V.

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 thequid nuncsof 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 theSalle 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 waspersona non grataat 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, thecollier de la reinevanished 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 sentencedin 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.”MADAMEDELAMOTTE’SESCAPE.(After an English print of 1790.)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 wonderfulsang 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 wasmentiris 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 uncommonéclat, 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 indeedconfessed 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 detestedlettre 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 aposeurand 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 abolishlettres de cachetand 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 theCourrier 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.CAGLIOSTROUNMASKEDATTHELODGEOFANTIQUITY,LONDON.From a Rare Print in the Possession of the Supreme Council, A. A. S. R., Washington, D. C.The verse appended to the engraving of Cagliostro and the English lodge is as follows:“Born, God knows where, supported, God knows how,From whom descended, difficult to know.Lord Crop15adopts him as a bosom friend,And manly dares his character defend.This self-dubb’d Count, some few years since becameA Brother Mason in a borrow’d name;For names likeSemplenumerous he bears,And Proteus like, in fifty forms appears.‘Behold in me (he says) Dame Nature’s child,‘Of Soul benevolent, and Manners mild;‘In me the guiltless Acharat behold,‘Who knows the mystery of making Gold;‘A feeling heart I boast, a conscience pure,‘I boast a Balsam every ill to cure;‘My Pills and Powders, all disease remove,‘Renew your vigor, and your health improve.’{74}This cunning part the arch impostor acts,And thus the weak and credulous attracts,But now, his history is rendered clear,The arrant hypocrite, and quack appear.First asBalsams, he to paint essay’d,But only daubing, he renounc’d the trade.Then, as a Mountebank, abroad he stroll’dAnd many a name on Death’s black list enroll’d.Three times he visited the British shore,And every time a different name he bore.The brave Alsatians he with ease cajol’dBy boasting of Egyptian forms of old.The self-same trick he practis’d at Bourdeaux,At Strasburg, Lyons, and at Paris too.But fate forBrother Mashreserv’d the taskTo strip the vile impostor of his mask,May all true Masons his plain tale attendAnd Satire’s lash to fraud shall put an end.”15Lord George Gordon.

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 thequid nuncsof 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 theSalle 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 waspersona non grataat 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, thecollier de la reinevanished 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 sentencedin 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.”

MADAMEDELAMOTTE’SESCAPE.(After an English print of 1790.)

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 wonderfulsang 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 wasmentiris 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 uncommonéclat, 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 indeedconfessed 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 detestedlettre 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 aposeurand 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 abolishlettres de cachetand 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 theCourrier 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.

CAGLIOSTROUNMASKEDATTHELODGEOFANTIQUITY,LONDON.From a Rare Print in the Possession of the Supreme Council, A. A. S. R., Washington, D. C.

From a Rare Print in the Possession of the Supreme Council, A. A. S. R., Washington, D. C.

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

“Born, God knows where, supported, God knows how,From whom descended, difficult to know.Lord Crop15adopts him as a bosom friend,And manly dares his character defend.This self-dubb’d Count, some few years since becameA Brother Mason in a borrow’d name;For names likeSemplenumerous he bears,And Proteus like, in fifty forms appears.‘Behold in me (he says) Dame Nature’s child,‘Of Soul benevolent, and Manners mild;‘In me the guiltless Acharat behold,‘Who knows the mystery of making Gold;‘A feeling heart I boast, a conscience pure,‘I boast a Balsam every ill to cure;‘My Pills and Powders, all disease remove,‘Renew your vigor, and your health improve.’{74}This cunning part the arch impostor acts,And thus the weak and credulous attracts,But now, his history is rendered clear,The arrant hypocrite, and quack appear.First asBalsams, he to paint essay’d,But only daubing, he renounc’d the trade.Then, as a Mountebank, abroad he stroll’dAnd many a name on Death’s black list enroll’d.Three times he visited the British shore,And every time a different name he bore.The brave Alsatians he with ease cajol’dBy boasting of Egyptian forms of old.The self-same trick he practis’d at Bourdeaux,At Strasburg, Lyons, and at Paris too.But fate forBrother Mashreserv’d the taskTo strip the vile impostor of his mask,May all true Masons his plain tale attendAnd Satire’s lash to fraud shall put an end.”

“Born, God knows where, supported, God knows how,

From whom descended, difficult to know.

Lord Crop15adopts him as a bosom friend,

And manly dares his character defend.

This self-dubb’d Count, some few years since became

A Brother Mason in a borrow’d name;

For names likeSemplenumerous he bears,

And Proteus like, in fifty forms appears.

‘Behold in me (he says) Dame Nature’s child,

‘Of Soul benevolent, and Manners mild;

‘In me the guiltless Acharat behold,

‘Who knows the mystery of making Gold;

‘A feeling heart I boast, a conscience pure,

‘I boast a Balsam every ill to cure;

‘My Pills and Powders, all disease remove,

‘Renew your vigor, and your health improve.’{74}

This cunning part the arch impostor acts,

And thus the weak and credulous attracts,

But now, his history is rendered clear,

The arrant hypocrite, and quack appear.

First asBalsams, he to paint essay’d,

But only daubing, he renounc’d the trade.

Then, as a Mountebank, abroad he stroll’d

And many a name on Death’s black list enroll’d.

Three times he visited the British shore,

And every time a different name he bore.

The brave Alsatians he with ease cajol’d

By boasting of Egyptian forms of old.

The self-same trick he practis’d at Bourdeaux,

At Strasburg, Lyons, and at Paris too.

But fate forBrother Mashreserv’d the task

To strip the vile impostor of his mask,

May all true Masons his plain tale attend

And Satire’s lash to fraud shall put an end.”

15Lord George Gordon.

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