desire to know what was to happen to
her in the future.
“At first he refused to tell her, but yielding to her entreaty, and
perhaps to gratify the curiosity of the King, he said--
“You will soon make a long journey, in course of which your carriage
will meet with an accident, and, whilst you are waiting for the repairs
to be made, the manner in which you are dressed will excite such
merriment in the crowd that you will be pelted with apples. You will
go from there to some famous watering-place, where you will meet a man
of high birth, to whom you will shortly afterwards be wedded. There
will be an attempt to prevent your marriage, which will cause you to be
foolish enough to make over to him your fortune. You will be married in
a city in which I shall be, and, in spite of your efforts to see me,
you will not succeed. You are threatened with great misfortunes, but
here is a talisman by which you may avoid them, so long as you keep it.
But if you are prevented from making over your fortune to your husband
in your marriage contract you will immediately lose the talisman, and,
the moment you cease to have it, it will return to my pocket wherever I
may be.’
“I do not know,” continues Laborde, “what confidence the King and
the lady placed in these predictions, but I know that they were all
fulfilled. I have had this on the authority of several persons, as
well as the lady herself; also from Cagliostro, who described it in
precisely the same words. I do not guarantee either its truth or its
falsity, and, as I do not pretend to be an exact historian, I shall not
indulge in the smallest reflection.”