Chapter IV: Introduction: By Dr. Paul Carus (3)

“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.” {44}

[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.

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]

Goethe[9] 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.]

MEMOIRE POUR LE COMTE DE CAGLIOSTRO, ACCUSE;

CONTRE

M. LE PROCUREUR-GENÉRAL, ACCUSATEUR;

En présence de M. le Cardinal DE ROHAN, de la Comtesse DE LA MOTTE, et autres Co-Accusés.

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.]

VIE DE JOSEPH BALSAMO, CONNU SOUS LE NOM DE COMTE CAGLIOSTRO,

_Extraite de la Procédure instruite contre lui à Rome, en 1790_,

Traduite d’après l’original italien, imprimé à la Chambre Apostolique; enrichie de Notes curieuses, et ornée de son Portrait.

A PARIS, Chez ONFROY, libraire, rue Saint-Victor, n^o. 11.

ET A STRASBOURG, Chez JEAN-GEORGE TREUTTEL, libraire.

1791.

TITLE-PAGE OF THE LIFE OF CAGLIOSTRO.]

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.”

II.

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}

III.

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.

[10] _Nachricht von des berüchtigten Cagliostro’s
Aufenthalt in Mithau im Jahre, 1779, und von dessen
dortigen magischen Operationen._—Charlotte Elisabeth von
der Recke. Berlin und Stettin, 1787. 8vo.

“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]

[11] _Mémoires de la Baronne d’Oberkirche, I._

[12] It is an interesting fact to note that Cagliostro
was recommended as a physician to our Benjamin Franklin,
at that time residing in Paris. See Hale’s _Franklin in
France_, vol. 2, p. 226.

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.

IV.

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}

[13] _The Diamond Necklace. Being the true Story of
Marie Antoinette and the Cardinal de Rohan. From the
new documents recently discovered in Paris._ By Frantz
Funck-Brentano. Translated from the French by H. S.
Edwards. Philadelphia, 1901. 8vo.

“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:

“De l’Ami des Humains reconnaissez les traits: Tous ses jours sont marqués par de nouveaux bienfaits, Il prolonge la Vie, il secourt l’indigence; Le plaisir d’être utile est seul sa recompense.”

{61}

After Houdon.

(In the possession of M. Storelli.)]

From _Vie de Joseph Balsamo, etc._

Paris, 1791.]

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}

[14] Beugnot, Comte de. _Mémoires._ Paris, 1866.

V.

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.”