CAGLIOSTRO IN PARIS
I
Notwithstanding the immense vogue that Cagliostro enjoyed throughout
the three years he passed in Strasburg, his life was by no means one
of unalloyed pleasure. Many a discordant note mingled in the chorus of
blessing and praise that greeted his ears. In the memoir he published
at the time of the Diamond Necklace Affair, he speaks vaguely of
certain “persecutions” to which he was constantly subjected.
“His good fortune, or his knowledge of medicine,” says Gleichen,
“excited the hatred and jealousy of the doctors, who when they
persecute are as dangerous as the priests. They were his implacable
enemies in France, as well as in Poland and Russia.”
His marvellous cures wounded the _amour propre_ of the doctors as much
as they damaged their reputation. Everything that malice and envy could
devise was done to decry him. They accused him of treating only such
persons as suffered from slight or imaginary ailments, questioned the
permanency of his cures, denied that he saved lives they had given
up, and attributed every death to him. He was charged with exacting
in secret the fees he refused in public. His liberality to the poor
was ascribed to a desire to attract attention, his philanthropy was
ridiculed, and the luxury in which he lived at Cagliostrano, as he
called the fine villa he rented on the outskirts of the town--attached
to which was a private hospital or “nursing-home,” where his poor
patients were treated free of charge--was called ostentation.
Unable to penetrate the mystery in which he wrapped his origin, his
fortune, and his remarkable powers, they attacked his character. As
it was known that he frequently stayed at Saverne when the Cardinal
was absent, attempts were made to poison the mind of the prince by
informing him that his guest gave costly banquets at his expense when
“Tokay flowed like water.”[21] But the Cardinal only laughed.
“Indeed!” he exclaimed, when Georgel reported to him what he himself
had only heard. “Well, I have given him the right to abuse my
hospitality if he chooses.”
As the confidence of the Cardinal in his mysterious friend was not
to be shaken by the slanders of the doctors, he also was assailed.
Old stories of his Eminence’s private life were revived and new ones
added to them. His friendship for Cagliostro was declared to be merely
a cloak to hide a passion for his wife. The Countess was said, and
believed by many, to be his mistress. It was consequently regarded as
a matter of course that it was the Cardinal’s money which the Count
spent so lavishly.
But far from plundering the infatuated prince as his enemies asserted,
Cagliostro did not so much as appeal to him for protection. Fortunately
the Cardinal did not require to be reminded of the claims of
friendship. Fully aware of the hostility to Cagliostro, he endeavoured
to silence it by procuring for him from three members of the Government
letters to the chief civil authority in which his _protégé_ was
recommended in the highest terms. To Cagliostro these letters, to
which at any time he would have attached an exaggerated importance,
had a special significance from the fact that “he neither solicited
them directly nor indirectly.” He counted them among his most valuable
possessions.
The tranquillity, however, which they procured him was only transient.
Ever employing fresh weapons and methods in attacking him, his enemies
eventually found his Achilles’-heel--the impulsive sympathy of a
naturally kind heart.
One day, while he was showing an important government official over
his hospital, a man whom he had never seen before, and who appeared to
have fallen on evil times, appealed to him for assistance. He asked
to be taken into his service, and offered to wear his livery. He said
that his name was Sacchi, that he came of a good family in Amsterdam,
and had some knowledge of chemistry. Touched by his evident distress,
Cagliostro yielded as usual to his charitable impulses. He found
employment for Sacchi in his hospital, and paid him liberally.
[Illustration: SAVERNE
(_From a very rare French print_)
Reproduced by the courtesy of L’Alsace Illustrée]
“I was even persuaded,” he said afterwards, “to give him the receipt
of certain medicaments, among others that of an elixir, which he has
since sold in London as my balsam, though there is not the least
resemblance between them.”
A week later a man, whose wife and daughter had been cured of a
dangerous illness by Cagliostro, called to inform him that Sacchi was a
spy of his enemies the doctors, and that he was seeking to damage him
by extorting fees from his patients. Horrified at the ingratitude and
treachery of which he was the victim, Cagliostro forthwith turned “the
reptile he had harboured” out of doors. Destitute of honour, rage now
deprived Sacchi of common sense. Having been rash enough to threaten
the life of the person who had exposed him, he was expelled from the
city by the Marquis de Lasalle, the Commandant of Strasburg, who had
been cured of a dangerous illness by Cagliostro.
But this action only served to increase the exasperation of the
doctors, whose agent Sacchi was. Instigated by them he wrote to
Cagliostro an insolent letter in which he demanded one hundred and
fifty louis for the week he had passed in his service, threatening,
if it were not instantly paid, to libel him. Cagliostro treated the
threat with contemptuous silence, whereupon Sacchi proceeded to publish
his libel, which he composed with the aid of a French lawyer who had
escaped from the galleys. In it he declared the mysterious Count to be
the son of a Neapolitan coachman, formerly known as Don Tiscio, a name
under which he, Sacchi, had seen him exposed in the pillory at Alicante
in Spain.[22]
As sensitive to abuse as he was susceptible to flattery, Cagliostro
was unable to endure such treatment, and convinced from his previous
experience in Russia that there would be no limit to the vindictive
malevolence of the doctors, he determined, he says, to leave Strasburg,
where, in spite of the Cardinal’s protection and his ministerial
letters, he could find neither tranquillity nor security. A letter
received about this time informing him that the Chevalier d’Aquino,
of Naples, a friend of his mysterious past, was dangerously ill, and
desired to see him, confirmed him in his resolution. Accordingly, in
spite of the entreaties of the Cardinal, he shook the dust of Strasburg
from his feet, and departed in all haste for Naples, where, however, he
states, he arrived too late to save his friend.
II
On leaving Strasburg, as previously on leaving London and Warsaw,
Cagliostro once more plunged into the obscurity in which so much of
his career was passed that it might almost be described as his native
element, to emerge again three months later as before on the crest of
the wave of fortune in Bordeaux. As rumour, however, followed him it is
possible to surmise with some degree of probability what became of him.
The imaginative Inquisition-biographer, though unable to give any
account of Cagliostro’s journey from Strasburg to Naples, his
residence in that city, or subsequent journey to Bordeaux--a singular
tour!--nevertheless unconsciously throws something like light on the
subject. He declares that the Countess Cagliostro, who accompanied
her husband, “confessed” at her trial before the Apostolic Court in
Rome that “he left Naples owing to his failure to establish a lodge
of Egyptian Masonry.” Questionable as the source is from which this
statement emanates, it is nevertheless a clue.
Whatever difference of opinion there may be as to the honesty of
Cagliostro’s motives in propagating Egyptian Masonry, there is
none as to his pertinacity. Within three weeks of his arrival in
Strasburg he had founded a lodge for the observance of the Egyptian
Rite. The mysterious and hurried visits he paid from time to time
to Bâle, Geneva, and other places in Switzerland during his three
years’ residence in Alsace were apparently of a Masonic nature. It
is, moreover, curious to note that his hurried departure for Naples
occurred immediately after the Neapolitan government removed its ban
against Freemasonry. As the Neapolitan government would not have taken
this step had there been the least likelihood of Freemasonry obtaining
a hold over the masses, it is highly probable that Cagliostro left
Naples for the reason given by the Inquisition-biographer.
This probability is still further strengthened by his subsequent
movements, which, erratic though they may appear, had a well-defined
purpose. From the time he left London, be it said, till his last fatal
journey to Rome, Cagliostro never went anywhere without having a
definite and preconceived purpose.
It was certainly with a very definite object that he went to Bordeaux,
where he is next heard of, and whither he travelled, as he himself
says, through the cities of Southern France. Now the cities of Southern
France were permeated with supernaturalism. It was at Bordeaux, that
Martinez Pasqualis had held his celebrated school of magic and mystical
theurgy, the most distinguished of whose pupils was Saint-Martin, the
founder of the Martinists. No place was better adapted for gaining
recruits to Egyptian or any other kind of Freemasonry.
It was here that Mesmer found the noisiest and most ardent of his
admirers in Père Hervier, an Augustinian monk who by his eloquence had
made a great reputation as a popular preacher. Summoned to Bordeaux by
the municipality to preach during Lent at the Church of St. Andrew,
Hervier preached not only the gospel according to Christ but that
according to the Messiah of animal magnetism, with the result that he
made both the clergy and the doctors his enemies.
This church, one of the finest Gothic monuments in Europe, was the
stage on which he displayed his talents both as an orator and as a
mesmerist. He was preaching one day on eternal damnation. His flashing
eyes, commanding gestures, and alluring voice, which had from the
start _prepared_ the church from the holy water stoup to the candles
on the altar, never once lost their hold upon the imagination. The
congregation, consisting of the richest, youngest, and most frivolous
women of Bordeaux, was in complete accord with the preacher. Suddenly
when the monk began to picture the horrors of hell a young girl fell
into a fit. Such an incident happening at such a moment created a
panic, and those in the immediate neighbourhood of the unfortunate
girl fled from the spot in terror. Suspending his sermon Père Hervier
descended from the pulpit with the sublime gravity of an apostle, and
going up to the young girl, magnetized her after the manner of Mesmer.
Immediately her convulsions began to cease. The congregation fell
on its knees. The face of the priest seemed illumined with a divine
light. As he passed the women kissed his feet, and were with difficulty
prevented from worshipping him.
Perceiving that the moment was, so to speak, psychological, Père
Hervier remounted the pulpit, and taking as his text the miracle he
had just performed, discoursed with all the eloquence for which he was
noted on charity and Christ healing the sick; finally bringing his
sermon to a close with a passionate denunciation of the doctors and
clergy of Bordeaux who did not believe in magnetism and desired nothing
better than to persecute a poor monk who did.
Such a stage was too well adapted to Egyptian Masonry not to have
attracted Cagliostro. On the night of his arrival in Bordeaux he and
his wife went to the play, and on being recognized received an ovation.
The next day the concourse of people who flocked to consult him was so
great that the magistrates were obliged to give him a guard of soldiers
to preserve order in the street.
He had resolved, he says, on leaving Strasburg to give up the practice
of medicine in order to avoid exposing himself again to the envy of the
doctors. However, as the number of persons of all stations who sought
his assistance was so great he was induced to change his mind, and
resume the gratuitous “miracles” which had rendered him so celebrated
in Strasburg. In coming to this decision he afterwards declared that
he counted on the protection of the Comte de Vergennes, Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs, and one of the three Cabinet Ministers who
had previously recommended him to the Pretor of Strasburg. It was, he
said, at Vergennes’ special request that he returned to France. As the
Comte de Vergennes failed to deny this statement, which he could easily
have done when it was made by Cagliostro at his trial in the Necklace
Affair, there seems no reason to doubt it.
In Bordeaux, as at Strasburg, his cures and his charities attracted
general attention and procured him a large and enthusiastic following.
Many of the most influential men of the city sought admittance to the
lodge he founded. But, as before, Egyptian Masonry flourished at the
expense of the tranquillity and security of the Grand Cophta. The
influence of Vergennes and other powerful patrons was powerless to
protect him from the ingenious malevolence of the envious doctors.
Even Père Hervier, instead of joining forces with him, entered the
lists against him. Mere “clerk of Mesmer,” he had the folly to engage
Cagliostro in a public discussion, in which he received so humiliating
a chastisement that he was laughed out of Bordeaux. But in spite of his
triumphs life was made such a burden to Cagliostro that after being
continually baited for eleven months he could endure the torment no
longer, and departed for Lyons.
This city was a veritable stronghold of Freemasonry. Lodges of all
descriptions flourished here, notably those founded by Saint-Martin,
the most mystical of occultists, in which the Swedenborgian Rite was
observed. It was here that Cagliostro found his most ardent and loyal
supporters. Their enthusiasm was such that they built a “temple”
expressly for the observance of the Egyptian Rite. It enjoyed the
dignity of being the Mother Lodge of Egyptian Masonry, the lodges at
Strasburg, Bâle, Bordeaux, Paris, and other places being affiliated
to it. As it was the custom for the mother lodges of every order of
Freemasonry to be named after some virtue, this one received the title
of _Sagesse Triomphante_. It was the only lodge specially erected by
Cagliostro’s followers, all the others being held in rooms rented for
their needs.
It would have been well for Cagliostro had he been content to remain
in Lyons. He would have enjoyed the “tranquillity and security” he so
much desired; and history, perhaps, would have forgotten him, for it is
owing to his misfortunes that his achievements are chiefly remembered.
But destiny lured him to destruction and an ignominious renown.
Inordinately vain and self-conscious, he was enticed to Paris by the
Cardinal, who was then residing there, and with whom he had been in
constant correspondence ever since he left Strasburg. So insistent
was his Eminence that he sent Raymond de Carbonnières, one of his
secretaries, and an enthusiastic admirer of Cagliostro, to Lyons on
purpose to fetch him. Paris, too, Mecca of every celebrity, called him
with no uncertain voice. Magic-struck she craved the excitement of
fresh mysteries and the spell of a new idol. Mesmer’s tempestuous vogue
was over; adored and ridiculed in turn he had departed with 340,000
livres, a very practical proof of his success.
So having appointed a Grand Master to represent him, and delegated his
seal--a serpent pierced with an arrow--to two “venerables,” Cagliostro
left Lyons for Paris. If he made enemies in Lyons they did not molest
him. It was the only place in which he does not complain of being
persecuted.
III
On arriving in Paris, Cagliostro declares that he “took the greatest
precaution to avoid causing ill-will.” As the majority of contemporary
documents concur in describing his life in Paris as “dignified and
reserved,” there is no reason to doubt the truth of his statement.
But one cannot escape one’s fate, and in spite of his efforts not to
attract attention, he was condemned to an extraordinary notoriety.
His arrival was no sooner known than, as at Strasburg, Bordeaux, and
Lyons, his house was beset with cripples and invalids of all walks of
life. As usual he refused to accept payment for his services or even
for his remedies.
“No one,” says Grimm, “ever succeeded in making him accept the least
mark of gratitude.”
“What is singular about Cagliostro,” says the Baron de Besenval, “is
that in spite of possessing the characteristics that one associates
with a charlatan, he never behaved as such all the time he was at
Strasburg or at Paris. On the contrary, he never took a sou from a
person, lived honourably, always paid with the greatest exactitude
what he owed, and was very charitable.”
Needless to say, it was not long before his name became the chief
topic of conversation in the capital. In the enthusiasm his successes
excited his failures were ignored. Rumour multiplied the number of his
cures and magnified their importance. His fame was thus reflected on
the invalids themselves. To be “healed” by the Grand Cophta became the
rage. In 1785 Paris swarmed with men and women who professed to have
been cured by Cagliostro.
Naturally this infatuation infuriated his inveterate enemies the
doctors. It is said that they obtained an order from the King
compelling him, if he wished to remain in Paris, to refrain from
practising medicine. If so, they had not the courage to enforce it, for
he counted among his partisans men of the very highest rank, such as
the Prince de Luxembourg, who was Grand Master of the Lodge at Lyons,
as well as those distinguished for their learning like the naturalist
Ramon. All the same the doctors did not leave him entirely unmolested.
Urged by their masters, who from a sense of dignity or prudence dared
not encounter him in person, two medical students resolved to play a
practical joke upon the “healer.” It was a species of amusement very
popular at the period; in this instance it was regarded also as a duty.
The students accordingly called on Cagliostro, and on being admitted
one of them complained of a mysterious malady of which the symptoms
seemed to him extraordinary. In attempting, however, to describe them,
he used certain scientific terms, which at once caused Cagliostro to
suspect that his visitor was an emissary of the doctors. Restraining
his indignation he turned to the other and said with the greatest
gravity--
“Your friend must remain here under my care for sixteen days. The
treatment to which I shall subject him is very simple, but to effect
his cure it will be absolutely necessary for him to eat but once a day,
and then only an ounce of nourishment.”
Alarmed at the prospect of so drastic a diet the mock-invalid began to
protest, and asked if it was not possible to indicate exactly what it
was he suffered from.
“Nothing simpler,” replied Cagliostro. “Superfluity of bile in the
medical faculty.”
The two students, finding themselves caught in the trap they had set
for him, stammered their apologies as best they could. Whereupon
Cagliostro, perceiving their discomfiture, good-naturedly set them at
ease and invited them to breakfast, with the result that they were
converted into ardent admirers.
He did not desire, however, to be known only as a healer of the sick.
In the exhibitions he gave of his occult or psychic powers, he soon
eclipsed every other contemporary celebrity from the number and variety
of the phenomena he performed. Everybody wished to witness these
wonders, and those who were denied the privilege were never tired of
describing them in detail as if they had seen them, or of listening in
turn to their recital. The memoirs of the period are filled with the
marvels of his séances at which he read--by means of _colombes_ and
_pupilles_--the future and the past, in mirrors, carafes, and crystals;
of his predictions, his cures, and his evocations of the dead, who
appeared at his command to rejoice or to terrify, as the case might be,
those in compliance with whose wishes he had summoned them from the
grave.
Every day some new and fantastic story was circulated about him.
It was related, for example, that one day after a dinner-party at
Chaillot, at which the company consisted chiefly of ladies, he was
asked by his hostess to procure partners for her friends who had
expressed the desire to dance.
“M. de Cagliostro,” she said half-seriously, half-playfully, “you have
only to employ your supernatural powers to fetch us some officers from
the Ecole Militaire.”
“True,” he replied, going to a window from which this institution could
be seen in the distance, “it only requires an invisible bridge between
them and us.”
A burst of ironical laughter greeted his words. Indignant, he extended
his arm in the direction of the Hôtel des Invalides, which could also
be seen from the window. A few minutes later eighteen veterans with
cork-legs arrived at the house!
On another occasion it was reported that Cagliostro, having invited
six noblemen to dine with him, had the table laid for thirteen. On
the arrival of his guests he requested them to name any illustrious
shades they desired to occupy the vacant seats. Straightway, as their
names were mentioned, the spectres of the Duc de Choiseul, the Abbé de
Voisenon, Montesquieu, Diderot, d’Alembert, and Voltaire appeared, and
taking the places assigned them conversed with their hosts in a manner
so incredibly stupid, which had it been characteristic of them in the
flesh would have robbed them of all claim to distinction.
This anecdote, one of the gems of the Marquis de Luchet’s lively
imagination, who related it with much spirit, was devoid of the least
particle of truth. Nevertheless the Cénacle de Treize or Banquet of the
Dead, as it was called, acquired an immense notoriety. All Paris talked
of it; and even at Versailles it had the honour for some minutes of
being the subject of royal conversation.
Constantly fired by such stories, the admiration and curiosity that
Cagliostro aroused in all classes of society reached a degree of
infatuation little short of idolatry. By his followers he was addressed
as “revered father” or “august master.” They spent whole hours censing
him with a flattery almost profane, believing themselves purified
by being near him. Some more impassioned and ridiculous than others
averred that “he could tell Atheists and Blasphemers by their smell
which threw him into epileptic fits.”
Houdon, the most celebrated sculptor of the day, executed his bust.
Replicas in bronze, marble, and plaster, bearing the words, _Le Divin
Cagliostro_ on the pedestal, were to be found in salons, boudoirs,
and offices. Rings, brooches, fans, and snuff-boxes were adorned with
his portrait. Prints of him by Bartolozzi and others were scattered
broadcast over Europe, with the following flattering inscription--
De l’ami des humains reconnaissez les traits;
Tous ses jours sont marqués par de nouveaux bienfaits,
Il prolonge la vie, il secourt l’indigence,
Le plaisir d’être utile est seul sa récompense.
[Illustration: HOUDON’S BUST OF CAGLIOSTRO
Reproduced by the courtesy of Messrs. Hachette et Cie.]
Figuier’s statement, however, that “bills were even posted on the
walls to the effect that Louis XVI had declared that any one who
injured him was guilty of _lèse-majesté_” is extremely doubtful. He
was never received at Versailles. Marie Antoinette, who had protected
Mesmer, could not be induced to take the least interest in Cagliostro.
IV
The interest displayed in the prodigies he was said to perform was
augmented by the profound secrecy he observed in regard to his
parentage, his nationality, and his past in general. In the hectic
years immediately preceding the Revolution, when credulity, curiosity,
and the passion for sensation had reached a stage bordering almost on
madness, it required no effort of the imagination to make this secrecy
itself supernatural; indeed, in the end the interest taken in the
mystery in which Cagliostro wrapped himself surpassed that in all his
wonders combined.
People speculated on the source of his wealth without being able to
arrive at any conclusion. “No one,” says Georgel, “could discover the
nature of his resources, he had no letter of credit, and apparently
no banker, nevertheless he lived in the greatest affluence, giving
much to the needy, and seeking no favours whatever from the rich.”
In Strasburg, according to Meiners, “at the very lowest estimate his
annual expenditure was not less than 20,000 livres.” In Paris he was
reputed to live at the rate of 100,000 livres a year. The splendid
footing on which his establishment was maintained was, however,
probably greatly exaggerated. He himself says that the fine house in
the Rue St. Claude, which he rented from the Marquise d’Orvilliers, was
“furnished by degrees.”
Some, as previously stated, attributed his splendour to the Cardinal.
It was attested during the Necklace Affair that proof of this was
found among the Cardinal’s papers. Rohan, however, at his trial denied
the charge most emphatically, and Cagliostro himself declared that
the Cardinal’s munificence never went beyond “birthday gifts to the
Countess, the whole of which consisted of a dove, his (Cagliostro’s)
portrait set in diamonds, with a small watch and chain also set with
brilliants.”[23]
Others declared that his wealth was derived from “the mines of Lima,
of which his father was said to be director.” By others, again, it
was said that “the Jesuits supplied him with funds, or that having
persuaded some Asiatic prince to send his son to travel in Europe,
he had murdered the youth and taken possession of his treasures.”
Cagliostro himself was always very mysterious on this subject.
“But your manner of living,” he was questioned at his trial in the
Necklace Affair, “is expensive; you give away much, and accept of
nothing in return; you pay everybody; how do you contrive to get money?”
“This question,” he replied, “has no kind of relation to the case in
point. What difference does it make whether I am the son of a monarch
or a beggar, or by what means I procure the money I want, as long as I
regard religion and the laws and pay every one his due? I have always
taken a pleasure in refusing to gratify the public curiosity on this
score. Nevertheless I will condescend to tell you that which I have
never revealed to any one before. The principal resource I have to
boast of is that as soon as I set foot in any country I find there
a banker who supplies me with everything I want. For instance, M.
Sarazin, of Bâle, would give me up his whole fortune were I to ask it.
So would M. Sancotar at Lyons.”[24]
Equally various were the nationalities attributed to him. “Some thought
him a Spaniard, others a Jew, an Italian, a Ragusan, or even an Arab.”
All attempts to discover his nationality by his language failed. Baron
Grimm was “certain that he had a Spanish accent,” others were equally
certain that he talked “the patois of Sicily or of the lazzaroni of
Naples.” His enemies declared that he spoke no known language at all,
but a mysterious jargon mixed with cabalistic words.
One day being pressed by the Comtesse de Brienne to explain the origin
of a life so surprising and mysterious, he replied, with a laugh,
that “he was born in the Red Sea and brought up in the shadow of the
Pyramids by a good old man who had taken care of him when he was
abandoned by his parents, and from whom he had learnt all he knew.”
But Mirabeau states that “M. de Nordberg, who had travelled much in
the East, once addressed him some words in Arabic of which he did not
understand one word.”
The mystery in which he purposely enveloped himself, and which became
the deeper the more it was probed, coupled with the wonders he
performed, recalled the famous Count de Saint-Germain, who had created
a similar sensation some twenty years before. Of the life, family
or country of this mysterious individual nothing was ever known. Of
many suppositions the most popular was that he was the son of a royal
_femme galante_--Marie de Neubourg, widow of the last King of Spain of
the House of Austria--and a Jewish banker of Bordeaux. Louis XV, who
had a particular predilection for men of his stamp and was probably
perfectly acquainted with his history, employed him for a time on
secret diplomatic missions and gave him apartments at Chambord. His
fascinating manners, good looks, lavish expenditure and mysterious
antecedents attracted attention wherever he went.
In London, where he lived for a couple of years, he excited great
curiosity. “He was called,” says Walpole, “an Italian, a Spaniard, a
Pole, a nobody that married a great fortune in Mexico and ran away with
her jewels to Constantinople.”
These jewels were the admiration of all who beheld them. Madame de
Hausset, the companion of Madame de Pompadour, to whom he showed
them once, believed them to be false. Gleichen, however, who was a
connoisseur of precious stones, “could discern no reason to doubt their
genuineness.” Like Cagliostro, who gave a diamond valued at 20,000
livres to Cardinal de Rohan, Saint-Germain made a present of one to
Louis XV worth 10,000 livres.
The secrecy he observed in regard to his origin appears in the
beginning to have been due less to any intention to mystify the public
than to a strong sense of humour. In an age when a supernatural
significance was attached to anything that appeared mysterious, he was
at once credited with occult powers which he never claimed to possess.
Urged by a whim to see how far he could play upon the credulity of the
public, he found the rôle of wonder-man so congenial that he never
attempted to adopt another.
A particular talent for romancing, aided by a wonderful memory, enabled
him to doctor up the marvellous to suit the taste of his hearers. He
described people and places of the distant past with a minuteness
of detail that produced the impression that he had been personally
acquainted with them. As many were foolish enough to take him
literally, all sorts of fabulous stories were circulated about him.
“I amuse myself,” he once confessed to Gleichen, who reproved him for
encouraging the belief that he had lived from time immemorial, “not by
making people believe what I wish, but by letting them believe what
they wish. These fools of Parisians declare that I am five hundred, and
I confirm them in the idea since it pleases them.”
The least credulous believed him to be at least a hundred. Madame de
Pompadour said to him once that old Madame de Gergy remembered having
met him fifty years before in Venice when he passed for a man of sixty.
“I never like to contradict a lady,” he replied, “but it is just
possible that Madame de Gergy is in her dotage.”
Even his valet was supposed to have discovered the secret of
immortality. This fellow, a veritable Scapin, assisted him admirably in
mystifying the credulous.
“Your master,” said a sceptic one day, seizing him by the collar, “is a
rogue who is taking us all in. Tell me, is it true that he was present
at the marriage of Cana?”
“You forget, sir,” was the reply, “I have only been in his service a
century.”
Many of the most amazing stories circulated about Cagliostro
were merely a repetition of those related twenty years before of
Saint-Germain. The recollection of Saint-Germain’s reputed longevity
led to the bestowal of a similar attribute to his successor. Thus it
was reported that Cagliostro stopped one day before a “Descent from
the Cross” in the Louvre and began to talk of the Crucifixion as if he
had witnessed it. Though the story was devoid of foundation it was not
without effect, and many declared, and believed too, that the Grand
Cophta had lived hundreds, and even thousands of years. Cagliostro, it
is but fair to add, complained bitterly of this at his trial.
On the strength of the close resemblance in the mystery and the stories
concerning Saint-Germain and Cagliostro, as well as their alchemical
knowledge--for Saint-Germain, needless to say, was credited with having
discovered the philosopher’s stone--Grimm believed Cagliostro to have
been the valet alluded to above. There is, however, not the least
evidence that the paths of the two men ever crossed.[25]
V
Great though the influence that an impenetrable mystery and so-called
supernatural phenomena always exercise over the human mind, their
appeal, even when credulity reaches the pitch it did in 1785, will
never alone provoke interest so extraordinary as that taken in
Cagliostro. It is only a very powerful and magnetic personality that
is able to fix such curiosity and to excite such admiration. It is,
moreover, equally certain, that had he been such a man as Carlyle
has painted him, history would never have heard of him, much less
remembered him.
Speaking of Cagliostro’s physiognomy, he describes it as “a most
portentous face of scoundrelism; a fat snub, abominable face;
dew-lapped, flat-nosed, greasy, full of greediness, sensuality, ox-like
obstinacy; the most perfect quack-face produced by the eighteenth
century.”
It is the _ignorance_ of his subject, be it said, rather than the
violence of his prejudice, which such statements as this reveal
that have deprived Carlyle’s opinion of Cagliostro of any value in
the estimation of modern writers.[26] There is plenty of reliable
information, to which Carlyle had access, to prove that Cagliostro’s
appearance was anything but repulsive.
Beugnot, who has described him with more mockery than any of his
contemporaries, says “he was of medium height, rather stout, with an
olive complexion, a short neck, round face, a broad turned-up nose, and
two large eyes.” From all accounts his eyes were remarkable. “I cannot
describe his physiognomy,” says the Marquise de Créquy, “for he had
twelve or fifteen at his disposal. But no two eyes like his were ever
seen; and his teeth were superb.” Laborde speaks of “his eyes of fire
which pierced to the bottom of the soul.” Another writer declares that
“his glance was like a gimlet.”
All the contemporary documents that speak of him--and they are hostile
with very few exceptions--refer to the powerful fascination that he
exercised on all who approached him. The impression he produced upon
the intellectual Countess von der Recke has already been referred to.
Like her, Laborde, Motus, and others considered that his countenance
“indicated genius.”
Cardinal de Rohan told Georgel that on seeing him for the first time
“he discovered in his physiognomy a dignity so imposing that he felt
penetrated with awe.”
“He was not, strictly speaking, handsome,” says Madame d’Oberkirch, who
certainly was not one of his admirers, “but never have I seen a more
remarkable face. His glance was so penetrating that one might be almost
tempted to call it supernatural. I could not describe the expression
of his eyes--it was, so to speak, a mixture of flame and ice. It
attracted and repelled at the same time, and inspired, whilst it
terrified, an insurmountable curiosity. I cannot deny that Cagliostro
possessed an almost demoniacal power, and it was with difficulty that
I tore myself from a fascination I could not comprehend, but whose
influence I could not deny.”
Lavater, whose unfavourable opinion seems to be due to the contemptuous
way in which Cagliostro received him, nevertheless thought him “a man
such as few are.”
Beugnot, after ridiculing him as “moulded for the express purpose of
playing the part of a clown,” confesses that “his face, his attire--the
whole man, in fact, impressed him in spite of himself.”
If, as Meiners and other hostile contemporaries assert, “he spoke
badly all the languages he professed to know,” there is not the least
reason to infer, like Carlyle, that “he was wholly intelligible to no
mortal,” or that “what thought, what resemblance of thought he had,
could not deliver itself, except in gasps, blustering gushes, spasmodic
refluences which made bad worse.”
Michelet--Carlyle’s brilliant and equally learned
contemporary--regarded him as “a veritable sorcerer possessed of great
eloquence.” Even the bitter Inquisition-biographer confessed that
he was “marvellously eloquent.” Motus declared that “his eloquence
fascinated and subjugated one, even in the languages he spoke least
well.” “If gibberish can be sublime,” says Beugnot, “Cagliostro was
sublime. When he began any subject he seemed carried away with it, and
spoke impressively in a ringing, sonorous voice.”
The beauty of the Countess Cagliostro was also an important element
in the success of her husband. She was like a sylph with her fluffy
straw-coloured hair, which she wore unpowdered, her large, deep, soft
blue eyes, her small and delicately chiselled nose, her full rose-red
lips, and a dazzlingly white skin.
“She is an angel in human form,” said Maître Polverit, by whom she
was defended when she was imprisoned in the Bastille on the charge of
being implicated in the Necklace Affair, “who has been sent on earth
to share and soften the days of the Man of Marvels. Beautiful with a
beauty that never belonged to any woman, she cannot be called a model
of tenderness, sweetness and resignation--no! for she does not even
suspect the existence of any other qualities.” And the judges evidently
agreed, for they ordered her release without a trial.
Motus describes her as “a beautiful and modest person and as charitable
as her husband.” She was fond of dress, and her diamonds were the talk
of Paris. The Countess de Lamotte at her trial declared that “Madame
de Cagliostro’s display of jewelry scandalized respectable women, as
well as those who were not.” It is scarcely necessary, however, to
observe that Madame de Lamotte saw the Countess through her hatred of
Cagliostro. To make a display of jewelry at that period did not cause
the least scandal. The Countess, moreover, was a fine horsewoman, and
mounted on her black mare Djèrid attracted attention quite apart from
the fact that she was the wife of Cagliostro.
Uneducated--she could not write; though from mixing in the best society
she had acquired the manners of a lady--she was one of those women who
always remain a child. In the over-civilized, cynical, and hysterical
age in which she lived, her ingenuous chatter passed for a new type of
spirituality, and her ignorance for candour. That was the secret of her
charm. As all the world lacked it, candour was a novelty.
“The admiration she excited,” says one writer, “was most ardent among
those who had never seen her. There were duels over her, duels proposed
and accepted as to the colour of her eyes, which neither of the
adversaries knew, or as to whether a dimple was on her right cheek or
on her left.”
Needless to say, scandal did not fail to attack her reputation. The
enemies of Cagliostro were quick to accuse her of light conduct, and
her husband of encouraging it. The Cardinal was popularly supposed
to be her lover. The Countess de Lamotte asserted that she specially
distinguished a Chevalier d’Oisemont among a crowd of admirers. But,
as Gleichen says in reference to her supposed infidelity, “why suppose
without proof?” Of Cagliostro’s devotion to her at least there is no
doubt. So little is known of her character that it is impossible to
speak of it with any certainty; but considering the admiration that
all agree she inspired and the numerous temptations she had to desert
him when fortune turned against him, the fact that she stuck to him to
the end is a pretty strong argument in favour of both her fidelity and
affection.
Owing to her girlish appearance, the age of the lovely Countess was
a subject of considerable speculation. It is said, though with what
truth cannot be stated, that “she occasionally spoke of a son who
was a captain in the service of the Dutch government.” As this made
her at least forty when she did not appear to be twenty, a credulous
public was ready to see in her a living witness to the efficacy of her
husband’s rejuvenating powders and elixir of life. De Luchet, who is
responsible for the story, asserts that she added to her age expressly
to advertise Cagliostro’s quack-medicines.[27]
Like Saint-Germain’s valet, she was also credited with a share of her
husband’s supernatural endowments. According to certain unauthenticated
information, she was the Grand Mistress of the Isis lodge for women,
which among other conditions of membership included a subscription
of one hundred louis. This lodge is said to have been composed of
thirty-six ladies of rank, who joined it for the purpose of being
taught magic by the wife of Cagliostro. The report widely circulated by
de Luchet, of the obscene character of the “evocations,” is devoid of
the least authenticity. It is doubtful, indeed, whether such a lodge
ever existed at all. Madame de Genlis, who figures in de Luchet’s list
of members, never so much as mentions the Cagliostros in her memoirs.
VI
Needless to say, Cagliostro did not fail to turn the prodigious furore
he created to the account of Egyptian Masonry. Not long after his
arrival in Paris a lodge was established at the residence of one of his
followers in a room specially set apart for the purpose and furnished,
says the Inquisition-biographer, “with unparalleled magnificence.”
Here from time to time the “seven angels of the Egyptian Paradise, who
stand round the throne of God--Anaël, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Uriel,
Zobriachel, and Hanachiel” (with whom the Grand Cophta was a special
favourite) “condescended to appear to the faithful.”
Cagliostro also opened another lodge in his own house, when the angels
came at the bidding of other members besides the Grand Cophta. It was
not long before similar phenomena were witnessed in all the Egyptian
lodges. In a remarkable letter of an adept of the lodge at Lyons found
in Cagliostro’s papers at the time of his arrest in Rome, the writer,
in describing a ceremony held there, said that “the first philosopher
of the New Testament _appeared without being called_, and gave the
entire assembly, prostrate before the blue cloud in which he appeared,
his blessing. Moreover” (adds the writer), “two great prophets and the
legislator of Israel have given us similar convincing signs of their
good-will.”
It is from Cagliostro’s ability “to transmit his powers,” as it was
termed, that the singular phenomena of modern spiritualism were
developed. In reality it was nothing more or less than the discovery
of the “psychic”--the word must serve for want of a better--properties
latent in every human being, and which in many are capable of a very
high degree of development. This discovery, till then unimagined, was
the secret of the veneration in which Cagliostro was regarded by his
followers.
Notwithstanding the very high development to which Cagliostro’s own
“psychic” powers had now attained, one gathers the impression from his
own utterances that he never completely understood them. A link between
the old conception of magic and the new theosophical theories, there
are many indications that he regarded the phenomena he performed as
direct manifestations of divine power. In an age of unbelief he always
spoke of God with the greatest respect, even in circles in which it
was the fashion to decry the goodness as well as the existence of the
Supreme Being. Like all the mystics of the eighteenth century, he was
deistic. “All duty, according to him,” says Georgel, “was based on the
principle: Never do to others what you would not wish them to do to
you.” One of the first things seen on entering his house in Paris was
a slab of black marble on which was engraved in gold letters Pope’s
_Universal Prayer_.
Historians who have been inclined to treat him leniently as the loyal
agent of a revolutionary sect are horrified that he “should have
effaced the dignity of the enthusiast behind the trickeries of the
necromancer.” Louis Blanc, who preached a perpetual crusade against
thrones and altars, and despised occultism, declares that Cagliostro’s
phenomena “cast suspicion on his own ideals, and were a veritable crime
against the cause he proclaimed to be holy, and which there was no
necessity to associate with shameful falsehoods.”
The charge is a very just one. The bitterness with which Cagliostro
has been regarded for a hundred years is due less to the calumnies
with which he was assailed in his life--and which till the present no
one has dreamt of investigating--than to the belief that he debased
his ideals. As his “psychic” powers developed it cannot be denied that
he attached a significance to them that, in the opinion of thoughtful
people, was calculated to render his motives suspect. His real
imposture was not in cheating people of their money or faking miracles,
but in encouraging the belief that he was a supernatural being--“I am
that I am,” as he is said to have described himself profanely on one
occasion. Intoxicated by his amazing success, he lost all sense of
proportion. The means which he had begun to employ in Mittau to justify
his end all but effaced the end itself in Paris.
To attract followers he was no longer content to gratify the passion
for the marvellous, but sought to stimulate it. To enhance the effect
of his phenomena he had recourse to artifices worthy of a mountebank.
The room in which his séances were held contained statuettes of Isis,
Anubis, and the ox Apis. The walls were covered with hieroglyphics, and
two lacqueys, “clothed like Egyptian slaves as they are represented
on the monuments at Thebes,” were in attendance to arrange the screen
behind which the _pupilles_ or _colombes_ sat, the carafe or mirror
into which they gazed, or to perform any other service that was
required.
To complete the _mise en scène_, Cagliostro wore a robe of black silk
on which hieroglyphics were embroidered in red. His head was covered
with an Arab turban of cloth of gold ornamented with jewels. A chain
of emeralds hung _en sautoir_ upon his breast, to which scarabs and
cabalistic symbols of all colours in metal were attached. A sword with
a handle shaped like a cross was suspended from a belt of red silk.
“In this costume,” says Figuier, “the Grand Cophta looked so imposing
that the whole assembly felt a sort of terror when he appeared.”
The manner in which Cagliostro dressed and conducted himself in public
was equally designed to attract attention, though it was scarcely of
the sort he desired. A writer who saw him walking one day followed by
an admiring band of street-arabs says “he was wearing a coat of blue
silk braided along the seams; his hair in powdered knots was gathered
up in a net; his shoes _à la d’Artois_ were fastened with jewelled
buckles, his stockings studded with gold buttons; rubies and diamonds
sparkled on his fingers, and on the frill of his shirt; from his
watch-chain hung a diamond drop, a gold key adorned with diamonds, and
an agate seal--all of which, in conjunction with his flowered waistcoat
and musketeer hat with a white plume, produced an instantaneous effect.”
The Marquise de Créquy, Beugnot, and nearly all his contemporaries
allude to the fantastic manner in which he dressed as well as to his
colossal vanity, which, inflated by success, rendered him not only
ridiculous to those whom he failed to fascinate, but even insufferable.
Pompous in Mittau, he became arrogant, domineering, and choleric in
Paris. Flattery, to which he had always been peculiarly susceptible,
at last became to him like some drug by which he was enslaved. He could
not tolerate criticism or contradiction. “The Chevalier de Montbruel,”
says Beugnot, “a veteran of the green-room, and ready to affirm
anything, was always at hand to bear witness to Cagliostro’s cures,
offering himself as an example cured of I do not know how many maladies
with names enough to frighten one.”
However, Cagliostro was never so spoilt by success, never so
compromised by the tricks and devices to which he stooped to perform
his wonders, as to lose sight of his ideal. Had he been the vulgar
cheat, the sordid impostor it is customary to depict him, he would have
contented himself with the subscriptions paid by the members of the
lodges he founded and have ceased to insist on the ethical character of
Egyptian Masonry. In 1785 a religious element was calculated to repel
rather than to attract. It was the wonder-man, and not the idealist,
in whom Paris was interested. But instead of taking the line of least
resistance, so to speak, Cagliostro deliberately adopted a course that
could not fail to make enemies rather than friends.
Far from dropping the religious and moral character of the Egyptian
Rite, he laid greater stress on it than ever, and claimed for his sect
a superiority over all the others of Freemasonry, on the ground that
it was based on the mysteries of Isis and Anubis which he had brought
from the East. As no one ever ventured to regard him as a fool as
well as a knave, it is impossible to question his sincerity in the
matter. At once the seventy-two Masonic lodges of Paris rose in arms
against him. He managed, however, to triumph over all opposition. At
a meeting held for the purpose of expounding the dogmas of Egyptian
Masonry “his eloquence was so persuasive,” says Figuier, “that he
completely converted to his views the large and distinguished audience
he addressed.”
From the respect that Cagliostro thus exacted and obtained, Egyptian
Masonry acquired an importance in France not unlike that of the
Illuminés in Germany. Nothing proves this so well as the Congress of
Philalètes, or the Seekers of Truth.
This Masonic body was composed of members of Swedenborgian and
Martinist lodges affiliated to Illuminism. Its character was at
once occult and political. On the detection and suppression of the
Illuminés, in 1784, the Philalètes, organized by Savalette de Langes,
a revolutionary mystic, sought to finish in France the work which
Weishaupt had begun in Germany. As an old Illuminé, Savalette de Langes
was well acquainted with Cagliostro, and the importance he attached to
him was so great that he desired to incorporate the sect of Egyptian
Masonry in that of the Philalètes. He accordingly summoned a congress
of Philalètes to which Cagliostro was invited to explain his doctrine.
The ambitions and aspirations of the Grand Cophta had kept pace with
the steadily rising fortunes of Egyptian Masonry. He was quick to
perceive the immense advantage to be derived from a union of the
organization of which he was the head with that of the Philalètes, who
were one of the most numerous and influential of the Masonic sects. But
he had no intention of playing second fiddle to them, and in replying
to their invitation he assumed that they were prepared to acknowledge
the superiority of the Egyptian Rite. So with pompous condescension,
which was as astute as it was bizarre, he informed them that “having
deigned to extend to them his hand and consented to cast a ray of light
upon the darkness of their Temple, he requested them as a sign of their
submission to the truths of Egyptian Masonry to burn their archives.”
Though taken aback by such an answer, the Philalètes did not abandon
the hope of coming to some satisfactory arrangement. But Cagliostro
proved too clever for them, and in the series of interviews and
negotiations which followed they were completely overawed and
over-reached. For a moment it seemed as if Freemasonry in general
was to be restored to “its original Egyptian character,” and that
Cagliostro would realize his sublime ideal, perform the greatest of all
his prodigies, and “evoke” the Revolution, which the noblest minds in
Europe had dreamt of for a hundred years.
But life has her great ironies as well as her little ones. Suddenly, to
the rapt enthusiast on the Pisgah-peak of his ambition the shadow of
the Revolution did indeed appear. Not the benign genius it was fondly
imagined to be before 1789: herald of freedom and the golden age; but
the monstrous demon of calumny, hatred and terror: the shadow of the
Revolution as it was to be, claiming its victims in advance.
Before the Philalètes and the Egyptian Masons could effect their union,
the Diamond Necklace Affair was to destroy all Cagliostro’s dreams and
projects.