THE DIAMOND NECKLACE AFFAIR
I
Few subjects have been more written about, more discussed than the
Affair of the Diamond Necklace. The defences alone of those involved
in this _cause célèbre_ fill two big volumes. All the memoirs of the
period contain more or less detailed accounts of it; in every history
of France it occupies a chapter to itself; and as it suggests romance
even more than history, novelists and dramatists alike have often
exercised their imagination upon its entanglements.
To re-tell in detail this romance, to rehearse this drama in which
the happiness and reputations of all who figure in it were destroyed,
does not come within the scope of this book. For the chief interest it
excites is focussed on the star--the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois--who
dominates the scene from first to last. It is only in the last act that
Cagliostro appears. Nevertheless, the part he played was so important
that a brief _résumé_ of the action preceding his appearance is
necessary to enable the reader to understand how he came to be involved
in the imbroglio.
[Illustration: COUNTESS DE LAMOTTE
(_After Robinet_)]
Nature had specially cast Madame de Lamotte for the part she played in
this drama. Descended from the Valois through a natural son of Henry
II, her family had sunk into a state of abject poverty. At her birth
her father was reduced to poaching for a livelihood on his former
ancestral estate. He eventually died in the Hôtel Dieu, the famous
hospital for the indigent founded by Madame de Pompadour. Madame de
Lamotte herself as a child was a barefoot beggar on the highway. It
was in this condition that she first attracted the attention of the
Marquise de Boulainvilliers, who out of pity gave her a home, educated
her as well as her brother and sister, and afterwards obtained a small
pension for them from Louis XVI.
Being naturally extremely precocious and intelligent, Jeanne de
Saint-Remy, as she was called, did not neglect her opportunities. It
was her misfortune, however, to derive but small profit from them.
Having flirted with the wrong people--her benefactress’s husband and
a bishop--she married the wrong man. Lamotte was good-looking, of a
respectable family, and crippled with debt. Unable to support himself
and his wife on his pay as a subaltern in the army, he resigned his
commission, adopted the title of Count--to which he had a shadowy
claim--added Valois to his name, and went to Paris to seek fortune,
where the Countess made the most of her wits and her looks.
The expedient to which she most frequently resorted was to pester
well-known people with petitions, in which she sought to have the claim
she had set up to the lands of her ancestors recognized. As by some
extraordinary coincidence the Crown had recently acquired these lands,
she had, she hoped, only to find the right person to take up her cause
to triumph in the end. Among those to whom she appealed was Cardinal
de Rohan. His Eminence, who was both sympathetic and susceptible,
manifested the greatest pity for the young and charming Countess whose
condition was in such a contrast to her illustrious birth. He was
amazed that the Court should so neglect a descendant of Henri II, and
promised readily to support her claim. A few days later in his capacity
as Grand Almoner of France, he sent his interesting _protégée_ 2,400
livres as an earnest of his intention. As gratitude and necessity
caused the suppliant to renew her visits frequently, the impression she
produced on the Cardinal deepened. His pride as well as his sensuality
urged him to protect a woman as fascinating and distinguished as she
was unfortunate. He entered into her views, gave her advice; and even
confided to her his own grievances and desires.
With all his splendour his Eminence was what is known as a disappointed
man. It was his ambition to play a conspicuous part in affairs of
state. To flatter him the sycophants who surrounded him were in the
habit of comparing his abilities to those of Richelieu, Mazarin, and
Fleury, the three great Cardinals who had governed France. It was
more than his right, it was his duty, they told him, to become First
Minister. In reality he was utterly unfitted for such a position,
though not more so than Calonne and Loménie de Brienne, the last
two ministers to govern the state under the _ancien régime_. Rohan,
however, intoxicated by flattery, believed what he was told; and his
desire for power developed into a passion, a fixed idea.
One obstacle alone stood between him and the pursuit of his
ambition--Marie Antoinette; a fascinating and dazzling obstacle to
this consecrated voluptuary, so dazzling that it became confused in
his mind with the summit from which it kept him. He did not bear the
Queen the slightest resentment for her animosity to him. He was aware
that it had been imparted to her by her mother Maria Theresa, at whose
instance he had been recalled from Vienna twelve years before. He felt
certain that if he could but meet her, get into communication with her,
he could win her esteem. Unfortunately Marie Antoinette’s contempt
extended to Louis XVI. Versailles was thus closed to the Cardinal. He
was never seen there but once a year, on Assumption Day, in his rôle of
Grand Almoner, when he celebrated mass in the Royal Chapel.
The confidences of her protector gave the Countess de Lamotte more
than an insight into his character. In the vanity and credulity they
revealed, her alert and cunning mind saw a Golconda of possibilities
which not only her necessity but her genius for intrigue urged her
to exploit.[28] By circulating rumours of her friendship with the
Queen, to which her frequent journeys to Versailles in search of some
influential person to present her petition to the King gave weight, she
had obtained credit from tradespeople. To cause this rumour to glide
to the ears of his Eminence was easy. And as people generally believe
what flatters them, when Madame de Lamotte spoke of the interest that
the Queen took in him, an interest that circumstances compelled her to
conceal, the dissipated, amorous Cardinal, too vain to dream any one
would deceive him, listened and believed all he was told.
Thus began the famous series of violet-tinted letters which during May,
June, and July, 1784, passed between Marie Antoinette and Rohan. This
correspondence of which the Queen, needless to say, had not the least
inkling, becoming as it proceeded less and less cold and reserved,
inflamed all the desires that fermented in the heart of the Cardinal.
In this way it was the simplest thing in the world for the Countess
de Lamotte to induce him to send the Queen through her “60,000 livres
out of the Almonry funds for a poor family in whom her Majesty was
interested.”
As Marie Antoinette continued to be “short of cash,” Rohan, who was
himself heavily in debt and had misappropriated into the bargain
the funds of various institutions of which he was the trustee, was
obliged to borrow the money the Queen was supposed to be in need of
from the Jews. His Eminence, however, at length became restive under
these incessant demands for money. He even began to suspect that the
Queen might be playing him false, and in spite of all the Countess’s
explanations demanded some visible proof of the interest she professed
to manifest in him.
It was at this juncture, when it seemed as if the game was up, that
Lamotte, walking in the garden of the Palais Royal, met by accident an
unfortunate female whose face bore a perfect resemblance to that of the
Queen.[29] To such an _intrigante_ as the Countess, this resemblance
was sufficient material out of which to forge a fresh chain for the
Cardinal. On August 11, 1784, between ten and eleven at night, “the
unfortunate female”--Mlle. Leguay, Baroness d’Oliva or whatever she
called herself--having been carefully trained and paid to represent
Marie Antoinette, gave the Cardinal, “disguised as a mousquetaire,”
a meeting in the park of Versailles, a meeting which the Countess de
Lamotte was careful to interrupt ere it began, giving his Eminence
barely time to kiss the hand of the supposed Queen, who as she was
hurried away flung the kneeling prelate a rose as a token of her
affection and esteem.
To Rohan that fleeting vision of the Queen of France served as the
proof he had demanded. Henceforth the dream of his diseased fancy
enveloped him as in a veil. Obsessed by a single idea, he became
the blind instrument of the consummate enchantress by whom he was
bewitched. After his romantic rendezvous in the park of Versailles, he
advanced confidently and triumphantly to the abyss into which he was
destined to plunge, without looking to the right or to the left, and
seeing nothing but his vision of the Queen as she had dropped the rose
at his feet.
So complete was his thraldom, that later in the depth of his abasement,
when he lay in the terrible solitude of the Bastille, charged with
swindling a jeweller of a necklace, it was with difficulty that Rohan
could bring himself to believe, not that he had been basely betrayed by
the Queen, but duped by Madame de Lamotte. “I was completely blinded by
the immense desire I had to regain the favour of the Queen,” he said
at his trial, in reply to the observations of the judges how a man
so cultivated, so intelligent, and even so able, as he unquestionably
was--his embassy in Vienna had been a brilliant success--should have
become the plaything of the Countess de Lamotte.
“His incredible credulity,” says the Duc de Lévis, “was really the knot
of the whole affair.” However, it is not so incredible as it seems. The
very fact of his intelligence partially explains it. As Suzanne says
to Figaro in the _Barber of Seville_, “intellectual men are fools,”
particularly when there is a woman in the case, and Madame de Lamotte
was clever and fascinating enough to have turned the head of the Devil
himself.
As a result of this strategy the Countess managed to mulct the Cardinal
of 150,000 livres. The figure that she cut on this money confirmed the
rumours of her intimacy with the Queen, a circumstance she did not
fail to turn to account. By paying those whom she owed she obtained
from them and others still greater credit, whereby the foundations of
the vast structure of deceit in which she lived were still further
strengthened and extended. She had no longer to ask for credit, it was
offered to her, and people even came to implore her to use her boasted
influence at Court in their behalf. Some silk merchants of Lyons, who
desired the patronage of the Queen, sent her a case of superb stuffs
valued at 10,000 livres.
It was in this way that she became acquainted with Böhmer, the maker of
the famous necklace.
Except the Cardinal, it would be impossible to imagine a more
ridiculous monomaniac than this Saxon Jew. For over ten years he had
locked up his whole fortune in a “matchless jewel” for which he was
unable to find a purchaser. Marie Antoinette, in particular, had been
pestered to buy it, till her patience being exhausted she ordered
Böhmer never to mention it to her again.[30] He obeyed her, but none
the less continued to hope she would change her mind. In the course of
ten years this hope became a fixed idea, which he sought to realize by
hook or crook. Thus hearing that Madame de Lamotte had great influence
with the Queen, Böhmer came, like the silk merchants of Lyons and
others, to purchase it if possible.
It did not take the wily Countess long to gauge the credulity of her
visitor, or to make up her mind that it was worth her while to exploit
it. Needless to say, a woman clever enough to persuade the Grand
Almoner of France that a _fille de joie_ of the Palais Royal from whom
he had received a rose in the park of Versailles was Marie Antoinette,
would have no difficulty in getting possession of Böhmer’s necklace.
The Cardinal, who had been marking time, so to speak, at Saverne ever
since his adventure, was hastily summoned to Paris to perform a service
for her Majesty concerning which she enjoined the strictest secrecy.
When Rohan, who had travelled post in a blizzard, discovered what the
service was he was staggered. No wonder. The Queen, he was informed,
wished him to be her security for the purchase of the necklace,
for which she had agreed to pay 1,600,000 livres (£64,000) in four
instalments of equal amounts at intervals of six months. Madame de
Lamotte, however, succeeded in persuading him to affix his signature to
the necessary documents--and in due course Böhmer’s “matchless jewel”
was in her possession.
It did not take her long “to break it up,” as Marie Antoinette had
advised Böhmer to do years before. Her manner of disposing of the
diamonds, which she “picked from the setting with a knife,” was
itself a romance. But it is impossible in so hurried a _résumé_ of
this imbroglio to enter into any particulars that have no connection
whatever with Cagliostro.
The _dénouement_ arrived six months later when the first instalment of
400,000 livres became due. Madame de Lamotte awaited it with perfect
indifference. She had involved the Cardinal too deeply to have any
fears for herself. The very peril to which _he_ was exposed was _her_
safety. At all costs Rohan would be obliged to pay for the necklace to
prevent a scandal.
She made a mistake, however, in not informing him in time that the
Queen was not in a position to pay the instalment, whereby as her
security the liability devolved on him. For never dreaming that such
a contingency was possible, he was utterly unprepared for it when it
came. Crippled with debt, he was unable to put his hand on 400,000
livres at a moment’s notice. The difficulty he found in raising the
sum made Böhmer so nervous that he consulted Madame Campan, one of the
Queen’s ladies-in-waiting. She informed the jeweller that he was mad
if he imagined the Queen had bought his necklace. Hereupon Böhmer in
great agitation rushed off to Madame de Lamotte, who coolly informed
him she suspected he was being victimized.
“But,” she added reassuringly, “the Cardinal is, as you know, very
rich; he will pay. Go to him.”
This was a master-stroke; for the Countess had as much reason to
believe that Böhmer would take her advice as that the Cardinal,
to avoid a scandal which meant his ruin, would assume the entire
responsibility of the purchase of the necklace. Unfortunately, the
distracted jeweller instead of going to the Cardinal tottered off to
the King!
By a dramatic coincidence it was Assumption Day, the one day in the
year on which the Cardinal was entitled to appear at Versailles, when
as Grand Almoner he celebrated mass to which the Royal Family always
went in state. He and the Court were waiting in the Oeil-de-Boeuf
for the King and Queen to appear in order to accompany them to the
Chapel of St. Louis, when a door opened and a chamberlain summoned
his Eminence to the sovereign. Everybody knows what followed. Böhmer,
having obtained an audience of Louis XVI, had related to that amazed
monarch all the details of the transaction by which the necklace had
been bought for the Queen. This story, repeated in the presence of
Marie Antoinette, whose honesty and virtue it alike impugned, stung
her to fury. Exasperated though she was by Böhmer’s assertion that
she had purchased his necklace, which for ten years she had refused
to do, she might nevertheless have excused him on the ground of his
insanity. But when he charged her with having employed Rohan, whom she
hated, to purchase the necklace through a confidante of whom she had
never heard, she was transported with indignation. Forgetting that
she was a Queen, which she did too often, she remembered only that
she was a woman, and without thinking of the consequences, insisted
that the Cardinal should be arrested and her reputation publicly
vindicated. Louis XVI, whose misfortune it was to be guided by her when
he shouldn’t, and never when he should--a misfortune that in the end
was to cost him crown and life--at once ordered the arrest of the Grand
Almoner, who, attired in his pontifical robes, was carried off then and
there to the Bastille like a common criminal before the eyes of the
entire Court.
The arrest of the Cardinal[31] was in due course followed by that
of the Countess de Lamotte, Cagliostro and his wife, the “Baroness
d’Oliva,” who had acted the part of the Queen in the park of
Versailles, Réteaux de Vilette, who had forged the Queens letters to
Rohan, and several others on whom suspicion had fallen. “The Bastille,”
as Carlyle says, “opened its iron bosom to them all.”[32]
Such in brief is the story of the rape of the Diamond Necklace.
* * * * *
[Illustration: Marie Antoinette (_From a French print_)]
The trial that followed has been justly described as the prologue of
the Revolution. To the calumnies it gave birth may be traced the hatred
which engendered the Reign of Terror.
“Calumny,” says M. Chaix d’Est-Ange in his brilliant monograph on the
Necklace Affair, “is common to all ages, but it has not always the
same force and success. In times when public opinion is indifferent or
feeble it is despised and powerless. At other periods more favourable
to it, borne on the wings of passion it soars aloft strong, confident,
and triumphant. If ever it was a power it was in the eighteenth
century.”
“It was everywhere,” says de Goncourt, “under the roofs of courtiers
and blackmailers alike, in the bureaux of the police themselves, and
even at the side of the Queen.”
Given such a state of society Marie Antoinette could have done nothing
so calculated to injure herself as to cause the arrest of the Cardinal.
If he deserved the Bastille it was not necessary to send him there.
Though she may be excused for regarding him as a “vulgar swindler who
stole diamonds to pay his debts,” she should have remembered that he
was also the head of one of the greatest houses in France. As soon as
the news of his arrest was known there was but a single opinion in the
_salons_ of the nobility: “What, arrest the Grand Almoner of France in
full pontificals before the whole Court for a bit of chiffon! Send a
Rohan and the chief of the clergy to the Bastille! _C’est trop!_”
The malcontents of the Court recognized in this shameful disgrace the
hand of the unpopular minister Breteuil, who was known to be the bitter
enemy of the Cardinal.
“M. de Breteuil,” wrote Rivarol with truth, “has taken the Cardinal
from the hands of Madame de Lamotte and crushed him on the forehead of
the Queen, which will retain the marks.”
It was by his advice, indeed, that Louis XVI had been persuaded to
gratify the rage of his reckless consort. The opportunity of ruining
his enemy had been too great for Breteuil to resist. The weakness of
the King, the unpopularity of the Queen and the faults of a blundering
minister were thus alike accentuated.
“When a king has absolute power,” says Chaix d’Est-Ange, “it is without
doubt at such a time as this that he should use it to stifle scandal.”
The arrest of the Cardinal could only have been justified by his
conviction. It was a question of his honour or the Queen’s. Thirty
years before it would have been an easy matter to find him guilty, but
the spirit of disrespect for a tyrannized and stupid authority which
was beginning to assert itself everywhere made Rohan’s conviction
extremely difficult, if not altogether impossible. For Louis XVI, from
a mistaken sense of equity which was interpreted as weakness, allowed
the Parliament to try him.
This was the height of folly. For sixty years there had been war
between the Court and the Parliament. In the truce which had taken
place on the accession of Louis XVI, the members had resumed their
deliberations more imbued than ever with the spirit of resistance;
embittered by a long exile they regarded their recall as a victory.
Thus to give the Parliament the power of determining the guilt or
innocence of the Cardinal, which was in reality that of the Queen
herself, was to take an acknowledged enemy for a judge.
When the news of the Cardinal’s arrest reached the Parliament, one of
the most popular members--he afterwards perished on the guillotine like
most of them--cried out, rubbing his hands, “Grand and joyful business!
A Cardinal in a swindle! The Queen implicated in a forgery! Filth on
the crook and on the sceptre! What a triumph for ideas of liberty! How
important for the Parliament!”
In such circumstances it is not surprising that the trial of the
Cardinal and his _co-accusés_ should become, as Mirabeau wrote, “the
most serious affair in the kingdom.”
The great family of Rohan left no stone unturned to save the honour of
their name. To assist them--but inspired by quite other motives--they
had all the enemies of the Queen and the Ministry, as well as the
people who considered the Cardinal the victim of despotism. Women in
particular were all for la Belle Eminence. It was the fashion to wear
ribbons half red and half yellow, the former representing the Cardinal,
the latter the straw on which he was supposed to lie in the Bastille.
_Cardinal sur la paille_ was the name of the ribbon, which was worn
even in the palace of Versailles itself.
To save the honour of the throne the Government was obliged to descend
into the arena and fight the forces arrayed against it. The attention
of the civilized world was thus riveted on the trial, which lasted
nine months. No detail was kept secret, accounts were published daily
in which the slightest incident was recorded. France and Europe were
inundated with libels and calumnies in which the reputations of all
concerned were torn to shreds.
Throw enough mud and some of it is sure to stick. It took more than
half a century to cleanse the honour of Marie Antoinette of all
suspicion of connivance in the theft of the necklace.
The mistrust that mystery and magic always inspire made Cagliostro with
his fantastic personality an easy target for calumny. After having
been riddled with abuse till he was unrecognizable, prejudice, the
foster-child of calumny, proceeded to lynch him, so to speak. For over
one hundred years his character has dangled on the gibbet of infamy,
upon which the _sbirri_ of tradition have inscribed a curse on any one
who shall attempt to cut him down.
His fate has been his fame. He is remembered in history, not so much
for anything he did, as for what was done to him. The Diamond Necklace
Affair, in which the old _régime_ and the new met in their duel to
the death, was Cagliostro’s damnation. In judging him to-day, it is
absolutely essential to bear in mind the unparalleled lack of scruple
with which the Government and its enemies contested this trial.
II
Implicated in her swindle by the Countess de Lamotte, to whose
accusations his close intimacy with the Cardinal gave weight,
Cagliostro was arrested at seven in the morning by Inspector Brugnière,
accompanied by Commissary Chesnon and eight policemen.
“He desired me,” says Cagliostro, who has described his arrest in
detail, “to deliver up my keys, and compelled me to open my bureau,
which I did. There were in it several of my remedies, amongst the rest
six bottles of a precious cordial. Brugnière seized on whatever he
took a fancy to, and the catchpoles he had brought with him followed
his example. The only favour I asked was that I might be permitted
to go in my own carriage to the place of my destination. This was
refused. I then requested to be allowed the use of a cab; this also was
denied. Proud of making a show of his prey to the thronging multitude,
Brugnière insisted on my walking part of the way; and although I was
perfectly submissive and did not make the least shadow of resistance
he laid hold of me by the collar. In this way, closely surrounded by
four _sbirri_, I was dragged along the Boulevards as far as the Rue
Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth, where a cab appearing, I was mercifully thrust
into it and driven the rest of the way to the Bastille.”
The admiration amounting almost to veneration that Cagliostro inspired
was shared only by his followers--of whom, however, he could count
several thousands, it is said, in Paris. On the other hand, the
curiosity which he had excited was general and anything but reverent.
The exaggerated enthusiasm of his followers, the incredible stories
related of him, and the extreme seriousness with which he took himself
made him ridiculous. If he was the chief subject of conversation in
all classes in Paris, it was as a subject of mirth. In the drama of
the Necklace Affair it was to him that the public looked to supply
the comic relief. He was by common consent the clown, the funny man
of the play, so to speak. He had but to appear on the scene to raise
a laugh, his slightest gesture produced a roar, when he spoke he
convulsed the house. But to Cagliostro his rôle was very far from
comic. The consciousness of innocence is not necessarily a consolation
in adversity. It poisons as often as it stimulates--according to the
temperament. Cagliostro was utterly crushed by the blow that had fallen
on him. The gloom of the Bastille, which the popular imagination
haunted by old legends made deeper than it was, seemed to chill his
very soul. He who had faced with “a front of brass” all the previous
dangers and humiliations of his agitated existence was for the
first time cowed. Illuminist, Egyptian Mason, Mystic Regenerator of
Mankind--Revolutionist, in a word--he had no confidence in the justice
of the power into whose hands he had fallen. He believed that he would
be forgotten in his dungeon like so many others.
The severity with which he was treated was calculated to justify his
fears.
“Were I left to choose,” he says, “between an ignominious death, and
six months in the Bastille, I would say without hesitation, ‘Lead me on
to the scaffold.’”
For five months he was not only in ignorance, but purposely
misinformed, as to what was transpiring without his prison. During this
time the beautiful Countess, less rigorously guarded, was confined
near him without his knowledge. As soon as Brugnière had carried off
her husband, Chesnon and the police, who had remained behind after
searching for incriminating documents which they did not find, attached
seals to the house and carried her off too, “half dead with fear,” to
the Bastille. In response to Cagliostro’s repeated inquiries as to
whether she shared his captivity, as he feared, his jailers “swore by
their honour and God that she was not in the Bastille.”
This deception was even carried to the length of permitting him to
write letters to her which never reached her, and to receive replies
which she never wrote, “in which she assured him that she was taking
steps to restore him to freedom.” As the Countess Cagliostro could
not write, a friend was supposed to write the letters for her. In the
same way if he wanted clothes or linen he would dispatch a line to his
wife, and an official would go to his house and fetch what he required,
bringing back a letter from the Countess calculated to make him believe
that they had been sent by her.
At the same time the Cardinal was living in almost as much comfort as
if he had been in his own palace. He occupied a spacious apartment,
had three of his servants to wait on him, and saw as many people as he
wished. The number of his visitors was so great that the drawbridge of
the Bastille was kept lowered throughout the day. On one occasion he
even “gave a dinner of twenty covers.”
As money--and Cagliostro had plenty of it--like rank, was able to
purchase equal consideration in the Bastille, the contrast in the
treatment of the two prisoners almost warrants the supposition that the
jailers derived no little amusement from making sport of the sufferings
of one who was alleged to be immune from those ills to which mere clay
is prone. There are many people to whom a weeping Pierrot is as funny
as a laughing one.
It was not till his despondency, on discovering as he eventually did
that his wife was a prisoner like himself, threatened to affect his
reason that the severity of his confinement was relaxed. To prevent
him from committing suicide, Thiroux de Crosne, the minister who had
issued the warrant for his arrest, advised de Launay, the Governor of
the Bastille, “to choose a warder, likely to be sympathetic, to sleep
in his cell.” He was also permitted, like the other prisoners, to have
exercise and to select a lawyer to defend him.
The first use he made of this privilege was to petition the
Parliament--“to release his wife from a dungeon, where a man himself
had occasion for all his strength, all his fortitude, and all his
resignation to struggle against despair.”
The Bastille was too massive a cage for so delicate a bird. Implicated
without the shadow of a reason in the Necklace Affair the Countess
Cagliostro began to imagine herself ill. She pined for her fine
house, her admirers, her diamonds, her black mare Djérid, and the
companionship of the man to whom she owed all that spelt happiness
in her inoffensive, doll-like existence. Moved to pity less by the
petition of Cagliostro than by the pleading of her lawyer, Polverit,
and the eloquence of d’Epremenil, the most brilliant member of the
Parliament, that body was finally persuaded to set her free without a
trial after having been imprisoned seven months in the Bastille.
The release of the Countess Cagliostro, to which the Court was bitterly
opposed, was the first reverse of the Government in the duel to which
it had so foolishly challenged public opinion.
No sooner was the news known than friends and strangers alike came to
congratulate her. For more than a week nearly three hundred people
came daily to inscribe their names in the visitors’ book kept by the
concierge.
“It is the perfection of good style,” says one of the newswriters of
the period, “to have made a call on the Countess Seraphina.”
“Even the ‘nymphs’ of the Palais Royal,” says d’Alméras, “discreetly
manifested their sympathy with the victim of arbitrary power on
recognizing her as she walked one day in the gardens.”
III
Madame de Lamotte in the meantime, utterly undaunted by her
imprisonment, was energetically preparing for the trial, which, in
spite of all her efforts, was to end in her conviction. Her defence
was a tissue of lies from beginning to end. She contradicted herself
with brazen effrontery, accused Cagliostro, the Cardinal, and at last
the Queen, of swindling Böhmer of the necklace. She did not hesitate
to defame herself by declaring that she had been the mistress of the
Cardinal--which was as false as the rest of her evidence--and, as each
lie became untenable, took refuge in another, even admitting that she
was lying “to shelter an exalted personage.” In only one thing was she
consistent; to the end she asserted her complete innocence. Her object
was to confuse the issue and so wriggle herself free.
In the first of her _mémoires justificatifs_, which were printed
and sold in accordance with the legal custom of the day, she boldly
charged Cagliostro with the robbery of the necklace. He was represented
as an impostor to make him the more easily appear a swindler. To
penetrate the mystery in which he had wrapped his origin she invented
for him a low and shameful past, which the editor of the _Courier
de l’Europe_ and the Inquisition-biographer afterwards merged into
Giuseppe Balsamo’s. She ridiculed his cures, and cited the Medical
Faculty as witnesses of the deaths he had caused. She declared his
disinterestedness and his generosity to be a fraud, and accused him of
practising in private the vices he denounced in public. Having stripped
him of the last stitch of respectability she proceeded to expose the
woman who passed as his wife, and whose _liaisons_ with the Cardinal
and others she declared he encouraged. As for the wonders he was said
to perform they were not even worthy of the name of tricks; only fools
were taken in by them. In fine, to Madame de Lamotte, the Grand Cophta
was nothing but “an arch empiric, a mean alchemist, a dreamer on the
philosophers stone, a false prophet, and a Jew who had taken to pieces
the necklace which he had beguiled the Cardinal, over whom he had
gained an incredible influence, to entrust to him, in order to swell a
fortune unheard of before.”
This _mémoire_--the first of many which the various persons implicated
in the Affair rained upon the public--was to an impatient world the
signal that the battle had begun. Excitement, already at fever heat,
was intensified by the boldness, directness and violence of Madame de
Lamotte’s denunciation. It was felt that to justify himself Cagliostro
would be obliged to clear up the mystery of his past. Never before
had the “Grand Coffer,” as he was called by a police official who
unwittingly confounded the title and the fortune of the restorer of
Egyptian Masonry, roused curiosity to so high a pitch. The recollection
of his reputed prodigies gave to his expected self-revelation the
character of an evocation, so to speak; and the public, as ready to
mock as it had formerly been to respect him, awaited his defence as a
sort of magic séance at which all the tricks of necromancy were to be
explained.
Cagliostro employed to defend him Thilorier, one of the youngest
and most promising advocates of the Parisian bar. Perhaps no _cause
célèbre_ in history has ever called forth a more brilliant display of
legal talent than the Diamond Necklace Affair. Of all the _mémoires_
or statements that were published by the advocates engaged in the case
that of Thilorier created the greatest sensation.
Warned by the tumult occasioned by the rush of purchasers who had
besieged the house of Madame de Lamotte’s advocate on the publication
of her _mémoire_, Thilorier took the precaution to secure eight
soldiers of the watch to guard his door. Within a few hours tens of
thousands of copies were scattered over Paris, and large editions were
dispatched to the principal cities of Europe. It was regarded as a
romance after the style of the _Arabian Nights_ rather than the serious
defence of a man whose liberty and very life were at stake. Everywhere
people read it with a sort of amused bewilderment, and “Thilorier
himself,” says Beugnot, “who was a man of infinite wit, was the first
to laugh at it.”
As a masterpiece of irony, clearness, dignity, and wit it was equalled
only by Blondel’s defence of the “Baroness d’Oliva.” But its chief
merit lay not so much in the piquancy of its literary style as in its
portrayal of Cagliostro. Those who read this fantastic document felt
that they not only saw the man but could hear him speak. Thilorier had
drawn his hero to the life.
Beginning with a high-flown and egotistical recapitulation of
his sufferings and virtues Cagliostro proceeded to refute “those
imputations (as to his origin) which in any other circumstance he would
have treated with contempt” by relating “with candour” the history of
his life. As a specimen of his grandiloquence it is worth quoting at
some length.
“I cannot,” he says, “speak positively as to the place of my nativity,
nor to the parents who gave me birth. All my inquiries have ended only
in giving me some great notions, it is true, but altogether vague and
uncertain, concerning my family.
“I spent the years of my childhood in the city of Medina in Arabia.
There I was brought up under the name of Acharat, which I preserved
during my progress through Africa and Asia. I had my apartments in the
palace of the Muphti Salahaym. It is needless to add that the Muphti is
the chief of the Mahometan religion, and that his constant residence is
at Medina.
“I recollect perfectly that I had then four persons attached to my
service: a governor, between fifty-five and sixty years of age, whose
name was Althotas,[33] and three servants, a white one who attended me
as _valet de chambre_ and two blacks, one of whom was constantly about
me night and day.
“My governor always told me that I had been left an orphan when only
about three months old, that my parents were Christians and nobly born;
but he left me absolutely in the dark about their names and the place
of my nativity. Some words, however, which he let fall by chance have
induced me to suspect that I was born at Malta. Althotas, whose name I
cannot speak without the tenderest emotion, treated me with great care
and all the attention of a father. He thought to develop the talent I
displayed for the sciences. I may truly say that he knew them all, from
the most abstruse down to those of mere amusement. My greatest aptitude
was for the study of botany and chemistry.
“By him I was taught to worship God, to love and assist my neighbours,
and to respect everywhere religion and the laws. We both dressed like
Mahometans and conformed outwardly to the worship of Islam; but the
true religion was imprinted in our hearts.
“The Muphti, who often visited me, always treated me with great
goodness and seemed to entertain the highest regard for my governor.
The latter instructed me in most of the Eastern languages. He would
often converse with me on the pyramids of Egypt, on those vast
subterraneous caves dug out by the ancient Egyptians, to be the
repository of human knowledge and to shelter the precious trust from
the injuries of time.
“The desire of travelling and of beholding the wonders of which he
spoke grew so strong upon me, that Medina and my youthful sports there
lost all the allurements I had found in them before. At last, when I
was in my twelfth year, Althotas informed me one day that we were going
to commence our travels. A caravan was prepared and we set out, after
having taken our leave of the Muphti, who was pleased to express his
concern at our departure in the most obliging manner.
“On our arrival at Mecca we alighted at the palace of the Cherif. Here
Althotas provided me with sumptuous apparel and presented me to the
Cherif, who honoured me with the most endearing caresses. At sight of
this prince my senses experienced a sudden emotion, which it is not in
the power of words to express, and my eyes dropped the most delicious
tears I have ever shed in my life. His, I perceived, he could hardly
contain.
“I remained at Mecca for the space of three years; not a day passed
without my being admitted to the sovereign’s presence, and every
hour increased his attachment and added to my gratitude. I sometimes
surprised his gaze riveted upon me, and turned to heaven with every
expression of pity and commiseration. Thoughtful, I would go from him a
prey to an ever-fruitless curiosity. I dared not question Althotas, who
always rebuked me with great severity, as if it had been a crime in me
to wish for some information concerning my parents and the place where
I was born. I attempted in vain to get the secret from the negro who
slept in my apartment. If I chanced to talk of my parents he would turn
a deaf ear to my questions. But one night when I was more pressing than
usual, he told me that if ever I should leave Mecca I was threatened
with the greatest misfortunes, and bid me, above all, _beware of the
city of Trebizond_.
“My inclination, however, got the better of his forebodings--I was
tired of the uniformity of life I led at the Cherifs court. One day
when I was alone the prince entered my apartment; he strained me to
his bosom with more than usual tenderness, bid me never cease to adore
the Almighty, and added, bedewing my cheeks with his tears: ‘_Nature’s
unfortunate child, adieu!_’
“This was our last interview. The caravan waited only for me and I set
off, leaving Mecca, never to re-enter it more.
“I directed my course first to Egypt, where I inspected those
celebrated pyramids which to the eye of the superficial observer only
appear an enormous mass of marble and granite. I also got acquainted
with the priests of the various temples, who had the complacence to
introduce me into such places as no ordinary traveller ever entered
before. The next three years of my progress were spent in the principal
kingdoms of Africa and Asia. Accompanied by Althotas, and the three
attendants who continued in my service, I arrived in 1766 at the island
of Rhodes, and there embarked on a French ship bound to Malta.
“Notwithstanding the general rule by which all vessels coming from the
Levant are obliged to enter quarantine, I obtained on the second day
leave to go ashore. Pinto, the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta,
gave us apartments in his palace, and I perfectly recollect that mine
were near the laboratory.
“The first thing the Grand Master was pleased to do, was to request
the Chevalier d’Aquino, of the princely house of Caramanica, to bear me
company and do me the honours of the island. It was here that I first
assumed European dress and with it the name of Count Cagliostro; nor
was it a small matter of surprise to me to see Althotas appear in a
clerical dress with the insignia of the Order of Malta.
“I have every reason to believe that the Grand Master Pinto was
acquainted with my real origin. He often spoke to me of the Cherif
and mentioned the city of Trebizond, but never would consent to enter
into further particulars on the subject. Meanwhile he treated me with
the utmost distinction, and assured me of very rapid preferment if I
would consent to take the cross. But my taste for travelling and the
predominant desire of practising medicine, induced me to decline an
offer that was as generous as it was honourable.
“It was in the island of Malta that I had the misfortune of losing my
best friend and master, the wisest as well as the most learned of men,
the venerable Althotas. Some minutes before he expired, pressing my
hand, he said in a feeble voice, ‘My son, keep for ever before your
eyes the fear of God and the love of your fellow-creatures; you will
soon be convinced by experience of what you have been taught by me.’
“The spot where I had parted for ever from the friend who had been
as a father to me, soon became odious. I begged leave of the Grand
Master to quit the island in order to travel over Europe; he consented
reluctantly, and the Chevalier d’Aquino was so obliging as to accompany
me. Our first trip was to Sicily, from thence we went to the different
islands of the Greek Archipelago, and returning, arrived at Naples,
the birthplace of my companion.
“The Chevalier, owing to his own private affairs, being obliged to
undertake a private journey, I proceeded alone to Rome, provided
with a letter of credit on the banking house of Signor Bellone.
In the capital of the Christian world I resolved upon keeping the
strictest _incognito_. One morning, as I was shut up in my apartment,
endeavouring to improve myself in the Italian language, my _valet de
chambre_ introduced to my presence the secretary of Cardinal Orsini,
who requested me to wait on his Eminence. I repaired at once to his
palace and was received with the most flattering civility. The Cardinal
often invited me to his table and procured me the acquaintance of
several cardinals and Roman princes, amongst others, Cardinals York and
Ganganelli, who was afterwards Pope Clement XIV. Pope Rezzonico, who
then filled the papal chair, having expressed a desire of seeing me, I
had the honour of frequent private interviews with his Holiness.
“I was then (1770) in my twenty-second year, when by chance I met
a young lady of quality, Seraphina Feliciani, whose budding charms
kindled in my bosom a flame which sixteen years of marriage have only
served to strengthen. It is that unfortunate woman, whom neither her
virtues, her innocence, nor her quality of stranger could save from the
hardships of a captivity as cruel as it is unmerited.”
From this stage of his Odyssey, beyond citing as references certain
persons by whom he was known in the various countries through which
he passed, Cagliostro was very reticent as to his doings. From
Rome he arrived at Strasburg at a bound, whence he proceeded to his
imprisonment in the Bastille with almost equal speed. His confession,
rendering as it did his country and parentage more mysterious than
ever, was received with derision. The credulous public, which had
swallowed so easily all the extravagant stories concerning his
supernatural powers refused to believe in this fantastic account of
a mysterious childhood passed in Mecca and Medina, of caravans and
pyramids, of tolerant Muphtis and benignant Grand Masters of Malta. It
was not that the credulity of the eighteenth century had its limit but
that calumny had mesmerized it, so to speak. Cagliostro’s prestige had
been submerged in the Necklace Affair; the blight of the Bastille had
fallen on the fame of the Grand Cophta and all his works.
As the manner in which he stated his ignorance of his birth seemed to
leave it to be inferred that he knew more than he wished to say, it
was determined to give him a father. While his enemies agreed with the
Countess de Lamotte that he was the son of a Neapolitan coachman, his
friends declared him to be the offspring of the illicit loves of the
Grand Master Pinto and a princess of Trebizond. To account for the
meeting of this singular pair it was gravely asserted that a Maltese
galley had captured a Turkish pleasure-boat with several young ladies
of distinction on board, one of whom had _exchanged hearts_ with Pinto,
who, prevented by his vow of celibacy from making her his wife, had
sent her back to her disconsolate parents, and that to frustrate their
rage at the condition in which she had returned she had caused her
child as soon as it was born to be spirited away to Arabia, which
accounted for the mysterious warning Acharat had received from the
black slave “to beware of Trebizond.”
Ridicule, however, soon disposed of this agreeable fable, and
substituted instead the popular Balsamo legend in which _just as much
as it has pleased subsequent biographers to accept of Cagliostro’s
confession_ has been included. As to whether he spoke the truth wholly
or partly or not at all, the present writer, confronted with his
mysterious and fantastic character on the one hand and the assertions
based on the prejudice of a century on the other, is unable to express
any opinion. It seems, however, hard to believe that any man placed
in so serious a situation as Cagliostro, and one which, moreover, had
thoroughly shaken his courage, would have ventured to invent a story
calculated to increase the suspicion it was his object to allay. To
the present generation, accustomed by the press to infinitely greater
improbabilities, Cagliostro’s adventures in Mecca and Medina have at
least lost the air of incredibility.
IV
As may be surmised from the cursory account of the Diamond Necklace
Affair already given, Cagliostro had no difficulty in proving his
innocence. The mere comparison of the dates of the various incidents of
the imbroglio with his own whereabouts at the time was sufficient to
vindicate him.
Throughout the whole of 1784, while the Cardinal was corresponding, as
he supposed, with the Queen, meeting her in the park of Versailles,
and purchasing the necklace, Cagliostro was in Bordeaux and Lyons. He
did not arrive in Paris till January 30, 1785; it was on February 1
that the Cardinal gave the necklace to Madame de Lamotte to hand to
the Queen. Accordingly, if Cagliostro had ever even seen the necklace,
it could only have been between January 30 and February 1 when Böhmer
had already obtained the Cardinal’s guarantee in exchange for his
precious jewel. This, however, he denied. “It was not,” he said, “till
a fortnight before the Cardinal was arrested that he informed me for
the first time of the transaction about the necklace.”
But Cagliostro was not content with merely establishing his innocence.
Madame de Lamotte’s attack on his character had deeply wounded him in
his most sensitive spot--his vanity--and pride would not suffer him to
ignore her gibes.
She had described him as “an arch empiric, a mean alchemist, a dreamer
on the philosopher’s stone, a false prophet, and a profaner of the true
religion.”
“Empiric,” he said, refuting each epithet in turn, not without a
certain dignity; “this word I have often heard without knowing exactly
what it meant. If it means one who without being a doctor has some
knowledge of medicine and takes no fee, who attends to rich and poor
alike and receives no money from either, then I confess I am an empiric.
“Mean alchemist. Alchemist or not, the epithet _mean_ is applicable
only to those who beg or cringe, and it is well known whether Count
Cagliostro ever asked a favour of any one.
“Dreamer on the philosopher’s stone. Whatever my opinion may be
concerning the philosopher’s stone, I have kept it to myself and never
troubled the public with my dreams.
“False prophet. Not always so. Had the Cardinal taken my advice he
would not be in the position in which he now finds himself. I told him
more than once that the Countess de Lamotte was a deceitful, intriguing
woman, and to beware of her.
“Profaner of the true religion. This is more serious. I have respected
religion at all times. My life and my outward conduct I freely submit
to the inquiries of the law. As to what passes inwardly God alone has a
right to call me to account.”
Cagliostro also took advantage of the occasion to deny the oft-repeated
assertion that he was a Jew.
“My education,” he said, “as I have already declared, was that of a
child born of Christian parents. I never was a Jew or a Mahometan.
These two religions leave on their sectaries an _outward_ and
_indelible_ mark. The truth, therefore, of what I here advance may be
ascertained; and rather than let any doubt remain on this affair, I am
ready, if required, to yield to a verification more shameful for him
who exacts it than for the person who submits to it.”[34]
When he was confronted with Madame de Lamotte the scene in court was in
the highest degree comic. The Countess, who had an unbounded contempt
for the occult in general, covered the séances of Cagliostro with
ridicule. She described one at which she had been present as a swindle,
and reproached him with having exploited the credulity of the Cardinal
by the most vulgar methods and for the most sordid motives. His
Eminence, she asserted, was so bewitched that he consulted Cagliostro
on “the pricking of a thumb,” which made her “regret she did not live
in those blessed times when a charge of sorcery would have led him to
the stake.”
But while she attempted to overwhelm the unfortunate creature she had
chosen to saddle with her own guilt, he dexterously turned the tables
upon her. Assuming that her calumnies were inspired by the desire
to clear herself rather than hatred, “he forgave her the tears of
bitterness she had caused him to shed.”
“Do not imagine,” he said, with the air of sublime bombast that
was characteristic of him, “that my moderation is a piece of mere
affectation. From the bottom of the abyss into which you have plunged
me I shall raise my voice to implore in your behalf the clemency of the
laws; and if, after my innocence and that of my wife is acknowledged,
the best of kings should think an unfortunate stranger who had settled
in France on the faith of his royal word, of the laws of hospitality,
and of the common rights of nations is entitled to some indemnity,
the only satisfaction I shall require will be that his Majesty may be
pleased, at my request, to pardon and set at liberty the unfortunate
Countess de Lamotte. However guilty she may be supposed, she is already
sufficiently punished. Alas! as I have been taught by sad experience,
there is no crime ever so great but may be atoned for by six months in
the Bastille!”
_Blague_ or conviction, at such a moment, it would be churlish to
inquire. When one is fighting for life and liberty one readily avails
oneself of any weapon that comes to hand. At least so thought Madame
de Lamotte. Failing further abuse of which she had been deprived by a
_riposte_ as unexpected as it was subtle, she picked up a candlestick.
Hurled at the head of her adversary, it “hit him in the stomach,” to
the amusement of the court, the judges and Madame de Lamotte herself,
who remarked to her counsel that “if he wished to render the scene
still more amusing he had but to give her a broomstick.”
But neither abusive epithets nor candlesticks are arguments. Finding
herself on the wrong road, the Countess made haste to leave it for
another. It was no longer Cagliostro who had stolen the necklace, but
the Cardinal.
At last, after more than nine months, the famous affair came to an end.
On May 30, 1786, all the accused were summoned before the Parliament.
When Cagliostro arrived, tricked out as usual like a mountebank in
a coat of green silk embroidered with gold, and his hair falling in
little tails on his shoulders, the whole assemblage burst into a laugh.
But to him it was anything but an occasion for merriment; he was
serious to the point of solemnity.
“Who are you?” asked the president.
“An illustrious traveller,” was the reply. Then with imperturbable
gravity he began in his loud, metallic voice, which Madame d’Oberkirch
compared to a “trumpet veiled in crape,” to repeat the story of his
life.
At the mention of Trebizond the laughter redoubled. This made him
nervous, and either unconsciously from old habit, or in the hope of
exciting an interest favourable to his cause, he related his adventures
in a jargon composed, says Beugnot, “of all known languages as well as
those which never existed.” The gibberish he employed rendered him and
his story still more fantastic. The laughter in the court was so loud
that at times the voice of the speaker was drowned. Even the judges
were convulsed. At the finish the president seemed to be on the point
of complimenting “Nature’s unfortunate child.” It was evident that
Cagliostro had won the sympathy of those on whom his fate depended.
Of the verdict of the mob there was no doubt. He took the cheers
with which he was greeted on being driven back to the Bastille as a
premonition of his acquittal. One writer says he displayed the joy he
felt “by throwing his hat into the air.”
* * * * *
On the following day (May 31) the Parliament pronounced the verdict.
The Cardinal and Cagliostro were unanimously acquitted--the innocence
of the latter had been acknowledged by all implicated in the trial,
even in the end by the Countess de Lamotte herself.[35]
The verdict was immensely popular. “I don’t know what would have
befallen the Parliament,” said Mirabeau, “had they pronounced
otherwise.” The fish-wives--the same who later were the Furies of the
Revolution--forcibly embraced the judges and crowned them with flowers.
In the street the name of the Cardinal was cheered to the echo. The
ovation he received, however, was inspired less from any desire of the
populace to acclaim him personally than to affront the Queen.
It was also to the violent hatred of the Court that Cagliostro owed
the reception accorded him. His account of the scenes that took place
on his deliverance from captivity would do credit to the lachrymose
romances of the “age of sensibility.”
“I quitted the Bastille,” he says, “about half-past eleven in the
evening. The night was dark, the quarter in which I resided but little
frequented. What was my surprise, then, to hear myself acclaimed by
eight or ten thousand persons. My door was forced open; the courtyard,
the staircase, the rooms were crowded with people. I was carried
straight to the arms of my wife. At such a moment my heart could not
contain all the feelings which strove for mastery in it. My knees gave
way beneath me. I fell on the floor unconscious. With a shriek my wife
sank into a swoon. Our friends pressed around us, uncertain whether the
most beautiful moment of our life would not be the last. The anxiety
spread from one to the other, the noise of the drums was no longer
heard. A sad silence followed the delirious joy. I recovered. A torrent
of tears streamed from my eyes, and I was able at last, without dying,
to press to my heart ... I will say no more. Oh, you privileged beings
to whom heaven has made the rare and fatal gift of an ardent soul and
a sensitive heart, you who have experienced the delights of a first
love, you alone will understand me, you alone will appreciate what
after ten months of torture the first moment of bliss is like!”
Both Cagliostro and the Cardinal were obliged to show themselves at
the windows of their respective houses before the crowds, which were
cheering them and hissing the name of the Queen, could be induced to
disperse.
To Marie Antoinette, whose popularity was for ever blasted by the
trial, the verdict of the Parliament was an insult--as it was meant to
be--which intolerable though it was, she would have been wise to have
borne in silence. But it was her fate to the last to hold the honour of
the woman higher than the majesty of the Queen. Having made the blunder
of arresting the Cardinal and suffering the Parliament to try him, the
King, advised by her, now committed the folly of showing his resentment
of the verdict, which had after all, in the eye of the law, cleared
his consort of complicity in the swindle. On June 2, the day after
his release from the Bastille, Rohan was stripped of all his Court
dignities and functions, and exiled to one of his abbeys in Auvergne.
At the same time, Cagliostro was also ordered to leave Paris with his
wife within a week, and France within three.
The news no sooner became known than an immense concourse of people
flocked to manifest their disapproval in front of the house of the
Grand Cophta. But if he mistook their demonstration of hatred of
the Queen as a sign of sympathy for himself, popularity under such
conditions was too fraught with danger for him to take any pleasure
in it. Terrified lest the Government should seize the opportunity of
thrusting him back into the Bastille, he came out on the balcony of his
house and entreated the mob to withdraw quietly, and then hurriedly
left Paris.
He went first to Passy, whither he was followed by a small band of his
most faithful adherents, who during the few days he remained there
mounted guard in the house in which he had taken shelter. A fortnight
later he embarked from Boulogne with his wife for England. Upwards of
five thousand people are said to have witnessed his departure, many
of whom demanded and received his farewell blessing on their knees.
France, on a page of whose history he had indelibly printed his name,
never saw him more.
* * * * *
There is an old and uncorroborated report that he who had always been
so punctilious in the discharge of his liabilities left Paris without
paying his rent. It appears to have arisen from the action that he
afterwards brought against the magistrate Chesnon and de Launay,
the governor of the Bastille, to recover property valued at 100,000
livres which he declared had been stolen from his house during his
imprisonment and for which he sought to hold them responsible. His
failure to substantiate the charge gave it the appearance of having
been trumped up. Whether it had any basis in fact it is impossible to
say, but there can be no doubt from the manner in which the police
turned his house upside down at the time he and his wife were arrested,
as well as from the carelessness with which the official seals were
affixed, that many valuable articles might easily have been spirited
away in the confusion by unscrupulous servants and even by the police
themselves.
If Cagliostro, however, failed to pay his rent the proprietor of
the house certainly took the matter very lightly. “His house,” says
Lenôtre, “remained closed till the Revolution. In 1805 the doors were
opened for the first time in eighteen years when the owner sold the
Grand Cophta’s furniture by auction.” Surely a very long time to wait
to indemnify oneself for unpaid rent?
A curious interest attaches to this house, which is still standing,
though long since shorn of its splendour in the days when the Cardinal
and the aristocracy of the old _régime_ came to assist at Cagliostro’s
magic séances. Yet in the meantime it has not been without a history.
In 1855 the doors of the gateway were removed during some process of
repair and replaced by doors which had formerly done service at the
Temple where the Royal Family were incarcerated after the fall of the
monarchy. They may be still seen with their heavy bolts and huge locks.
What a fatality--the doors of Marie Antoinette’s prison closing
Cagliostro’s house! History has her irony as well as her romance.