Pierre-Julien Cagliostro

“ The Bastille was too massive a cage for so delicate a bird. Implicated without the shadow of a reason in the Necklace Affair the Countess Cagliostro began to imagine herself ill. She pined for her fine house, her admirers, her diamonds, her black mare Djérid, and the companionship of the man to whom she owed all that spelt happiness in her inoffensive, doll-like existence. ”

“ With still more enthusiasm than Madame Blavary, he held forth to his acquaintance, and in all public places, that the count was an extraordinary man, a true adept, whose fortune was immense, and who could transmute into pure and solid gold as much lead, iron, and copper as he pleased. The consequence was, that the house of Cagliostro was besieged by crowds of the idle, the credulous, and the avaricious, all eager to obtain a sight of the “philosopher,” or to share in the boundless wealth which he could call into existence. ”

“ If ever a man had cause to be embittered and to nurse a grievance it was Cagliostro. He had been cast suddenly headlong, through no fault of his own, from the pinnacle of good fortune into the Bastille; accused of another’s crime; arrested with the utmost brutality and treated with outrageous severity; kept in uncertainty of the fate of his wife, who for six months, unknown to him, was confined within fifteen feet of him; he had been an object of ridicule and mockery within, of calumny and detraction without his prison, of which the name alone was sufficient to reduce him to despair ”

“ Had Cagliostro come to England before his fame had been tarnished by the Necklace Affair, he would in all probability have been lionized by the best society as he was in France. But the unsavoury notoriety he had acquired, the hundred and one reports that were circulated to his discredit and believed, for people always listen more readily to the evil that is said of one than to the good, closed the doors of the aristocracy to him. ”

“ As to confess his utter inability to oblige her would have been to rob him at one fell swoop of the belief in his powers on which he counted to establish a lodge of Egyptian Masonry at Mittau, Cagliostro evaded the request. His great gifts, he explained, were only to be exercised for the good of the world, and if he used them merely for the gratification of idle curiosity, he ran the risk of losing them altogether, or of being destroyed by evil spirits who were on the watch to take advantage of the weakness of such as he. ”

“ There could be no better illustration of the perplexities that confront the biographer of Cagliostro at every stage of his mysterious career than the uncertainty that prevails regarding the career of Giuseppe Balsamo himself. For rightly or wrongly, their identity has so long been taken for granted that the history of one has become indissolubly linked to that of the other. ”

“ It took more than half a century to cleanse the honour of Marie Antoinette of all suspicion of connivance in the theft of the necklace.
The mistrust that mystery and magic always inspire made Cagliostro with his fantastic personality an easy target for calumny. After having been riddled with abuse till he was unrecognizable, prejudice, the foster-child of calumny, proceeded to lynch him, so to speak. For over one hundred years his character has dangled on the gibbet of infamy, upon which the sbirri of tradition have inscribed a curse on any one who shall attempt to cut him down. ”

“ If, indeed, the parents of the Countess Seraphina, or Lorenza Balsamo, as you will, were still living or even resident in Rome, they were apparently unwilling or afraid to recognize the relationship, for nothing further is heard of them. It is much more likely that Cagliostro chose Rome on account of its size, as being the one place in Italy which offered him the most likely chance of escaping observation. In so large a city his poverty was itself a safe-guard. ”

“ On arriving in Paris, Cagliostro declares that he “took the greatest precaution to avoid causing ill-will.” As the majority of contemporary documents concur in describing his life in Paris as “dignified and reserved,” there is no reason to doubt the truth of his statement. But one cannot escape one’s fate, and in spite of his efforts not to attract attention, he was condemned to an extraordinary notoriety.
His arrival was no sooner known than, as at Strasburg, Bordeaux, and Lyons, his house was beset with cripples and invalids of all walks of life. ”

“ Alas! “Count M.” had devoted his life to the subject, of which it did not take him long to discover Cagliostro knew next to nothing. Indignant that one who had not even learnt the alphabet of alchemy should undertake to instruct him of all people, he laid the trap described by Madame Böhmer. It was not, however, at the Royal Palace that the exposure took place that caused Cagliostro to leave Poland, but at a country seat near Warsaw. Moreover, if we are to believe “Count M.,” Cagliostro did not wait to be exposed, but suspecting what was a-foot, “decamped during the night.” ”

“ He will make me the richest prince in Europe! These are no mere vagaries of the imagination, madame, but positive facts. Think of all his predictions that have been realized, of all the miraculous cures that he has effected! I repeat he is a most extraordinary, a most sublime man, whose knowledge is only equalled by his goodness. What alms he gives! What good he does! It exceeds all power of imagination. I can assure you he has never asked or received anything from me.”
But Cagliostro did not confine himself solely to seeking the philosopher’s stone for the Cardinal. ”

“ One day, after conversing on magic and necromancy with the von Medems, he gave them and a certain Herr von Howen a proof of his occult powers. Apart from his “miraculous” cures, nearly all the prodigies performed by Cagliostro were of a clairvoyant nature. As previously stated, in these exhibitions he always worked through a medium, known as a pupille or colombe, according to the sex—the pupilles being males and the colombes females. From the fact that they were invariably very young children, he probably found that they responded more readily to hypnotic suggestion than adults. ”

“ D’Alméras pictures Cagliostro as a sort of clown, which is certainly the most curious view ever taken of the “Front of Brass,” and even more unjustifiable than Carlyle’s.
“What a good-natured, amusing, original rascal!” he exclaims. “The Figaro of Alchemy, more intelligent [Pg 6] than Diafoirus, and more cunning than Scapin. And with what imperturbable serenity did he lie in five or six languages, as well as in a gibberish that had no meaning at all. To lie like that gives one a great superiority over the majority of one’s fellow-men. ”

“ From all of which it may be gathered that whether Cagliostro is depicted as an Apostle of Light by his friends the occultists, or a rank impostor by his enemies, of whom Carlyle is the most implacable and d’Alméras the most charitably inclined, the real man has been as effectually hidden from view by prejudice as by the mystery in which he wrapped himself. ”

“ Such is gratitude! such is popular favor! a thing to be bought and bargained for, to be given when not needed. Such, no doubt, Cagliostro decided!
He is sore bested, and begins "to confess himself to priests," for a man must do something in his extremity. It avails him not; he is at last in the gripe of the holy Inquisition at Rome, "in the year of our Lord, 1789, December 29," and must match himself with a power which this world knows something of: face to face, hand to hand, at last. ”

“ That the thoughts of others besides himself should be concentrated on the “magic dream,” the relations of the Countess, as well as herself, were duly agitated by its expectation. With an air of great mystery, which Cagliostro could make so impressive, he delivered to Count von Medem a sealed envelope containing, he said, a question, which he hoped by the dream to have answered. ”

“ Thus, after having been forger, swindler, blackmailer, souteneur, quack, pickpocket—all of the commonest type—Balsamo, on the word of a disreputable Sacchi, supported by a few singular coincidences, is saved without rhyme or reason from the gallows in Cadiz, on which he very probably perished, in order to be brought back to London as Count Cagliostro, a highly accomplished charlatan and past-master in wonder-working. An improbability that even the Inquisition-biographer is unable to pass over in silence. ”

“ Tranquillity is denied thee, because of the concupiscence of thy ambition. A profligate and venal career has troubled thy soul with misgivings. Thou hast scorned even the five senses—those golden portals of humanity! Know, O dreamer, that in them alone consists the enjoyment of a finite existence: know that through the virtuous use of those five senses, earthly happiness is attainable! Dost thou still tremble in thy unbelief? Arise, Balsamo, and behold the teachings of eternity!"
As the last sentence resounded in the heart of Cagliostro, up into the air floated the Rosicrucian and the Voice. ”

“ French Revolution—wherever he meets him—he brands him as a “King of Liars,” a “Prince of Scoundrels,” an “Arch-Quack,” “Count Front of Brass-Pinch-beckostrum,” “Bubby-jock,” “a babbling, bubbling Turkey-cock,” et cetera. But such violence defeats its intention. When on every page the historian’s conscience is smitten with doubts that prejudice cannot succeed in stilling, the critical and inquisitive reader comes to the conclusion he knows less about the real Cagliostro at the end than he did at the beginning. He has merely seen Carlyle in one of his fine literary rages ”

“ Focusing the gaze of the church, kings, and the commons upon himself, in many respects the most audacious pretender that history records, he raised the Hermetic art to a dazzling height, and finally buried it in a blaze of splendor as he passed from existence beneath a mantle of shame. As a meteor streams into view from out the star mists of space, and in corruscating glory sinks into the sea, Cagliostro blazed into the sky of the eighteenth century, from the nebulæ of alchemistic [Pg 42] speculation, and extinguished both himself and his science in the light of the rising sun of materialism. ”

“ Even his valet was supposed to have discovered the secret of immortality. This fellow, a veritable Scapin, assisted him admirably in mystifying the credulous.
“Your master,” said a sceptic one day, seizing him by the collar, “is a rogue who is taking us all in. Tell me, is it true that he was present at the marriage of Cana?”
“You forget, sir,” was the reply, “I have only been in his service a century.”
Many of the most amazing stories circulated about Cagliostro were merely a repetition of those related twenty years before of Saint-Germain. ”

“ According to report, Cagliostro’s first act in St. Petersburg, as everywhere else he went, was to gain admission to one of the lodges of Strict Observance and endeavour to convert the members to the Egyptian Rite. As experience had taught him the futility of attempting to recruit adherents merely by expounding his lofty ideal of the regeneration of mankind, he had recourse to the methods he had adopted with such success in Mittau ”

“ These interviews with the departed were very expensive; for, as Cagliostro said, the dead would not rise for nothing. The countess, as usual, exercised all her ingenuity to support her husband’s credit. She was a great favourite with her own sex, to many a delighted and wondering auditory of whom she detailed the marvellous powers of Cagliostro. She said he could render himself invisible, traverse the world with the rapidity of thought, and be in several places at the same time.49
He had not been long at Paris before he became involved in the celebrated affair of the queen’s necklace. ”

“ Cagliostro himself boldly asserted that all his prodigies were performed under the special favour and help of heaven. He added that the Supreme Being had deigned to accord him the beatific vision, that it was his [Pg 254] mission to convert unbelievers and reinstate catholicism, but in spite of this exalted vocation he told fortunes, taught the art of winning at lotteries, interpreted dreams, and held séances of transcendental phantasmagoria.
“But,” contended the rope-maker with much animation, “a man who converses with angels is never the devil.”
“Is he in communication with angels?” ”

“ There is something cabalistic in the very sound of the name that, considering the occult phenomena performed by the strange personality who assumed it, is curiously appropriate. As an incognito it is, perhaps, the most suitable ever invented. The name fits the man like a glove; and, recalling the mystery in which his career was wrapped, one involuntarily wonders if it has ever been cleared up. In a word, what was Cagliostro really? Charlatan, adventurer, swindler, whose impostures were finally exposed by the ever-memorable Necklace Affair in which he was implicated? ”

“ On the 6th October, 1795, the Moniteur states “it is reported in Rome that the famous Cagliostro is dead.” But when he died, or how, is absolutely unknown. “That his end was tragic,” says d’Alméras, “one can well suppose, and his jailers, to make sure that he should not escape, may have put him out of his misery.” The Moniteur speaks of the probability of such an end as being a topic of conversation in Rome. In any case, it seems impossible to believe that he could long have survived so terrible a doom, which, whatever his offence, was utterly disgraceful to the government that pronounced it. ”