Henry Ridgely Evans

“Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.”—Latin Proverb.

“The pseudo-mystic, who deceives the world because he knows that the world wishes to be deceived, becomes an attractive subject for psy­cho­log­i­cal analysis.”—HUGO MÜNSTERBERG: Psychology and Life.

“Unparalleled Cagliostro! Looking at thy so attractively decorated private theatre, wherein thou actedst and livedst, what hand but itches to draw aside thy curtain; overhaul thy pasteboards, paint-pots, paper-mantles, stage-lamps, and turning the whole inside out, find thee in the middle thereof!”—CARLYLE: Miscellaneous Essays.

I.

In the summer of 1893, I was in Paris, partly on business, partly on pleasure. In the Figaro one day, shortly after my arrival, I read about the marvelous exhibitions of magic of M. Caroly, who was attracting crowds to his sÉances diaboliques at the Capucine Theatre of the Isola Brothers. I went to see the nineteenth-century necromancer exhibit his marvels. I saw some very clever illusions performed during the evening, but nothing that excited my especial interest as a devotee of the weird and wonderful, until the pre­sti­di­gi­ta­teur came to his piÈce de rÉsistance—the Mask of Balsamo. That aroused my flagging attention. M. Caroly brought forward a small table, undraped, which he placed in the center aisle of the theatre; and then passed around for examination the mask of a man, very much resembling a death-mask, but unlike that ghastly memento mori in the particulars that it was exquisitely modeled in wax and artistically colored.

“Messieurs et mesdames,” said the professor of magic and mystery, “this mask is a perfect likeness of Joseph Balsamo, Count de Cagliostro, the famous sorcerer of the eighteenth {43} century. It is a reproduction of a death-mask which is contained in the secret museum of the Vatican at Rome. Behold! I lay the mask upon this table in your midst. Ask any question you please and it will respond.”

The mask rocked to and fro with weird effect at the bidding of the conjurer, rapping out frequent answers to queries put by the spectators. It was an ingenious electrical trick.7 Being already acquainted with the secret of the surprising experiment in natural magic, I evinced no emotion at the extraordinary behavior of the mask. But I was intensely interested in the mask itself. Was it indeed a true likeness of the great Cagliostro, the prince of charlatans? I repaired to the manager’s office at the close of the soirÉe magique, and sought an introduction to M. Caroly.

“Is monsieur an aspiring amateur who wishes to take lessons in legerdemain?”

“No!” I replied.

“Pardon! Then monsieur is desirous of purchasing the secrets of some of the little jeux?”

I replied as before in the negative. The manager shrugged his shoulders, toyed with his ponderous watch-chain, and elevated his eyebrows inquiringly.

“I simply wish to ascertain whether the mask of Balsamo was really modeled from a genuine death-mask of the old-world wizard.”

“Monsieur, I can answer that question,” said the theatrical man, “without an appeal to the artist who performed this evening. It was taken from a likeness of the eighteenth-century sorcerer, not a death-mask as stated, but a rare old medallion cast in the year 1785. Unfortunately this is not in our possession.”

7 “The secret of the trick is as follows: That part of the wood which forms the chin is replaced by a small strip of iron, which is painted the same color as the mask, so that it cannot be seen; an electro-magnet is let into the top of the table, so that the cores shall be opposite the strip of iron when the mask is laid upon the table. Contact is made by means of a push-button somewhere in the side scenes; the wires run under the stage, and connection is made through the legs of the table when the legs are set on the foreordained place.”—Hopkins’ Magic, etc.

{44}

I thanked the manager for his information. The story about the death-mask in the possession of the Vatican was simply a part of the pre­sti­di­gi­ta­teur’s patter, but everything is permissible in a conjuring sÉance.

I went home to the little hotel where I lodged in the historic Rue de Beaune, a stone’s throw from the house where Voltaire died. In my bedroom, over the carved oak mantel, was a curious old mirror set in a tarnished gilt frame, a relic of the eighteenth century. Said I to myself: “Would this were a ghost-glass, a veritable mirror of Nostradamus, wherein I might conjure up a phan­tas­ma­goria of that vanished Paris of long ago.” Possessed with this fantastic idea, I retired to rest, closed in the crimson curtains of the antique four-poster, and was soon wafted into the land of dreams. Strange visions filled my brain. In the mirror I seemed to see Cagliostro searching for the “elixir of life,” in the laboratory of the Hotel de Strasbourg, while near him stood the Cardinal de Rohan, breathlessly awaiting the results of the mystic operation. The red glow from the alchemist’s furnace illumined the great necromancer with a coppery splendor.

Cagliostro! Cagliostro! I was pursued all the next day, and for weeks afterward, with visions of the enchanter. “Ah, wretched mask of Balsamo,” I said to myself, “why have you bewitched me thus with your false oleaginous smile?” I took to haunting the book-stalls and antiquarian shops of the Quai Voltaire, in the hope of picking up some old medallion or rare print of the arch-quack. The second-hand literature of the world may be found here. Amid the flotsam and jetsam of old books tossed upon this inhospitable shore of literary endeavor many a precious Elzevir or Aldus has been picked up. My labors were not in vain. I was fortunate in discovering a quaint little volume, the life of Cagliostro, translated from the Italian work printed under the auspices of the Apostolic Chamber, Rome, 1790. It was entitled Vie de Joseph Balsamo, Connu Sous le Nom de Comte Cagliostro. Traduite d’aprÈs l’original italien, imprimÉ À la Chambre Apostolique; enrichie de Notes curieuses, et ornÉe de son Portrait. Paris et Strasbourg, 1791. The frontispiece was an engraved portrait of Cagliostro. Yes, here {45} was the great magician staring at me from out the musty, faded pages of a quaint old chronicle. A world of cunning lay revealed in the depths of his bold, gleaming eyes. His thick lips wore a smile of Luciferian subtlety. Here, indeed, was a study for Lavater. Here was the biography of the famous sorcerer of the old rÉgime, the prince of charlatans, who foretold the fall of the Bastille, the bosom friend of the Cardinal de Rohan, and founder of the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry. Fascinated with the subject of magic and magicians, I visited the BibliothÈque Nationale and dipped into the literature on Cagliostro. Subsequently, at the British Museum, I examined the rare brochures and old files of the Courrier de l’Europe for information concerning the incomparable necromancer, who made use of hypnotism, and, like Mesmer, performed many strange feats of pseudo-magic, and made numerous cures of diseases which baffled the medicos of the time.8

Goethe9 and Catharine II. wrote plays about him; George Sand introduced him into her novel, “The Countess of Rudolstadt;” Alexander Dumas made him the hero of several romances; Scribe, St. Georges, and Adam in the year 1844 brought out “Cagliostro,” a comic opera in three acts, which was successfully performed at the OpÉra Comique, Paris; Alexander Dumas fils wrote a drama in five acts called “Joseph Balsamo” which was produced at the OdÉon, March 18, 1878; and Thomas Carlyle philosophized concerning him.

8 “Der Gros-Cophta” (a comedy in five acts). Goethe’s Werke, vol. 18, Stuttgart, 1868.

9 A superb bibliography of Cagliostro is to be found in “BÖrsenblatt fÜrden deutschen Buchhandel,” 1904, Nos. 210–212, and 214 (Sept. 9–12, 14), pp. 7488–92, 7524–30, 7573–75. This publication is to be found in the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.

To understand Cagliostro, one must understand the period in which he lived and acted his strange world-drama, its philosophical and religious background. The arch-enchanter appeared on this mortal scene when the times were “out of joint.” It was the latter part of that strange, romantic eighteenth century of scepticism and credulity. The old world like a huge Cheshire cheese was being nibbled away from within, until little but the {46} rind was left to tell the tale. The rotten fabric of French society, in particular, was about to tumble down in the sulphurous flames of the Revolution, and the very people who were to suffer most in the calamity were doing their best to assist in the process of social and political disintegration. The dogmas of the Church were bitterly assailed by learned men. But the more sceptical the age, the more credulity extant. Man begins by denying, and then doubts his doubts. Charles Kingsley says: “And so it befell, that this eighteenth century, which is usually held to be the most ‘materialistic’ of epochs, was in fact a most ‘spiritualistic’ one.” The soil was well fertilized for the coming of Cagliostro, the sower of super­sti­tion. Every variety of mysticism appealed to the imaginative mind. There were societies of Illuminati, Rosicrucians, and Alchemists.

From a painting in the Versailles Historical Gallery

After an engraving which served as a frontis piece of Balsamo’s Life, published in 1781

Joseph Balsamo, Known as Count Cagliostro.

M. DE CAGLIOSTRO NE DEMANDE QUE TRAN­QUIL­LITÉ ET SURETÉ; l’HOS­PI­TAL­I­TÉ LES LUI AS­SURE. EX­TRAIT d’une Let­tre Écrite per M. le Comte de VERGENNES, Ministre des Affaires EtrangÈres, À M. GÉRARD, PrÉteur de Strasbourg, le 13 Mars 1783.

1786.

TITLE-PAGE OF THE DEFENSE OF CAGLIOSTRO.

Traduite d’aprÈs l’orig­i­nal ital­ien, im­primÉ À la Chambre Apost­o­lique; en­richie de Notes cur­ieuses, et ornÉe de son Por­trait.

Speaking of the great charlatan, the Anglo-Indian essayist Greeven in an article published a few years ago in the {47} Calcutta Review writes: “It is not enough to say that Cagliostro posed as a magician, or stood forth as the apostle of a mystic religion. After all, in its mild way, our own generation puts on its evening dress to worship at the feet of mediums, whose familiar spirits enable them to wriggle out of ropes in cupboards, or to project cigarette papers from the ceiling [À la Madame Blavatsky]. We ride our hobby, however, only when the whim seizes us, and, as soon as it wearies, we break it in pieces and fling it aside with a laugh. But Cagliostro impressed himself deeply on the history of his time. He flashed on the world like a meteor. He carried it by storm. Princes and nobles thronged to his ‘magic operations.’ They prostrated themselves before him for hours. His horses and his coaches and his liveries rivaled a king’s in magnificence. He was offered, and refused, a ducal throne. No less illustrious a writer than the Empress of Russia deemed him a worthy subject of her plays. Goethe made him the hero of a famous drama. A French Cardinal and an English Lord were his bosom companions. In an age which arrogated {48} to itself the title of the philosophic, the charm of his eloquence drew thousands to his lodges, in which he preached the mysteries of his Egyptian ritual, as revealed to him by the Grand Kophta under the shadow of the pyramids.”

And now for a brief review of his life. Joseph Balsamo, the son of Peter Balsamo and Felicia Braconieri, both of humble extraction, was born at Palermo, on the eighth day of June, 1743. He received the rudiments of an education at the Seminary of St. Roche, Palermo. At the age of thirteen, according to the Inquisition biographer, he was intrusted to the care of the Father-General of the Benfratelli, who carried him to the Convent of that Order at Cartagirone. There he put on the habit of a novice, and, being placed under the tuition of the apothecary, he learned from him the first principles of chemistry and medicine. He proved incorrigible, and was expelled from the monastery in disgrace. Then began a life of dissipation in the city of Palermo. He was accused of forging theatre-tickets and a will. Finally he had to flee the city for having duped a goldsmith named Marano of sixty pieces of gold, by promising to assist him in unearthing a buried treasure by magical means. The super­sti­tious Marano entered a cavern situated in the environs of Palermo, according to instructions given to him by the enchanter, and discovered, not a chest full of gold, but a crowd of Balsamo’s confederates, who, disguised as infernal spirits, administered to him a terrible castigation. Furious at the deception, the goldsmith vowed to assassinate the pretended sorcerer. Balsamo, however, took wing to Messina, where he fell in with a strolling mountebank and alchemist named Althotas, or Altotas, who spoke a variety of languages. They traveled to Alexandria in Egypt, and finally brought up at the island of Malta. Pinto, the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, was a searcher after the philosopher’s stone, an enthusiastic alchemist. He extended a warm reception to the two adventurers, and took them under his patronage. They remained for some time at Malta, working in the laboratory of the deluded {49} Pinto. Eventually Althotas died, and Balsamo went to Naples, afterwards to Rome, where he married a beautiful girdle-maker, named Lorenza Feliciani. Together with a swindler calling himself the Marchese d’Agliata, he had a series of disreputable adventures in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Unmasked at one place, he fled in hot haste to another.

In 1776 he arrived in London. He had assumed various aliases during the course of his life, but now he called himself the “Conte di Cagliostro.” The title of nobility was assumed, but the name of Cagliostro was borrowed from an uncle on his mother’s side of the house, Joseph Cagliostro, of Messina, who was an agent or factor of the Prince of Villafranca. His beautiful wife called herself the “Countess Serafina Feliciani.” Cagliostro announced himself as a worker of wonders, especially in medicine. He carried about two mysterious substances—a red powder, known as his “Materia Prima,” with which he transmuted baser metals into gold, and his “Egyptian Wine,” with which he prolonged life.

He dropped hints that he was the son of the Grand-Master Pinto of Malta and the Princess of Trebizonde. He foretold the lucky numbers in a lottery and got into difficulty with a gang of swindlers, which caused him to flee from England to avoid being imprisoned. While in London he picked up, at a second-hand book-stall, the mystic writings of an obscure spiritist, one George Coston, “which suggested to him the idea of the Egyptian ritual”; and he got himself initiated into a masonic lodge. Henri d’AlmÉras (Cagliostro: la Franc-MaÇonnerie et l’Occultisme au XVIII siÈcle, Paris, 1904) states authoritatively that the famous charlatan received the masonic degrees in the Esperance Lodge, April 12, 1777. This lodge, composed mainly of French and Italian residents in London, held its sessions at the King’s Head Tavern (Gerard Street). It was attached to the Continental Masonic order of the Higher Observance, which was supposed to be a continuation and perfection of the ancient association of the Knights Templars. According to AlmÉras, Cagliostro was initiated under the name of Joseph Cagliostro, Colonel of the 3d regiment of Brandenburg. On June 2, the Grand Lodge of London gave him his masonic patent, which is to {50} be found in the collection of autographs of the Marquis de Chateaugiron, V. Catalogue, Paris, 1851. Cagliostro is regarded as the greatest masonic imposter of the world. His pretentions were bitterly repudiated by the English members of the fraternity, and many of the Continental lodges. But the fact remains that he made thousands of dupes. As Grand Master of the Egyptian Rite he leaped at once into fame. His swindling operations were now conducted on a gigantic scale. He had the entrÉe into the best society. According to him, freemasonry was founded by Enoch and Elias. It was open to both sexes. Its present form, especially with regard to the exclusion of women, is a corruption. The true form was preserved only by the Grand Kophta, or High Priest of the Egyptians. By him it was revealed to Cagliostro. The votaries of any religion are admissible, subject to these conditions, (1) that they believe in the existence of a God; (2) that they believe in the immortality of the soul; and (3) that they have been initiated into common Masonry. The candidate must swear an oath of secrecy, and obedience to the Secret Superiors. It is divided into the usual three grades of Apprentice, Fellowcraft, and Mastermason.

In this system he promised his followers “to conduct them to perfection, by means of a physical and moral regeneration; to enable them by the former (or physical) to find the prime matter, or Philosopher’s Stone, and the acacia, which consolidates in man the forces of the most vigorous youth and renders him immortal; and by the latter (or moral) to procure them a Pantagon, which should restore man to his primitive state of innocence, lost by original sin.”

Cagliostro declared Moses, Elias and Christ to be the Secret Superiors of the Order, because having “attained to such perfection in masonry that, exalted into higher spheres, they are able to create fresh worlds for the glory of the Lord. Each is still the head of a secret community.”

No wonder the Egyptian Rite became popular among lovers of the marvelous, because it promised its votaries, who should attain to perfection, or adeptship, the power of transmuting baser metals into gold; prolonging life indefinitely by means of {51} an elixir; communing with the spirits of the dead; and many other necromantic feats and experiments.

The meetings of the Egyptian Lodges were in reality spiritualistic sÉances. The medium was a young boy (pupille) or young girl (colombe) in the state of virgin innocence, “to whom power was given over the seven spirits that surround the throne of the divinity, and preside over the seven planets.” The Colombe would kneel in front of a globe of clarified water which was placed upon a table covered with a black cloth, and Cagliostro would summon the angels of the spheres to enter the globe, whereupon the youthful clairvoyant would behold the visions presented to view, and describe events transpiring in distant places. “It would be hard,” says Count Beugnot, “to believe that such scenes could have taken place in France at the end of the eighteenth century; yet they aroused great interest among people of importance in the Court and the town.”

In the mysticism of the twentieth century the above-mentioned form of divination is known as “crystal gazing,” though the medium employed is usually a ball of rock crystal, and not a globe of water such as Cagliostro generally used. Occultism classes all such experiments under the head of magic mirrors. The practice is very ancient. The Regent d’OrlÉans of France experimented with the magic mirror, as Saint Simon records. The great traveler, Lane, speaks of such divination among the modern Egyptians by means of ink held in the palm of the hand. Mirrors of ivory, metal, and wood coated with gypsum have been used. As Andrew Lang puts it: “There is, in short, a chain of examples, from the Greece of the fourth century B. C., to the cases observed by Dr. Mayo and Dr. Gregory in the middle of the nineteenth century, and to those which Mrs. De Morgan wished to explain by ‘spiritualism.’” In the opera “Parsifal” by Richard Wagner, the necromancer, Klingsor, sees the approach of the young knight in a magic mirror. In the Middle Ages the use of these mirrors was well known. Deeply imbued with the spirit of mediÆvalism, Wagner properly equipped the magician of his sublime opera with the mirror.

Max Dessoir, the German psychologist, writes as follows concerning the magic mirror (Monist, Vol. I, No. 1): {52}

“The phenomena produced by the agency of the magic mirror with regard to their contents proceed from the realm of the sub­con­scious­ness; and that with regard to their form they belong to the category of hal­luc­i­na­tions. ... Hallucinations, the production of which are facilitated by the fixation of shining surfaces, do not occur with all persons; and there may be a kernel of truth in the tradition which designates women and children as endowed with especial capacities in this respect. The investigations of Fechner upon the varying vividness of after-images; the statistics of Galton upon hallucinatory phantasms in artists; and the extensive statistical work of the Society for Psychical Research, appear to point to a connection of this character. ... Along with the inner process the outward form of the hal­luc­i­na­tion requires a brief explanation. The circumstance, namely, which lends magic-mirror phenomena their salient feature, is the sensory reproduction of the images that have sprung up from the sub­con­scious­ness. The sub­ter­ranean ideas produced do not reach the surface as thoughts, but as pseudo-perceptions.”

Cagliostro sometimes made use of a metallic mirror. This fact we have on the authority of the Countess du Barry, the frail favorite of Louis XV. When the “Well Beloved” went the way of dusty death, the charming Countess divided her years of banishment from the glories of the Court at her Chateau of Luciennes and her houses in Paris and Versailles. She relates that on one occasion the Cardinal de Rohan paid her a visit. During the conversation the subject of Mesmer and magnetism was discussed.

“My dear Countess,” said the Cardinal, “the magnetic sÉances of Mesmer are not to be compared with the magic of my friend the Count de Cagliostro. He is a genuine Rosicrucian, who holds communion with the elemental spirits. He is able to pierce the veil of the future by his necromantic power. Permit me to introduce him to you.”

The curiosity of the Countess was excited, and she consented to receive the illustrious sorcerer at her home. The next day the Cardinal came, accompanied by Cagliostro. The magician was magnificently dressed, but not altogether in good taste. Diamonds sparkled on his breast and upon his fingers. The {53} knob of his walking-stick was incrusted with precious stones. Madame du Barry, however, was much struck with the power of his bold, gleaming eyes. She realized that he was no ordinary charlatan. After discussing the question of sorcery, Cagliostro took from the breast pocket of his coat a leather case which he handed to the Countess, saying that it contained a magic mirror wherein she might read the events of the past and future. “If the vision be not to your liking,” he remarked, impressively, “do not blame me. You use the mirror at your own risk.”

She opened the case and saw a “metallic glass in an ebony frame, ornamented with a variety of magical characters in gold and silver.” Cagliostro recited some cabalistic words, and bade her gaze intently into the glass. She did so, and in a few minutes was overcome with fright and fainted away.

Such is the story as related by Du Barry in her memoirs, which have been recently edited by Prof. Leon VallÉe, librarian of the BibliothÈque Nationale, Paris.

She gives us no clew as to the vision witnessed by her in the magic glass. She says she afterwards refused to receive Cagliostro under any circumstances.

What are we to believe concerning this remarkable story? We might possibly conjecture that she saw in the mirror a phan­tas­ma­goria of the guillotine, and beheld her blonde head “sneeze into the basket,” and held up to public execration. Coming events cast their shadows before.

But all this is mere fancy, “midsummer madness,” as the Bard of Avon has it.

God alone knows the future. Wisely has it been veiled to us.

Possibly Madame la Comtesse from her subliminal consciousness conjured up an hal­luc­i­na­tion of the loathsome death by smallpox of her royal lover, at whose corpse even the “night men” of Versailles recoiled with horror. Telepathy from Cagliostro may have played a part in inducing the vision. Ah, who knows! We leave the problem to the psychologists for solution. {54}

From England Cagliostro went to the Hague, where he inaugurated a lodge of female masons, over which his wife presided as Grand Mistress. Throughout Holland he was received by the lodges with masonic honors—beneath “arches of steel.” He discoursed volubly upon magic and masonry to enraptured thousands. In March, 1779, he made his appearance at Mitau,10 in the Baltic Provinces, which he regarded as the stepping-stone to St. Petersburg. He placed great hope in Catherine II of Russia—“the avowed champion of advanced thought.” He hoped to promulgate widely his new and mysterious religious cult in the land of the Czars, with all the pomp and glamour of the East. The nobility of Kurland received him with open arms. Some of them offered to place him on the ducal throne, so he claimed. He wisely refused the offer. Cagliostro eventually made a fiasco at Mitau and left in hot haste. In St. Petersburg his stay was as short. Catherine II was too clever a woman to be his dupe. She ordered the charlatan to leave Russia, which he forthwith did. Prospects of Siberia doubtless hastened his departure. In May, 1780, he turned up at Warsaw. A leading prince lodged him in his palace. Here Cagliostro “paraded himself in the white shoes and red heels of a noble.” His spirit sÉances were not a success. He chose as his clairvoyant a little girl, eight years of age. After pouring oil into her hands, he closed her in a room, the door of which was hung with a black curtain. The spectators sat outside. He interrogated the child concerning the visions that appeared to her. Among other tests, he requested the spectators to inscribe their names on a piece of paper which he appeared to burn before their very eyes. Calling to the child that a note would flutter down at her feet, he requested her to pass it to him through the door. He passed his hand through the opening of the door to receive the note. In the next instant he produced a note closed with a freemason’s seal, which contained the signatures of the spectators. This was nothing more than the trick of a pre­sti­di­gi­ta­teur, such {55} as was performed by Philadelphia and Pinetti, the two great sleight of hand artists of the period. The next day the clairvoyant confessed the fact that she had been tutored by the magician, and that the visions were but figments of the imag­i­na­tion. Cagliostro secured a new subject, a girl of sixteen, but had the folly to fall in love with his accomplice. In exasperation she repeated the confession of her predecessor. The Polish nobles now insisted that Cagliostro invoke the spirit of the Grand Kophta (the Egyptian High Priest). This sÉance took place “in a dark room, on a sort of stage, lit with two candles only, and filled with clouds of incense.” The Grand Kophta appeared. Through the uncertain light the spectators beheld an imposing figure in white robes and turban. A snowy beard fell upon its breast.

“What see ye?” cried in a hoarse voice the sage of the pyramids.

“I see,” replied a sceptical gentleman from the audience, “that Monsieur le Comte de Cagliostro has disguised himself with a mask and a white beard.”

Everybody recognized the portly figure of the vision. A rush seemed imminent. Quick as thought, the Grand Kophta, by a wave of his hands, extinguished the two candles. A sound followed as the slipping off of a mantle. The tapers were relit. Cagliostro was observed sitting where the sage had disappeared.

At Wola, in a private laboratory, he pretended to transmute mercury into silver. The scene must have been an impressive one. Girt with a freemason’s apron, and standing on a black floor marked with cabalistic symbols in chalk, Cagliostro worked at the furnace. In the gloom of twilight the proceedings were held. By a clever substitution of crucibles, Cagliostro apparently accomplished the feat of transmutation, but the fraud was detected the next morning, when one of the servants of the house discovered the original crucible containing the mercury, which had been cast upon a pile of rubbish by the pretended alchemist, or one of his confederates.

In September, 1780, Cagliostro arrived in Strasburg. Here he was received with unbounded enthusiasm. He lavished money right and left, cured the poor without pay, and treated the great with haughtiness. Just outside of the city he erected a {56} country villa in Chinese architecture, wherein to hold his Egyptian lodges. This place was long pointed out as the CagliostrÆum. The peasants are said to have passed it with uncovered heads, such was their admiration and awe of the great wonder-worker. At Strasburg resided at that time the Cardinal Louis de Rohan, who was anxious to meet the magician. Cagliostro, to whom the fact was reported, said: “If the Cardinal is sick, he may come to me and I will cure him; if he is well, he has no further need of me, nor I of him.” Cardinal de Rohan, Grand Almoner of France, Commander of the order of the Holy Ghost, enormously rich, and an amateur dabbler in alchemy and the occult sciences, was now more anxious than ever to become acquainted with the charlatan. Such disdain on the part of a layman was a new experience to the haughty churchman. His imag­i­na­tion, too, was fired by the stories told of the enchanter. The upshot of it was that Cagliostro and the Cardinal became bosom friends. The prelate invited the juggler and his wife to live at his episcopal palace.

The Baroness d’Oberkirch, who saw him there, says in her memoirs:11 “No one can ever form the faintest idea of the fervor with which everybody pursued Cagliostro. He was surrounded, besieged; every one trying to win a glance or a word. ... A dozen ladies of rank and two actresses had followed him in order to continue their treat­ment. ... If I had not seen it, I should never have imagined that a Prince of the Roman Church, a man in other respects intelligent and honorable, could so far let himself be imposed upon as to renounce his dignity, his free will, at the bidding of a sharper.”

Cagliostro said to the Cardinal one day: “Your soul is worthy of mine, and you deserve to be the confidant of all my secrets.” He presented the Cardinal with a diamond worth 20,000 francs which he pretended to have made, the churchman claiming to have been an eye-witness of the operation. The Cardinal said to the Baroness: “But that is not all; he makes gold; he has made five or six thousand francs worth before me, up there in the top of the palace. I am to have more; I am to have a great deal; he will make me the richest prince in Europe {57} These are not dreams, madame; they are proofs. And his prophecies that have come true! And the miraculous cures that he has wrought! [He really cured the Cardinal of the asthma.] I tell you, he is the most extraordinary man, the sublimest man in the world.”12

From Strasburg Cagliostro went to Naples, and from thence to Bordeaux. After residing at Bordeaux for eleven months, he proceeded to Lyons in great pomp, with lackeys, grooms, guards armed with battle-axes, and heralds garbed in cloth of gold, blowing trumpets. In the year 1785 he founded at Lyons the Lodge of Triumphant Wisdom, and made many converts to his mystical doctrines. The fame of his Egyptian masonry reached Paris and created quite a stir among the lodges. The chiefs of a masonic convocation assembled in Paris wrote to him for information concerning his new rite. He scornfully refused to have anything to do with them, unless they burned all their masonic books and implements as useless trash and acknowledged their futility, claiming that his Egyptian Rite was the only true freemasonry and worthy of cultivation among men of learning. His next move was to the French capital. Behold him on his travels with coach-and-four, flunkies and outriders in gorgeous liveries of red and gold; vehicles filled with baggage and paraphernalia. Best of all, he carries with him an iron coffer which contains the silver, gold, and jewels reaped from his dupes.

Cagliostro’s greatest triumph was achieved in Paris. A gay and frivolous aristocracy, mad after new sensations, welcomed the magician with open arms. The way had been paved for him by St. Germain and Mesmer. He made his appearance in the French capital, January 30, 1785. Fantastic stories were circulated about him. The Cardinal de Rohan selected and furnished a house for him, and visited him three or four times a week, arriving at dinner time and remaining until an advanced {58} hour in the night. It was said that the great Cardinal assisted the sorcerer in his labors, and many persons spoke of the mysterious laboratory where gold bubbled and diamonds sparkled in crucibles brought to a white heat. But nobody except Cagliostro, and perhaps the Cardinal, ever entered that mysterious laboratory. All that was known for a certainty was that the apartments were furnished with Oriental splendor, and that Count Cagliostro in a dazzling costume received his guests with kingly dignity, and gave them his hand to kiss. Upon a black marble slab in the antechamber carved in golden letters was the universal prayer of Alexander Pope. “Father of all! in every age,” etc., the parody of which ten years later Paris sang as a hymn to the Supreme Being.

Says Funck-Brentano:13 “At Paris Cagliostro showed himself what he had been at Strasburg, dignified and reserved. He refused with haughtiness the invitations to dinner sent to him by the Count of Artois, brother of the king, and the Duke of Chartres, prince of the blood. He proclaimed himself chief of the Rosicrucians, who regarded themselves as chosen beings placed above the rest of mankind, and he gave to his adepts the rarest pleasure. ... To all who pressed him with questions as to who he was, he replied in a grave voice, knitting his eyebrows and pointing his forefinger towards the sky, ‘I am he who is’; and as it was difficult to make out that he was ‘he who is not,’ the only thing was to bow with an air of profound deference.

“He possessed the science of the ancient priests of Egypt. His conversation turned generally on three points: (1) Universal Medicine, of which the secrets were known to him. (2) Egyptian Freemasonry, which he wished to restore, and of which he had just established a parent lodge at Lyons, for Scotch masonry, then predominant in France, was in his eyes only an inferior, degenerate form. (3) The Philosopher’s Stone, which was to ensure the transmutation of all the imperfect metals into fine gold.” {59}

“He thus gave to humanity, by his universal medicine, bodily health; by Egyptian masonry, spiritual health; and by the philosopher’s stone, infinite wealth.” These were his principal secrets, but he had a host of others, that of predicting the winning numbers in lotteries; prophesying as to the future; softening marble and restoring it to its pristine hardness; of giving to cotton the lustre and softness of silk, which has been re-invented in our day by a chemical process.

Many writers on magic have fancied that the art of making gold was the secret that lay hid under the forms of Egyptian theology. Says the Benedictine monk, Pernetz: “The hermetic science was the source of all the riches of the Egyptian kings, and the object of these mysteries so hidden under the veil of their pretended religion.” In a subterranean chamber beneath the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, Hermes Trismegistus is supposed, according to mediÆval alchemists, to have placed his Table of Emerald, upon which he engraved the secret of transmuting metals into gold.

Among the many stories told of Cagliostro, that of the supper in the hotel of the Rue Saint Claude, where the ghosts made merry, is the most extraordinary. Six guests and the host took their places at a round table upon which there were thirteen covers. Each guest pronounced the name of the dead man whose spirit he desired to appear at the banquet table. Cagliostro, concentrating his mysterious forces, gave the invitation in a solemn and commanding tone. One after another the six guests appeared. They were the Duc de Choiseul, Voltaire, d’Alembert, Diderot, the AbbÉ de Voisenon, and Montesquieu.

The story of this spirit sÉance created a sensation in Paris. It reached the court, and one evening, when the conversation turned upon the banquet of the ghosts, Louis XVI frowned, shrugged his shoulders, and resumed his game of cards. The queen became indignant, and forbade the mention of the name of the charlatan in her presence. Nevertheless, some of the light-headed ladies of the court burned for an introduction to the superb sorcerer. They begged Lorenza Feliciani to get him to give them a course of lectures or lessons in magic to which no gentlemen were to be admitted. Lorenza replied that he would consent, provided there were thirty-six pupils. The list was made {60} up in a day, and a week afterward the fair dames got their first lesson. But they gossiped about it. This caused another scandal, and consequently the first lesson was the last.

Cagliostro’s Egyptian Rite of Masonry was well received in Paris, especially the lodge for ladies, which was presided over by the beautiful Lorenza, his wife. It was appropriately called Isis. Among the members of this female lodge were the Countesses de Brienne, Dessalles, de Polignac, de Brassac, de Choiseul, d’Espinchal, the Marchioness d’Avrincourt, and Mmes. de LomÉnie, de Genlis, de Bercy, de TreviÈres, de Baussan, de Monteil, d’Ailly, etc.

Cagliostro lived like a lord, thanks to the revenues obtained from the initiates into his masonic rite, and the money which he unquestionably received from his dupe, the Cardinal de Rohan, who was magic mad.

“His wife,” says a gossipy writer, “was rarely seen, but by all accounts she was a woman of bewildering beauty, realizing the Greek lines in all their antique purity and enhanced by an Italian expression. The most enthusiastic of her so-called admirers were precisely those who had never seen her face. There were many duels to decide the question as to the color of her eyes, some contending that they were black, and others that they were blue. Duels were also fought over the dimple which some admirers insisted was on the right cheek, while others said that the honor belonged to the left cheek. She appeared to be no more than twenty years old, but she spoke sometimes of her eldest son, who was for some years a captain in the Dutch army.”

The magician’s sojourn in Paris caused the greatest excitement. His portrait and that of his wife were to be seen everywhere, on fans, on rings, on snuff-boxes, and on medallions. His bust was cut in marble by the famous sculptor, Houdon, cast in bronze, and placed in the mansions of the nobility. He was called by his admirers “the divine Cagliostro.” To one of the old portraits was appended the following verse:

Hats and neckties were named after him. In Paris as in Strasburg, he gave away large sums of money to the poor and cured them of their ailments free of charge. His mansion was always crowded with noble guests. The idle aristocracy could find nothing better to do than attend the spirit sÉances of the charlatan. The shades of Voltaire, Rousseau, and other dead celebrities were summoned from the “vasty deep,” impersonated doubtless by clever confederates in the pay of Cagliostro, often aided by mechanical and optical accessories. The art of phan­tas­ma­goria, in which the concave mirror plays a part, was well known to the enchanter. The Count de Beugnot gives in detail, in his interesting autobiography, an account of Cagliostro’s performances at the residences of Madame de la Motte and the Cardinal de Rohan. The niece of Count de la Motte, a Mlle. de {62} la Tour, a charming girl of fifteen, frequently acted as clairvoyant in the mystical sÉances. She is reported to have possessed all the requisites of a seeress: angelic purity, delicate nerves, and blue eyes, also to have been born under the constellation Capricorn. “Her mother nearly died of joy.”

Says Count Beugnot: “When she learned that her child fulfilled all these conditions of Egyptian thaumaturgy, she thought the treasures of Memphis and of that large city in the interior of Africa were about to fall upon her family, which was badly in need of them.” In the report of the necklace trial (Arch. Nat. X2, B-1417), the young girl confesses to have aided the charlatan in his magical operations at the house of the Cardinal, by pretending to see visions of Marie Antoinette and others in a globe of water, which was surrounded by lighted tapers and figures of Isis and Apis. He had decked her out in a freemason’s apron embroidered with cabalistic characters. She aided him because “she did not want to be bothered,” and answered his leading questions, etc. But there was perhaps another reason for her acquiescence in the fraud. Cagliostro had declared to her, in the presence of the prelate, her aunt and mother, when she first attempted to play the part of pythoness and failed, that her inability to see anything in the globe was evidence that she was not innocent. Stung by his inuendos, she immediately yielded and saw all she was desired to see, thereby becoming his confederate to deceive De Rohan.

An interesting pen portrait of Cagliostro is contained in Beugnot’s memoirs. The Count met the enchanter for the first time at the house of Madame de la Motte:

“Cagliostro was of medium height, rather stout, with an olive complexion, a very short neck, round face, two large eyes on a level with the cheeks, and a broad, turned-up nose. ... His hair was dressed in a way new to France, being divided into several small tresses that united behind the head, and were twisted up into what was then called a club.

“He wore on that day an iron gray coat of French make, with gold lace, a scarlet waistcoat trimmed with broad Spanish lace, red breeches, his sword looped to the skirt of his coat, and a laced hat with a white feather, the latter a decoration still {63} required of mountebanks, tooth-drawers and other medical practitioners, who proclaim and retail their drugs in the open air. Cagliostro set off this costume by lace ruffles, several valuable rings, and shoe-buckles which were, it is true, of antique design, but bright enough to be taken for real diamonds. ... The face, attire, and the whole man made an impression on me that I could not prevent. I listened to the talk. He spoke some sort of medley, half French and half Italian, and made many quotations which might be Arabic, but which he did not trouble himself to translate. I could not remember any more of [his conversation] than that the hero had spoken of heaven, of the stars, of the Great Secret, of Memphis, of the high-priest, of transcendental chemistry, of giants and monstrous beasts, of a city ten times as large as Paris, in the middle of Africa, where he had correspondents.”14

Cagliostro often boasted of his great age.

One day in Strasburg, he stopped before a huge crucifix of carved wood, and contemplated it with melancholy countenance.

“The likeness is excellent,” he remarked to one of his votaries, “but I cannot understand how the artist, who certainly never saw Christ, could have secured such a perfect portrait.”

“You knew Christ, then?” inquired the neophyte, breathlessly.

“We were on the most intimate terms.”

“My dear Count!—”

“I mean what I say. How often we strolled together on the sandy shore of the Lake of Tiberias. How infinitely sweet his voice. But, alas, he would not heed my advice. He loved to walk on the seashore, where he picked up a band of lazzaroni—of fishermen and beggars. This and his preaching brought him to a bitter end.”

Turning to his servant, Cagliostro added: “Do you remember that evening at Jerusalem when they crucified Christ?”

“No, Monsieur le Comte,” replied the well-tutored lackey, bowing low, “you forget that I have only been in your employ for the last fifteen hundred years.”

Baron Munchausen is not to be compared to Cagliostro. {64}

Cagliostro was at the height of his fame, when suddenly he was arrested and thrown into the Bastille. He was charged with complicity in the affair of the diamond necklace. Here is his own account of the arrest: “On the 22d of August, 1785, a commissaire, an exempt, and eight policemen entered my home. The pillage began in my presence. They compelled me to open my secretary. Elixirs, balms, and precious liquors all became the prey of the officers who came to arrest me. I begged the commissaire to permit me to use my carriage. He refused! The agent took me by the collar. He had pistols, the stocks of which appeared from the pockets of his coat. They hustled me into the street and scandalously dragged me along the boulevard all the way to the rue Notre Dame du Nazareth. There a carriage appeared which I was permitted to enter to take the road to the Bastille.”

What was this mysterious affair of the diamond necklace which led to his incarceration in a state prison? In brief the story is as follows:

The court jewelers, BÖhmer and Bassange, had in their possession a magnificent diamond necklace, valued at 1,800,000 livres, originally designed for the ivory neck of the fair but frail Madame du Barry, mistress of Louis XV. But Louis—“the well beloved”—died before the necklace was completed; the Sultana went into exile, and the unlucky jewelers found themselves with the diamond collar on their hands, instead of on the neck of Du Barry. They were obliged to dispose of it, or become bankrupt. Twice BÖhmer offered it to Marie Antoinette, but she refused to purchase it, or permit her husband, Louis XVI., to do so, alleging that France had more urgent need of war ships than jewels. Poor BÖhmer, distracted at her refusal to buy the necklace, threatened to commit suicide. The matter became food for gossip among the quid nuncs of the Court. Unfortunate necklace! it led to one of the most romantic intrigues of history, involving in its jeweled toils a Queen, a cardinal, a courtesan and a conjurer. Living at the village of Versailles at the time was the Countess de la Motte, an ex-mantua maker and {65} a descendant of an illegitimate scion of the Valois family who had committed a forgery under Louis XIII. Her husband was a sort of gentleman-soldier in the gendarmerie, a gambler, and a rake. Madame de la Motte-Valois, boasting of the royal blood that flowed in her veins, had many times petitioned the King to assist her. A small pension had been granted, but it was totally inadequate to supply her wants. She wished also to gain a foothold at Versailles and flutter amidst the butterfly-countesses of the Salle de l’Oeil-de-Boeuf. Looking about for a noble protector, some one who could advance her claims, she pitched upon the Cardinal de Rohan, who was the Grand Almoner of the King. He supplied her with money, but accomplished very little else for her. Though Grand Almoner and a Cardinal, Louis de Rohan was persona non grata at the court. He was cordially detested by Marie Antoinette not only because of his dissolute habits, but on account of slanderous letters he had written about her when she was still a Dauphiness. This coldness on the part of the Queen caused the Cardinal great anguish, as he longed to be Prime Minister, and sway the destinies of France through the Queen like a second Richelieu, Fleury or Mazarin. More than that, he loved the haughty Antoinette. All these things he confided to Madame de la Motte. When the story of BÖhmer and the diamond necklace was noised abroad, Madame de la Motte conceived a plot of wonderful audacity. She determined to possess the priceless collar and make the Cardinal the medium of obtaining it. She deluded the Cardinal into the belief that she was in the Queen’s confidence. She asserted that Marie Antoinette had at last yielded to her pleadings for recognition as a descendant of the Valois and granted her social interviews. She confided to him that the Queen secretly desired to be reconciled to him. She became the pretended “go-between” between the Cardinal and the Queen, and delivered numerous little notes to him, signed “Antoinette de France.” Finally she arranged an interview for him, at night, in the park of Versailles, ostensibly with the Queen, but in reality with a young girl named d’Oliva who bore a remarkable resemblance to Marie Antoinette. The d’Oliva saw him only for a few moments and presented him with a rose. {66} The Cardinal was completely duped. “Madame de la Motte persuaded him,” says Greeven, “into the belief that the Queen was yearning for the necklace, but, as she could not afford it, he could assure himself of her favor by becoming security for the payment. She produced a forged instrument, which purported to have been executed by the Queen, and upon which he bound himself as security.” The necklace was delivered to the Cardinal, who handed it over to Madame de la Motte, to be given to Marie Antoinette. Thus it was, as Carlyle says, the collier de la reine vanished through “the horn-gate of dreams.”

But, asks the curious reader, what has all this to do with Cagliostro? What part had he to play in the drama? This: When the Countess de la Motte was arrested, she attempted to throw the blame of the affair upon the Cardinal and Cagliostro. She alleged that they had summoned her into one of their mystic sÉances. “After the usual hocus-pocus, the Cardinal made over to her a casket containing the diamonds without their setting and directed her to deliver them to her husband, with instructions to dispose of them at once in London. Upon this information Cagliostro and his wife were arrested. He was detained without hearing, from the 22d of August, 1785, until the 30th of January, 1786, when he was first examined by the Judges, and he was not set at liberty till the 1st of June, 1786.”

The trial was the most famous in the annals of the Parliament. Cagliostro and the Cardinal were acquitted with honor. The Countess de la Motte was sentenced to be exposed naked, with a rope around her neck, in front of the Conciergerie, and to be publicly whipped and branded by the hangman with the letter V (Voleuse—thief) on each shoulder. She was further sentenced to life imprisonment in the prison for abandoned women. She escaped from the latter place, however, to London, where she was killed on the 23d day of August, 1791, by a fall from a window. The Count de la Motte was sentenced in contumacium. He was safe in London at the time and had disposed of the diamonds to various dealers. The d’Oliva was set free without punishment. The man who forged the letter for Madame de la Motte, her secretary, Villette, was banished for life. The Countess de Cagliostro was honorably discharged. {67}

The Cardinal was unquestionably innocent, as was fully established at the trial. His overweening ambition and his mad love for Marie Antoinette had rendered him an easy dupe to the machinations of the band of sharpers. But how about Cagliostro? The essayist Greeven seems to think that the alchemist was more or less mixed up in the swindle. He sums up the suspicions as follows: “First, his [Cagliostro’s] immense influence over the Cardinal, and his intimate relations with him render it impossible that so gigantic a fraud could have been practiced without his knowledge. Second, he was in league with the Countess for the purpose of deceiving the Cardinal, in connection with the Queen.”

M. Frantz Funck-Brentano writes: “The idea of implicating Cagliostro in the intrigue had been conceived, as Georgel says, with diabolical cunning. If Jeanne de Valois had in the first instance made a direct accusation against Cardinal de Rohan, no one would have believed in it. But there was something mysterious and suspicious about Cagliostro, and it was known what influence he exercised on the mind of the Cardinal. ‘The alchemist,’ she suggested, ‘took the necklace to pieces in order to increase by means of it the occult treasures of an unheard-of fortune.’ ‘To conceal his theft,’ says Doillot [Madame de la {68} Motte’s lawyer], ‘he ordered M. de Rohan, in virtue of the influence he had established over him, to sell some of the diamonds and to get a few of them mounted at Paris through the Countess de la Motte, and to get more considerable quantities mounted and sold in England by her husband.’ ... Cagliostro had one unanswerable argument: the Cardinal had made his agreement with the jewelers on the 29th of January, 1785, and he, Cagliostro, had only arrived in Paris at nine in the evening of the 30th.”

Cagliostro refuted the charges with wonderful sang froid. He appeared in court “proud and triumphant in his coat of green silk embroidered with gold.” “Who are you? and whence do you come?” asked the attorney for the crown.

“I am an illustrious traveler,” he answered bombastically. Everyone present laughed. He then harangued the judges in theatrical style. He told the most impossible stories of his adventures in Arabia and Egypt. He informed the judges that he was unacquainted with the place of his birth and the name of his parents, but that he spent his infancy in Medina, Arabia, and was brought up under the cognomen of Acharat. He resided in the palace of the Great Muphti, and always had the servants to attend his wants, besides his tutor, named Althotas, who was very fond of him. Althotas told him that his (Cagliostro’s) father and mother were Christians and nobles, who died when he was three months old, leaving him in the care of the Muphti. On one occasion, he asked his preceptor to tell him the name of his parents. Althotas replied that it would be dangerous for him to know, but some incautious expressions dropped by the tutor led him to believe that they were from Malta. When twelve years of age he began his travels, and learned the languages of the Orient. He remained three years in the sacred city of Mecca. The Sherif or Governor of that place showed him such unusual attention and kindness, that he oftentimes thought that personage was his father. He quitted this good man with tears in his eyes, and never saw him again.

“Adieu, nature’s unfortunate child, adieu!” cried the Sherif of Mecca to him, as he took his departure. {69}

Whenever he arrived in any city, either of Europe, Asia, or Africa, he found an account opened for him at the leading banker’s or merchant’s. Like the Count of Monte Cristo, his credit was unlimited. He had only to whisper the word “Acharat,” and his wants were immediately supplied. He really believed that the Sherif was the friend to whom all was owing. This was the secret of his wealth. He denied all complicity in the necklace swindle, and scornfully refuted the charge of Madame de la Motte, that he was “an empiric, a mean alchemist, a dreamer on the Philosopher’s Stone, a false prophet, a profaner of true worship, the self-dubbed Count de Cagliostro.”

“As to my being a false prophet,” he exclaimed grandiloquently, “I have not always been so; for I once prophesied to the Cardinal de Rohan, that Madame de la Motte would prove a dangerous woman, and the result has verified my prediction.”

In conclusion he said that every charge that Madame de la Motte had preferred against him was false, and that she was mentiris impudentissime, which two words he requested her lawyers to translate for her, as it was not polite to tell her so in French.

The Inquisition biographer, regarding the subject of the necklace, says: “It is difficult to decide whether, in this celebrated affair, Madame de la Motte or the Count Cagliostro had the greatest share of glory. It is certain, however, that both of them acquired uncommon Éclat, and indeed attempted to surpass each other. We cannot affirm that they acted in concert on this memorable occasion; we can, however, with safety assert that Cagliostro was well acquainted with the designs of this woman, so wonderfully formed for intrigue, and that he always kept his eye steadily fixed upon the famous necklace. He certainly perceived, and has indeed confessed in his interrogatories [the italics are mine], that he was acquainted with all the manoeuvres which she put in practice to accomplish her criminal designs.

“The whole affair was at length discovered. He had foreseen this; and wished to have evaded the inevitable consequences attendant on detection; but it was now too late. The officers of the police were persuaded that without his aid this piece of {70} roguery and deception could never have been carried on; and he was arrested and imprisoned in the Bastille. He, however, did not lose courage; he even found means to corrupt his guards, and to establish a correspondence with the other prisoners who were confined along with him. It was owing to this that they were enabled to be uniform in the answers which they gave in to the various interrogatories to which they were obliged to reply.

“Cagliostro, who has recounted the whole of the circumstances to us, has added, of his own accord, that he denied everything to his judges with the utmost intrepidity; and exhibited such a sameness in his replies, that, on Madame de la Motte’s being confronted with him, and finding herself unable to quash his evidence, she became so furious, that she threw a candlestick at his head in the presence of all his judges. By this means he was declared innocent.”

So much for the Inquisition biography. The incident of the candlestick has been verified by the archives of the Parliament.

Cagliostro was acquitted.

He drove in triumph from the Bastille to his residence, after hearing his order of discharge. His coach was preceded by “a fantastic cripple, who distributed medicines and presents among the crowd.” He found the Rue Saint Claude thronged with friends and sympathizers, anxious to welcome him home. At this period revolutionary sentiments were openly vented by the people of France. The throne was being undermined by the philosophers and politicians. Any excuse was made to revile Louis XVI and his queen. Scurrilous pamphlets were published declaring that Marie Antoinette was equally guilty with the de la Mottes in the necklace swindle. Cagliostro consequently was regarded as a martyr to the liberties of man. His arrest under the detested lettre de cachet, upon mere suspicion, and long incarceration in the Bastille without trial, were indeed flagrant abuses of justice and gave his sympathizers a whip with which to lash the King and Court.

His wife had been liberated some time before him. She met him at the door of the temple of magic, and he swooned in her arms. Whether this was a genuine swoon or not, it is {71} impossible to say, for Cagliostro was ever a poseur and never neglected an opportunity for theatrical effect and self-advertisement. He accused the Marquis de Launay, Governor of the Bastille—he who had his head chopped off and elevated upon a pike a few years later—of criminal misappropriation of his effects, money, medicines, alchemical powders, elixirs, etc., etc., which he valued at a high sum. The Commissioner of Police who arrested him was also included in this accusation. He appealed to his judges, who referred him to the Civil Courts. But the case never came to trial. The day after his acquittal he was banished from France by order of the King. At St. Denis “his carriage drove between two dense and silent lines of well-wishers, while, as his vessel cleared from the port of Boulogne, five thousand persons knelt down on the shore to receive his blessing.” He went direct to London. No sooner there, than he filed his suit against the Marquis de Launay, “appealing, of course, to the hearts of all Frenchmen as a lonely and hunted exile.” The French Government, through its ambassador, granted him leave to come in person to Paris to prosecute his suit, assuring him of safe conduct and immunity from all prosecution, legal as well as social. But Cagliostro refused this offer, hinting that it was merely a stratagem to decoy him to Paris and reincarcerate him in a dungeon. No clear-headed, impartial person believed that the Marquis de Launay was guilty of the charge laid at his door. Whatever else he may have been, tyrannical, cold, unsympathetic, the Governor of the Bastille was a man of honor and above committing a theft. In fact, Cagliostro’s accusation was a trumped-up affair, designed to annoy and keep open “a running sore in the side of the French authorities.” Notoriety is the life of charlatanry. Cagliostro was no common quack, as his history shows. He next published a pamphlet, dated June 20th, 1786, prophesying that the Bastille would be demolished and converted into a public promenade; and, that a ruler should arise in France, who should abolish lettres de cachet and convoke the Estates-General. In a few years the prediction was fulfilled. Poor De Launay lost his life, whereupon Cagliostro issued a pamphlet exulting over the butchery of his enemy. In London, Cagliostro became the {72} bosom friend of the eccentric Lord George Gordon, the hero of the “no-popery” riots. Eventually he became deeply involved in debt, and was obliged to pawn his effects. He was unable to impress the common-sense, practical English with his pretensions to animal magnetism, transcendental medicine, and occultism. One of his vaunted schemes was to light up the streets of London with sea-water, which by his magic power he proposed to change into oil. The newspapers ridiculed him, {73} especially the Courrier de l’Europe, published and edited by M. Morande, who had “picked up some ugly facts about the swindler’s early career.” The freemasons repudiated him with scorn, and would have nothing to do with his Egyptian Rite. There is a rare old print, a copy of which may be seen in the Scottish Rite Library, Washington, D. C., which depicts the unmasking of the famous imposter at the Lodge of Antiquity, published Nov. 21, 1786, at London. It was engraved by an eye-witness of the scene. In company with some French gentlemen, Cagliostro visited the lodge one evening. At the banquet which followed the working of the degree, a certain worthy brother named Mash, an optician, was called upon to sing. Instead of a post-prandial ditty, he gave a clever imitation of a quack doctor selling nostrums, and dilating bombastically upon the virtues of his elixirs, balsams (Balsamos), and cordials. Cagliostro was not slow in perceiving that he was the target for Brother Mash’s shafts of ridicule. His “front of brass,” as Carlyle has it, was beaten in, his pachyderm was penetrated by the barbed arrows of the ingenious optician’s wit. He left the hall in high dudgeon, followed by the jeers of the assembled masons. Alas, for the Grand Kophta, no “vaults of steel,” no masonic honors for him in London.

The verse appended to the engraving of Cagliostro and the English lodge is as follows:

To escape the harpies of the law, who threatened him with a debtor’s prison, Cagliostro fled to his old hunting-ground, the Continent, leaving la petite Comtesse to follow him as best she could. But the game was played out. The police had by this time become fully cognizant of his impostures. He was forbidden to practice his peculiar system of medicine and masonry in Austria, Germany, Russia, and Spain. Drawn like a needle to the lodestone rock, he went to Rome. Foolish Grand Kophta! Freemasonry was a capital offence in the dominions of the Pope. One lodge, however, existed. Says Greeven: “There is reason to suppose that it was tolerated only because it enabled the Holy Church to spy out the movements of freemasons in general.” Cagliostro attempted to found one of his Egyptian lodges, but met with no success. His exchequer became depleted. He appealed to the National Assembly of France to revoke the order of banishment, on the ground of “his services to the liberty of France.” Suddenly on the evening of Dec. 27, 1789, he and his wife were arrested and incarcerated in the fortress of San Angelo. His highly-prized manuscript of Egyptian masonry was seized, together with all his papers and correspondence. He was tried by the Holy Inquisition. It must have been an impressive scene—that gloomy council {75} chamber with the cowled inquisitors. Cagliostro’s wife appeared against him and lifted the veil of Isis that hid the mysteries of the charlatan’s career. The Egyptian manuscript of George Coston, the seals, the masonic regalia and paraphernalia were mute and damning evidences of his guilt. He was indeed a freemason, even though he were not an alchemist, a soothsayer, the Grand Kophta of the Pyramids. Cagliostro’s line of defense was that “he had labored throughout to lead back freemasons, through the Egyptian ritual, to Catholic orthodoxy.” He appeared at first to be contrite. But it availed him nothing. Finding his appeals for mercy useless, he adopted another tack, and told impossible stories of his adventures. He harangued the Holy Fathers for hours, despite their threats and protests. Nothing could stop his loquacious tongue from wagging. Finally, he was condemned to death as a heretic, sorcerer, and freemason, but Pope Pius VI., on the 21st of March, 1791, commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. His manuscript was declared to be “super­sti­tious, blasphemous, wicked, and heretical,” and was ordered to be burnt by the common hangman, together with his masonic implements.

After the sentence of the Inquisition, Cagliostro was taken back to the Castle of San Angelo and immured in a gloomy dungeon, where no one but the jailer came near him. But still his indomitable spirit was unconquered. He conceived a plan of escape. Expressing the greatest contrition for his crimes, he begged the Governor of the prison to send him a confessor. The request was granted, and a Capuchin monk was detailed to listen to the condemned man’s catalogue of sins. During the confession, the charlatan suddenly sprang upon the monk and endeavored to throttle him. His object was to escape from the Castle in the Capuchin’s robe. But the Father Confessor proved to be a member of the church militant, and vigorously defended himself. Cagliostro’s attempt proved futile. This anecdote was related by S. A. S. the Prince Bernard of Saxe-Weimar to the French masonic historian, Thory (Acta Latamorum, I, 68). The Prince declared it to be authentic.

Soon after the above-mentioned event, the Pontifical Government ordered Cagliostro to be conducted in the night time to {76} the Fortress of San Leon, in the Duchy of Urbino. Here in a subterranean dungeon, it is said, he was literally swallowed up alive, like the victims of mediÆval days in the stone in pace. From this epoch we lose all traces of the great necromancer. It is said that he died in the month of August, 1795, the rigor of his punishment having somewhat abated. The following item will prove of interest: “News comes from Rome that the famous Cagliostro is dead in the fortress of San Leon.” (Moniteur universel, 6 Octobre, 1795. Correspondence dated from Genoa, August 25th.) Everything concerning that death is shrouded in mystery. The stone walls of San Leon have told no tales. No one knows where the magician is buried. In all likelihood in some ignoble prison grave. One can readily picture the obsequies: A flash of flambeaux in the night; a coarse winding-sheet; a wooden coffin; an indifferent priest to mumble a few Latin prayers; the callous grave diggers with their spades—and all is over! No masonic honors here; no arches of steel; no mystic lights and regalia. Farewell forever, Balsamo! I confess a weakness for you, despite your charlatanry. Doubtless you were welcomed with open arms to the Shades by your brethren—the Chaldeans, the sorcerers and the soothsayers.

Alfred de Caston, in his Marchands de Miracles, Paris 1864, remarks that Cagliostro “rendered up his soul to God” just one hundred years after the death of his predecessor in the art magique, the brilliant charlatan Joseph Francis Borri of Milan, who was condemned to perpetual imprisonment in the Castle of St. Angelo by the Holy Inquisition, as a heretic, alchemist, and sorcerer. A curious coincidence, says Castro.

The beautiful “Flower of Vesuvius,” Lorenza Feliciani, escaped severe punishment by immuring herself in the convent of St. Appolonia at Rome, where she died in 1794. She was more sinned against than sinning.

There lived in 1858, an old woman known by the name of Madeline, who inhabited a miserable attic in Paris, the ceiling of which was covered with cabalistic and astrological emblems. She pretended to divine the future and tell fortunes. She was the daughter of Cagliostro and a Jewess of Lyons. (Le Figaro, 13 mai, 1858.) {77}

In the Inquisition biography some curious letters to Cagliostro from his masonic correspondents in France are published. They evidence the profound respect, one might almost say blind worship, with which he was regarded by his disciples.

The masonic lodge at Rome was disrupted shortly after Cagliostro’s arrest. The Sbirri of the Holy Office pounced down upon it, but the birds had flown, taking with them their most important papers. Father Marcellus says that among the members of this Roman lodge were an Englishman and an American.

And so endeth the career of Cagliostro, one of the most romantic of history. His condemnation as a sorcerer and freemason has invested him with “the halo of a religious martyr, of which perhaps no one was less deserving.”

Among his effects the Inquisition found a peculiar seal, upon which the mysterious letters “L. P. D.” were engraved. These letters were supposed to stand for the Latin sentence, Lilia pedibus destrue, which rendered into the vulgar tongue signifies, “Tread the lilies under foot.” The fleur-de-lys was the heraldic device of the Bourbon Kings of France, hence this trampling upon the lily alluded to the stamping out of the French monarchy by the freemasons. However, it is more than probable that the initials, arranged as follows, L. D. P., stood for LibertÈ de Penser—“Freedom of thought”—which is a motto of Scottish Rite Masonry. This was the opinion of General Albert Pike, 33d degree, than whom no greater masonic student ever lived.

Many theosophical writers have placed implicit belief in the mission of Cagliostro. They have regarded him as a genuine adept in magic and alchemy, and not a chevalier d’industrie preying upon a credulous world. Totally ignoring the evidence contained in the police archives16 of Paris and the numerous brochures by eminent men and women who personally knew Cagliostro, they point to the Inquisition biography as a mass of false evidence compiled by religious bigots, and consequently unreliable, as if no other testimony regarding Cagliostro’s character existed. Father Marcellus had an ecclesiastical axe to grind, {78} it is true, to prove Cagliostro a freemason and heretic (heinous crimes in the eyes of the Roman Church, but absurd charges in the eyes of all tolerant men), nevertheless he showed conclusively that Joseph Balsamo of Palermo, the man of many aliases, was also a charlatan, impostor and evil liver. All impartial contemporary biographers corroborate the facts adduced by the Inquisition in this respect. The Cardinal de Rohan is not a competent witness for Cagliostro, for he was blinded by his super­sti­tious belief in magic and alchemy. Populus vult decipi, decipiatur—people who wish to be deceived are deceived.

Some writers have asserted that Cagliostro was the agent of the Templars, and therefore wrote to the freemasons of London that the time had arrived to begin the work of rebuilding the Temple of the Eternal. With the heads of the Order he had vowed to overturn the Throne and the Altar upon the tomb of the martyred Grand Master of Templars, Jacques de Molai. Learned in the esoteric doctrines of the Orient, the Knights Templars, or Poor Fellow Soldiery of the Holy House of the Temple, were accused of sorcery and witchcraft, hence their persecution by the Church, and Philippe le Bel of France. De Molai, before he was burned to death in Paris, organized and instituted what afterwards became in the eighteenth century occult, hermetic or Scottish Masonry. And thus the freemasons traced their order to the Templars of the Middle Ages, from whom they inherited the theosophical doctrines of Egypt and India. Such is the romantic but improbable legend. Color is lent to the story by Cagliostro himself. Among other Munchausen tales related by him to his Inquisitors, he told how he had visited the Illuminati of Frankfurt, when on his way to Strasburg. In an underground cavern the secret Grand Master of Templars “showed him his signature under a horrible form of oath, traced in blood, and pledged him to destroy all despots, especially in Rome.”

Taking this idea for a theme, Alexander the Great—he of the pen, not of the sword—has built up a series of improbable though highly romantic novels about the personality of Cagliostro, entitled The Memoirs of a Physician and The Diamond Necklace. He makes him the Grand Kophta of a Society of {79} Illuminati, or exalted freemasons, which extends throughout the world. Pledged to the propagation of liberty, equality, and fraternity among men, the mystic brotherhood seeks to overthrow the thrones of Europe and the Papacy, symbols of oppression and persecution.

The Memoirs of a Physician opens with a remarkable prologue, descriptive of a solemn conclave of the secret superiors of the Order. The meeting takes place at night in a ruined chateau located in a mountainous region near the old city of Strasburg. Cagliostro reveals his identity as the Arch-master of the Fraternity, the Grand Kophta, who is in possession of the secrets of the pyramids. He takes upon himself the important task of “treading the lilies under foot” and bringing about the destruction of the monarchy in France, the storm-centre of Europe. He departs on his mission. Like Torrini, the conjurer, he has a miniature house on wheels drawn by two Flemish horses. One part of the vehicle is fitted up as an alchemical laboratory, wherein the sage Althotas makes researches for the elixir of life. Arriving at the chateau of a nobleman of the ancien rÉgime, Cagliostro meets the young dauphiness Marie Antoinette, on her way to Paris, accompanied by a brilliant cortÈge. He causes her to see in a carafe of water her death by the guillotine. Aided by the freemasons of Paris, Cagliostro sets to work to encompass the ruin of the throne and to bring on the great Revolution. Dumas in this remarkable series of novels passes in review before us Jean Jacques Rousseau, Cardinal de Rohan, Louis XV and XVI, Marie Antoinette, Countess du Barry, Madame de la Motte, Danton, Marat, and a host of people famous in the annals of history. Cagliostro is exalted from a charlatan into an apostle of liberty, endowed with many noble qualities. He is represented as possessing occult powers, and his sÉances are depicted as realities. Dumas himself was a firm believer in spiritualism, and hobnobbed with the American medium Daniel D. Home.

Cagliostro’s house in the Marais quarter, Paris, still remains—a memorial in stone of its former master. In the summer {80} of 1899 the Courrier des Etats-Unis, New York, contained an interesting article on this mansion. I quote as follows:

“Cagliostro’s house still stands in Paris. Few alterations have been made in it since the days of its glories and mysteries; and one may easily imagine the effect which it produced in the night upon those who gazed upon its strange pavilions and wide terraces when the lurid lights of the alchemist’s furnaces streamed through the outer window blinds. The building preserves its noble lines in spite of modern additions and at the same time has a weird appearance which produces an almost depressing effect. But this doubtless comes from the imag­i­na­tion, because the house was not built by Cagliostro; he simply rented it. When he took up his quarters in it, it was the property of the Marquise d’Orvillers. Cagliostro made no changes in it, except perhaps a few temporary interior additions for the machines which he used in his sÉances in magic.

COURTYARD OF CAGLIOSTRO’S HOUSE IN PARIS (PRESENT CONDITION).

“The plan of the building may well be said to be abnormal. The outer gate opens upon the Rue Saint Claude at the angle of the Boulevard Beaumarchais. The courtyard has a morose and solemn aspect. At the end under a flagged porch there is a stone staircase worn by time, but it still preserves its old iron railing. On looking at that staircase, one cannot help thinking of the hosts of beautiful women, attracted by curiosity to the den of the sorcerer, and terrified at what they imagined they were about to see, who placed their trembling hands upon that old railing. Here we can evoke {81} the shade of Mme. de la Motte running up the steps, with her head covered with a cloak, and the ghosts of the valets of Cardinal de Rohan sleeping in the driver’s seat of the carriage with a lantern at their feet, while their master, in company with the Great Kophta, is occupied with necromancy, metallurgy, cabala, or oneirocritics, which, as everybody knows, constitute the four elementary divisions of Cagliostro’s art.

“A secret stairway now walled up ran near the large one to the second story, where its traces are found; and a third stairway, narrow and tortuous, still exists at the other end of the building on the boulevard side. It is in the center of the wall, in complete darkness, and leads to the old salons now cut into apartments, the windows of which look out upon a terrace. Below, with their mouldering doors, are the carriage house and the stable,—the stable of Djerid, the splendid black horse of Lorenza Feliciani.”

To verify the above statement, I wrote to M. Alfred de Ricaudy (an authority on archÆological matters and editor of L’Echo du Public, Paris), who responded as follows, Jan. 13, 1900:

“The house still exists just as it was in the time of Cagliostro [the exterior]. Upon the boulevard, contiguous to the mansion, there was formerly the shop of one Camerlingue, a bookseller, now occupied by an upholsterer. On January 30, 1785, Cagliostro took up his residence in this quaint old house. It was then No. 30 Rue St. Claude, at the corner of the Boulevard Saint Antoine, afterwards the Boulevard Beaumarchais. The Marquise d’Orvillers was the owner of the premises occupied by the thaumaturgist of the eighteenth century. Her father, M. de Chavigny, captain in the royal navy, had built this house on ground acquired in 1719 from Mme. de Harlay, who had inherited it from her father, le Chevalier Boucherat. (See Lefeuve, Old Houses of Paris, Vol. IV., issue 51, page 24, published by Achille Faure, Paris, 1863.)”

Cagliostro’s house is now No. 1, the numbering of the street having been altered during the reign of Louis Philippe. Says M. de Ricaudy:

“The numbering originally began at the Rue Saint Louis, now Rue de Turenne, in which is situated the church of Saint Denis du Sacrement. When the houses were re-numbered with reference to the direction of the current of the Seine (under Louis Philippe), the numbers of the Rue St. Claude, which is parallel to the river, began at the corner of the boulevard, and in that way the former number 30 became number 1.”

The sombre old mansion has had a peculiar history. Cagliostro locked the doors of the laboratories and sÉance-chambre some time in June, 1786, on the occasion of his exile from France. All during the great Revolution the house remained closed and intact. Twenty-four years of undisturbed repose passed away. The {82} dust settled thick upon everything; spiders built their webs upon the gilded ceilings of the salons. Finally, in the Napoleonic year 1810, the doors of the temple of magic and mystery were unfastened, and the furniture and rare curios, the retorts and crucibles, belonging to the dead conjurer, were auctioned off. An idle crowd of curious quid nuncs gathered to witness the sale and pry about. Says Ricaudy:

“The household furniture, belongings, etc., of the illustrious adventure were not sold until five years after his death. The sale took place in the apartment which he had occupied, and was by order of the municipal government. An examination revealed many curious acoustical and optical arrangements constructed in the building by Cagliostro. By the aid of these contrivances and that of well-trained confederates, he perpetrated many supposedly magical effects, summoned the shades of the dead,” etc. (See Dictionnaire de la France. By A. G. de St. Fargeau, Vol. III., page 245. Paris, 1851.)

Says LenÔtre:

“Since the auctioning of Cagliostro’s effects the gloomy house of the Rue St. Claude has had no history. Ah, but I am mistaken. In 1855 some repairs were made. The old carriage door was removed, and the one that took its place was taken from the ruins of the Temple. There it stands today with its great bolts and immense locks. The door of the prison of Louis XVI. closes the house of Cagliostro.”

M. de Ricaudy verifies this statement about the door of the mansion. The student of Parisian archÆology will do well to consult M. de Ricaudy, as well as M. Labreton, 93 Boulevard Beaumarchais, who possesses forty volumes relating to the history of the Marais Quarter. Last but not least is the indefatigable student of ancient landmarks of Paris, M. G. LenÔtre, author of Paris rÉvolutionnaire, vieilles maisons, vieux papiers, 1re sÉrie.

My friend, M. FÉlicien Trewey, who visited the place in the summer of 1901, at my request, reported to me that it had been converted into a commercial establishment. The salons were cut up into small apartments. The laboratories and the chambre Égyptienne where the great sorcerer held his sÉances were no more. A grocer, a feather curler, and a manufacturer of cardboard boxes occupied the building, oblivious of the fact that the world-renowned Cagliostro once lived there, plying his trade of sorcerer, mesmerist, physician, and mason, like a true chevalier d’industrie. Alas! the history of these old mansions! They {83} have their days of splendid prosperity, followed by shabby gentility and finally by sordid decay,—battered, blear-eyed, and repulsive looking.

According to Henri d’Almeras (Cagliostro, et la franc-maconnerie et l’occultisme au XVIIIe siÈcle), Cagliostro’s apartment on the second floor of the house was occupied in the year 1904 by a watchmaker. Two famous watchmakers became conjurers, one after having read an old book on natural magic, the other after having seen a performance of the Davenport Brothers. I allude to Robert-Houdin and Jno. Nevil Maskelyne. Watchmaking leads naturally to the construction of automata and magical illusions. The young horologist of the Rue Saint Claude has every excuse to become a pre­sti­di­gi­ta­teur. He works in an atmosphere of necromancy in that old house haunted by its memories of the past. If this does not influence him to enter the magic circle, nothing else will.

People pass and repass this ghost-house of the Rue Saint Claude every day, but not one in a hundred knows that the great enchanter once resided there and held high court. If those dumb walls could but speak, what fascinating stories of super­sti­tion and folly they might unfold to our wondering ears! Yes, in this ancient house, dating back to pre-Revolutionary Paris, to the old rÉgime, the great necromancer known as Cagliostro lived in the zenith of his fame. In these golden years of his life, was he never haunted by disturbing visions of the dungeons of the Holy Inquisition, yawning to receive him? Ah, who can tell? Thanks to the gossipy memoir writers of the period, I am able to give a pen portrait, composite, if you will, of some of the scenes that were enacted in the antiquated mansion.

It is night. The lanterns swung in the streets of old Paris glimmer fitfully. Silence broods over the city with shadowy wings. No sound is heard save the clank of the patrol on its rounds. The Rue Saint Claude, however, is all bustle and confusion. A grand “soirÉe magique” is being held at the house of Monsieur le Comte de Cagliostro. Heavy old-fashioned carriages stand in front of the door, with coachmen lolling sleepily on the boxes, and linkboys playing rude games with each other in the kennel. A rumble in the street—ha, there, lackeys! out of {84} the way! Here comes the coach of my Lord Cardinal, Prince Louis de Rohan. There is a flash of torches. Servants in gorgeous liveries of red and gold, with powdered wigs, open the door of the vehicle, and let down the steps with a crash. Monseigneur le Cardinal, celebrant of the mass in the royal palace at Versailles, man of pleasure and alchemist, descends. He is enveloped in a dark cloak, as if to court disguise, but it is only a polite pretense. He enters the mansion of his bosom friend, Cagliostro the magician. Within, all is a blaze of light. A life-size bust of the divine Cagliostro ornaments the foyer. Visitors are received in a handsomely furnished apartment on the second floor. Beyond that is the sÉance-room, a mysterious chamber hung with somber drapery. Wax candles in tall silver sconces, arranged about the place in mystic pentagons and triangles, illuminate the scene.

In the center of the room is a table with a black cloth, on which are embroidered in red the symbols of the highest degree of the Rosicrucians. Upon this strange shekinah is placed the cabalistic apparatus of the necromancer—odd little Egyptian figures of Isis, Osiris, vials of lustral waters, and a large globe full of clarified water. It is all very uncanny. Presently the guests are seated in a circle about the altar, and form a magnetic chain. As the old chroniclers phrase it, to them enters Cagliostro, the Grand Kophta, the man who has lived thousands of years, habited in gorgeous robes like the arch-hierophant of an ancient Egyptian temple. The clairvoyant is now brought in, a child of angelic purity, who was born under a certain constellation, of delicate nerves, great sensitiveness, and, withal, blue eyes. She is bidden to kneel before the globe, and relate what she sees therein. Cagliostro makes passes over her, and commands the genii to enter the water. The very soul of the seeress is penetrated with the magnetic aura emanating from the magician. She becomes convulsed, and declares that she sees events taking place that very moment at the court of Versailles, at Vienna, at Rome.

Every one present is transported with joy. Monseigneur le Cardinal de Rohan is charmed, delighted, and lauds the necromancer to the skies. How weird and wonderful! Albertus {85} Magnus, Nostradamus and Appolonius of Tyana are not to be compared with the all-powerful Cagliostro. Truly he is the descendant of the Egyptian thaumaturgists.

The sÉance is followed by a banquet. Rose-leaves are showered over the guests from the gilded ceiling, perfumed water plashes in the fountains, and a hidden orchestra of violins, flutes and harps plays soft melodies. The scene reminds one of the splendid feasts of the Roman voluptuaries in the decadent days of the empire. The lovely Lorenza Feliciani, wife of the enchanter, discourses learnedly of sylphs, salamanders and gnomes, in the jargon of the Rosicrucians. The Cardinal, his veins on fire with love and champagne, gazes amorously at her. But he is thinking all the while of the aristocratic Marie Antoinette, who treats him with such cruel disdain. But Cagliostro has promised to win the Queen for him, to melt her icy heart with love-philters and magical talismans. Let him but possess his soul in patience a little while. All will be well. Aye, indeed, well enough to land the haughty prelate in the Bastille, and start the magician on that downward path to the Inquisition at Rome.

The night wanes. The lights of the banqueting-hall burn lower and lower. Finally the grandes dames and the seigneurs take their departure. When the last carriage has rolled away into the darkness, Cagliostro and his wife yawn wearily, and retire to their respective sleeping-apartments. The augurs of Rome, says a Latin poet, could not look at each other without laughing. Cagliostro and Lorenza in bidding each other goodnight exchange smiles of incalculable cunning. The sphinx masks have dropped from their faces, and they know each other to be—charlatans and impostors, preying upon a super­sti­tious society. The magician is alone. He places his wax light upon an escritoire, and throws himself into an arm-chair before the great fireplace, carved and gilded with many a grotesque image. The flames of the blazing logs weave all sorts of fantastic forms on floor and ceiling. The wind without howls in the chimney like a lost spirit. The figures embroidered on the tapestry assume monstrous shapes of evil portent—alguazils, cowled inquisitors, and jailers with rusty keys and chains. {86}

But the magician sees nothing of it all, hears not the warning cry of the wind: he is thinking of his newly hatched lodges of Egyptian occultism, and the golden louis d’or to be conjured out of the strong-boxes of his Parisian dupes.