But suppose we should now, from these foreign scenes turn
homewards, for a moment, into the native alley in Palermo!
homewards, for a moment, into the native alley in Palermo!
Thomas Carlyle
" to that Prince Q.
; among whicl
high believing potentates, what is an incredulous "Coun
M. "? His pockets are distended with ducats and diamonds:
he is off to Vienna, to Frankfort, to Strasburg, by extra post
and there also will work miracles. "The train he commonl)
took with him," says the Inquisition-Biographer, "corre
sponded to the rest; he always travelled post, with a consider-
able suite: couriers, lackeys, body-servants, domestics of all
sorts, sumptuously dressed, gave an air of reality to the high
birth he vaunted. The very liveries he got made at Paris
cost twenty louis each. Apartments furnished in the height
of the mode; a magnificent table, open to numerous guests;
rich dresses for himself and his wife, corresponded to this
luxurious way of life. His feigned generosity likewise made
a great noise. Often he gratuitously doctored the poor, and
even gave them alms. " 1
In the inside of all this splendid travelling and lodging
economy are to be seen, as we know, two suspicious-looking
rouged or unrouged figures, of a Count and a Countess;
lolling on their cushions there, with a jaded, haggard kind of
aspect; they eye one another sullenly, in silence, with a scarce-
suppressed indignation; for each thinks the other does not
work enough and eats too much. Whether Dame Lorenza
followed her peculiar side of the business with reluctance or
with free alacrity, is a moot-point among Biographers: not
so that, with her choleric adipose Archquack, she had a sour
1 Cagliostro dimasqul a Varsovic, en 1780, pp. 35 et seq. (Paris, 1786. )
* Vie de Joseph Balsamo, p. 41.
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? Count Cagliostro
285
ife of it, and brawling abounded. If we look still farther
nwards, and try to penetrate the inmost self-consciousness,
vhat in another man would be called the conscience, of the
\rchquack himself, the view gets most uncertain; little or
lothing to be seen but a thick fallacious haze. Which indeed
oas the main thing extant there. Much in the Count Front-
i'airain remains dubious; yet hardly this: his want of clear
. nsight into anything, most of all into his own inner man.
Cunning in the supreme degree he has; intellect next to none.
Nay, is not cunning (couple it with an esurient character) the
natural consequence of defective intellect? It is properly the
vehement exercise of a short, poor vision; of an intellect sunk,
bemired; which can attain to no free vision, otherwise it
would lead the esurient man to be honest.
Meanwhile gleams of muddy light will occasionally visit all
mortals; every living creature (according to Milton, the very
Devil) has some more or less faintresemblance to a Conscience;
must make inwardly certain auricular confessions,absolutions,
professions of faith,--were it only that he does not yet quite
loathe, and so proceed to hang himself. What such a Porcus
as Cagliostro might specially feel, and think, and be, were diffi-
cult in any case to say; much more when contradiction and
mystification, designed and unavoidable, so involve the
matter. One of the most authentic documents preserved of
him is the Picture of his Visage. An Effigies once universally
diffused; in oil-paint, aquatint, marble, stucco, and perhaps
gingerbread, decorating millions of apartments: of which
remarkable Effigies one copy, engraved in the line-manner,
happily still lies here. Fittest of visages; worthy to be worn
by the Quack of Quacks! A most portentous face of scoundrel-
ism: a fat, snub, abominable face; dew-lapped, flat-nosed,
greasy, full of greediness, sensuality, oxlike obstinacy; a fore-
head impudent, refusing to be ashamed; and then two eyes
turned up seraphically languishing, as in divine contemplation
and adoration; a touch of quiz too; on the whole, perhaps
the most perfect ? quack - face produced by the eighteenth
century. There he sits, and seraphically languishes, with this
epigraph:
De I'A mi des Humains reconnaisscz les traits:
Tous ses jours sont marquis par de nouveaux bienfaits,
II prolonge la vie, it secourt I'indigence;
Le plaisir d'ttre utile est seul sa recompense.
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? 286 Carlyle's Essays
A probable conjecture were, that this same Theosophy,
Theophilanthropy, Solacement of the Poor, to which our Arch-
quack now more and more betook himself, might serve not
only as bird-lime for external game, but also half-uncon-
sciously as salve for assuaging his own spiritual sores. Am
not I a charitable man? could the Archquack say: if I have
erred myself, have I not, by theosophic unctuous discourses,
removed much cause of error? The lying, the quackery,
what are these but the method of accommodating yourself
to the temper of men; of getting their ear, their dull long ear,
which Honesty had no chance to catch? Nay, at worst, is
not this an unjust world; full of nothing but beasts of prey,
four-footed or two-footed? Nature has commanded, saying:
Man, help thyself. Ought not the man of my genius, since he
was not born a Prince, since in these scandalous times he has
not been elected a Prince, to make himself one? If not by
open violence, for which he wants military force, then surely
by superior science,--exercised in a private way. Heal the
diseases of the Poor, the far deeper diseases of the Ignorant;
in a word, found Egyptian Lodges, and get the means of
founding them. --By such soliloquies can Count Front-of-
brass Pinchbeckostom, in rare atrabiliar hours of self-
questionings, compose himself. For the rest, such hours are
rare: the Count is a man of action and digestion, not of
self - questioning; usually the day brings its abundant
task; there is no time for abstractions,--of the metaphysical
sort.
Be this as it may, the Count has arrived at Strasburg; is
working higher wonders than ever. At Strasburg, indeed, in
the year 1783, occurs his apotheosis; what we can call the
culmination and Fourth Act of his Life-drama. He was here
for a number of months; in full blossom and radiance, the
envy and admiration of the world. In large hired hospitals,
he with open drug-box containing " Extract of Saturn," and
even with open purse, relieves the suffering poor; unfolds
himself lamb-like, angelic to a believing few, of the rich
classes; turns a silent minatory lion-face to unbelievers, were
they of the richest. Medical miracles have in all times been
common: but what miracle is this of an Oriental or Occidental
Serene-Excellence, who, "regardless of expense," employs
himself not in preserving game, but in curing sickness, in
illuminating ignorance? Behold how he dives, at noonday,
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? Count Cagliostro
287
into the infectious hovels of the mean; and on the equipages,
haughtinesses, and even dinner-invitations of the great, turns
anly his negatory front-of-brass! The Prince Cardinal de
Rohan, Archbishop of Strasburg, first-class peer of France,
ol the Blood-royal of Brittany, intimates a wish to see him!
he answers: "If Monseigneur the Cardinal is sick, let him
come, and I will cure him; if he is well, he has no need of me,
I none of him. " 1
Heaven meanwhile has sent him a few disciples: by a nice
tact, he knows his man; to one speaks only of Spagiric Medi-
cine, Downfall of Tyranny, and the Egyptian Lodge; to
another, of quite high matters, beyond this diurnal sphere, of
visits from the Angel of Light, visits from him of Darkness;
passing a Statue of Christ, he will pause with a wondrously
accented plaintive "Ha! " as of recognition, as of thousand-
years remembrance; and when questioned, sink into mysteri-
ous silence. Is he the Wandering Jew, then? Heaven
knows! At Strasburg, in a word, Fortune not only smiles
but laughs upon him: as crowning favour, he finds here the
richest, inflammablest, most open-handed Dupe ever yet
vouchsafed him; no other than that same many-titled Louis
de Rohan; strong in whose favour, he can laugh again at
Fortune.
Let the curious reader look at him, for an instant or two,
through the eyes of two eye-witnesses: the Abb6 Georgel,
Prince Louis's diplomatic Factotum, and Herr Meiners, the
Gottingen Professor:
>> "Admitted at length," says our too-prosing Jesuit Abbd,
"to the sanctuary of this jEsculapius, Prince Louis saw,
according to his own account, in the incommunicative man's
^physiognomy, something so dignified, so imposing, that he
felt penetrated with a religious awe, and reverence dictated
his address. Their interview, which was brief, excited more
keenly than ever his desire of farther acquaintance. He
attained it at length: and the crafty empiric graduated so
cunningly his words and procedure, that he gained, without
appearing to court it, the Cardinal's entire confidence, and
the greatest ascendency over his will. 'Your soul,' said he
,one day to the Prince, 'is worthy of mine; you deserve to
be made participator of all my secrets. ' Such an avowal
captivated the whole faculties, intellectual and moral, of a
1 Mtmoircs de I'Abbi Georgel, ii. 48.
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? 288 Carlyle's Essays
man who at all times had hunted after secrets of alchymy and
botany. From this moment their union became intimate
and public: Cagliostro went and established himself at
Saverne, while his Eminency was residing there; theii
solitary interviews were long and frequent. " . . . " I re-
member once, having learnt, by a sure way, that Baron de
Planta (his Eminency's man of affairs) had frequent, most
expensive orgies, in the Archiepiscopal Palace, where Tokaj
wine ran like water, to regale Cagliostro and his pretended
wife, I thought it my duty to inform the Cardinal: his answei
was, 'I know it; I have even authorised him to commit
abuses, if he judge fit. '" . . . " He came at last to have nc
other will than Cagliostro's: and to such a length had it gone,
that this sham Egyptian, finding it good to quit Strasburg
for a time, and retire into Switzerland, the Cardinal, apprised
thereof, despatched his Secretary as well to attend him, as
to obtain Predictions from him; such were transmitted
in cipher to the Cardinal on every point he needed to
consult of "1--
"Before ever I arrived in Strasburg" (hear now the as
prosing Protestant Professor), "I knew almost to a certainty
that I should not see Count Cagliostro; at least, not get to
speak with him. From many persons I had heard that he,
on no account, received visits from curious Travellers, in a
state of health; that such as, without being sick, appeared
in his audiences were sure to be treated by him, in the brutal-
est way, as spies. " . . . " Nevertheless, though I saw not
this new god of Physic near at hand and deliberately, but
only for a moment as he rolled on in a rapid carriage, I fancy
myself to be better acquainted with him than many that have
lived in his society for months. " "My unavoidable convic-
tion is, that Count Cagliostro, from of old, has been more of
a cheat than an enthusiast; and also that he continues a
cheat to this day.
"As to his country I have ascertained nothing. Some
make him a Spaniard, others a Jew, or an Italian, or a
Ragusan; or even an Arab, who had persuaded some Asiatic
Prince to send his son to travel in Europe, and then murdered
the youth, and taken possession of his treasures. As the
self-styled Count speaks badly all the languages you hear
from him, and has most likely spent the greater part of his
1 Georgel, ubi supra.
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? Count Cagliostro
289
life under feigned names far from home, it is probable enough
no sure trace of his origin may ever be discovered. "
"On his first appearance in Strasburg he connected him-
self with the Freemasons; but only till he felt strong enough
to stand on his own feet: he soon gained the favour of the
Praetor and the Cardinal; and through these the favour of
the Court, to such a degree that his adversaries cannot so
much as think of overthrowing him. With the Praetor and
Cardinal he is said to demean himself as with persons who
were under boundless obligation to him, to whom he was
under none: the equipage of the Cardinal he seems to use as
freely as his own. He pretends that he can recognise Atheists
or Blasphemers by the smell; that the vapour from such
throws him into epileptic fits; into which sacred disorder he,
like a true juggler, has the art of falling when he likes. In
public he no longer vaunts of rule over spirits, or other
magical arts; but I know, even as certainly, that he still
pretends to evoke spirits, and by their help and apparition
to heal diseases, as I know this other fact, that he understands
no more of the human system, or the nature of its diseases,
or the use of the commonest therapeutic methods, than any
other quack. "
"According to the crediblest accounts of persons who have
long observed him, he is a man to an inconceivable degree
choleric {heftig), heedless, inconstant; and therefore doubt-
less it was the happiest idea he ever in his whole life came
upon, this of making himself inaccessible; of raising the
most obstinate reserve as a bulwark round him; without
which precaution he must long ago have been caught at
fault.
"For his own labour he takes neither payment nor present:
when presents are made him of such a sort as cannot without
offence be refused, he forthwith returns some counter-present,
of equal or still higher value. Nay he not only takes nothing
from his patients, but frequently admits them, months long,
to his house and his table, and will not consent to the smallest
recompense. With all this disinterestedness (conspicuous
enough, as you may suppose), he lives in an expensive way,
- plays deep, loses almost constantly to ladies; so that, accord-
ing to the very lowest estimate, he must require at least
20,000 livres a-year. The darkness which Cagliostro has,
on purpose, spread over the sources of his income and outlay,
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? 290 Carlyle's Essays
contributes even more than his munificence and miraculous
cures to the notion that he is a divine extraordinary man,
who has watched Nature in her deepest operations, and among
other secrets stolen that of Gold-making from her. " . . .
"With a mixture of sorrow and indignation over our age, I
have to record that this man has found acceptance, not only
among the great, who from of old have been the easiest be-
witched by such, but also with many of the learned, and even
physicians and naturalists. "1
Halcyon days; only too good to continue! All glory runs
its course; has its culmination, and then its often precipitous
decline. Eminency Rohan, with fervid temper and small in-
struction, perhaps of dissolute, certainly of dishonest manners,
in whom the faculty of Wonder had attained such prodigious
development, was indeed the very stranded whale for jackals
to feed on: unhappily, however, no one jackal could long be
left in solitary possession of him. A sharper-toothed she-
jackal now strikes in; bites infinitely deeper; stranded whale
and he-jackal both are like to become her prey. A young
French Mantua-maker, "Countess de La Motte-Valois,
descended from Henri II. by the bastard line," without
Extract of Saturn, Egyptian Masonry, or any verbal con-
ference with Dark Angels,--has genius enough to get her
finger in the Archquack's rich Hermetic Projection, appropri-
ate the golden proceeds, and even finally break the crucible.
Prince Cardinal Louis de Rohan is off to Paris, under her
guidance, to see the long-invisible Queen, or Queen's Appari-
tion; to pick up the Rose in the Garden of Trianon, dropt
by her fair sham-royal hand; and then--descend rapidly to
the Devil, and drag Cagliostro along with him.
The intelligent reader observes, we have now arrived at
that stupendous business of the Diamond Necklace: into the
dark complexities of which we need not here do more than
glance: who knows but, next month, our Historical Chapter,
written specially on this subject, may itself see the light?
Enough, for the present, if we fancy vividly the poor whale
Cardinal, so deep in the adventure that Grand-Cophtic
"predictions transmitted in cipher " will no longer illumin-
ate him; but the Grand Cophta must leave all masonic or
other business, happily begun in Naples, Bourdeaux, Lyons,
and come personally to Paris with predictions at first hand.
1 Meiners: Briefe iiber die Schweis (as quoted in Mirabeau).
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? Count Cagliostro
291
"The new Calchas," says poor Abbe Georgel, "must have
read the entrails of his victim ill; for, on issuing from these
communications with the Angel of Light and of Darkness, he
prophesied to the Cardinal that this happy correspondence,"
with the Queen's Similitude, " would place him at the highest
point of favour; that his influence in the Government would
soon become paramount; that he would use it for the propaga-
tion of good principles, the glory of the Supreme Being, and
the happiness of Frenchmen. " The new Calchas was indeed
at fault: but how could he be otherwise? Let these high
Queen's-favours, and all terrestrial shiftings of the wind,
turn as they will, his reign, he can well see, is appointed to be
temporary; in the mean while, Tokay flows like water;
prophecies of good, not of evil, are the method to keep it
flowing. Thus if, for Circe de La Motte-Valois, the Egyptian
Masonry is but a foolish enchanted cup wherewith to turn her
fat Cardinal into a quadruped, she herself converse-wise, for
the Grand Cophta, is one who must ever fodder said quad-
ruped with Court hopes, and stall-feed him fatter and fatter,
--it is expected, for the knife of both parties. They are
mutually useful; live in peace, and Tokay festivity, though
mutually suspicious, mutually contemptuous. So stand
matters through the spring and summer months of the
year 1785.
But fancy next that--while Tokay is flowing within doors,
and abroad Egyptian Lodges are getting founded, and gold
and glory, from Paris as from other cities, supernaturally
'coming in,--the latter end of August has arrived, and with it
Commissary Chesnon, to lodge the whole unholy Brotherhood,
from Cardinal down to Sham-queen, in separate cells of the
Bastille! There, for nine long months, let them howl and wail,
in bass or in treble; and emit the falsest of false Memoires;
among which that Memoire -pour le Comle de Cagliostro, en
presence des autres Co-Accuses, with its Trebisond Acharats,
Scherifs of Mecca, and Nature's unfortunate Child, all gravely
printed with French types in the year 1786, may well bear
the palm. Fancy that Necklace or Diamonds will nowhere
unearth themselves; that the Tuileries Palace sits struck
'with astonishment and speechless chagrin; that Paris, that
all Europe, is ringing with the wonder. That Count Pront-
of-Brass Pinchbeckostom, confronted, at the judgment-bar,
with a shrill glib Circe de La Motte, has need of all his
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? 292 Carlyle's Essays
eloquence; that nevertheless the Front-of-brass prevails, and
exasperated Circe "throws a candlestick at him. " Finally,
that on the 31st of May 1786, the assembled Parliament of
Paris, "at nine in the evening, after a sitting of eighteen
hours," has solemnly pronounced judgment: and now that
Cardinal Louis is gone "to his estates;" Countess de La
Motte is shaven on the head, branded, with red-hot iron,
"V" (Voleuse) on both shoulders, and confined for life to
the Salpetriere; her Count wandering uncertain, with dia-
monds for sale, over the British Empire; that the Sieur de
Villette, for handling a queen's pen, is banished forever; the
too-queenlike Demoiselle Gay d'Oliva (with her unfathered
infant) " put out of Court; "--and Grand Cophta Cagliostro
liberated indeed, but pillaged, and ordered forthwith to take
himself away. His disciples illuminate their windows; but
what does that avail? Commissary Chesnon, Bastille-
Governor De Launay cannot recollect the least particular
of those priceless effects, those gold-rouleaus, repeating
watches of his: he must even retire to Passy that very night,
and two days afterwards, sees nothing for it but Boulogne
and England. Thus does the miserable pickle - herring
tragedy of the Diamond Necklace wind itself up, and wind
Cagliostro once more to inhospitable shores.
Arrived here, and lodged tolerably in "Sloane Street,
Knightsbridge," by the aid of a certain Mr. Swinton, whilom
broken Wine-merchant, now Apothecary, to whom he carries
introductions, he can drive a small trade in Egyptian pills,
such as one "sells in Paris at thirty-shillings the dram;"
in unctuously discoursing to Egyptian Lodges; in "giving
public audiences as at Strasburg,"--if so be any one will
bite. At all events, he can, by the aid of amanuensis-disciples,
compose and publish his Lettre au Peuple Anglais; setting
forth his unheard-of generosities, unheard-of injustices
suffered, in a world not worthy of him, at the hands of English
Lawyers, Bastille-Governors, French Counts, and others4,
his Lettre aux Francais, singing to the same tune, predicting
too, what many inspired Editors had already boded, that
"the Bastille would be destroyed," and " a King would come
who should govern by States - General. " But, alas, the
shafts of Criticism are busy with him; so many hostile eyes
look towards him; the world, in short, is getting too hot for
him. Mark, nevertheless, how the brow of brass quails not;
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? Count Cagliostro
293
nay a touch of his old poetic Humour, even in this sad crisis,
unexpectedly unfolds itself.
One De Morande, Editor of a Courrier de VEurope published
here at that period, has for some time made it his distinction
to be the foremost of Cagliostro's enemies. Cagliostro, endur-
ing much in silence, happens once, in some " public audience,"
to mention a practice he had witnessed in Arabia the Stony:
the people there, it seems, are in the habit of fattening a few
pigs annually, on provender mixed with arsenic, whereby the
whole pig-carcass by and by becomes, so to speak, arsenical;
the arsenical pigs are then let loose in the woods; eaten by
lions, leopards and other ferocious creatures; which latter
naturally all die in consequence, and so the woods are cleared
af them. This adroit practice the Sieur Morande thought a
proper subject for banter; and accordingly, in his Seven-
teenth and two following Numbers, made merry enough with
it. Whereupon Count Front-of-brass, whose patience has
limits, writes as Advertisement (still to be read in old files of
the Public Advertiser, under date September 3,1786), a French
Letter, not without causticity and aristocratic disdain;
challenging the witty Sieur to breakfast with him, for the
9th of November next, in the face of the world, on an actual
Sucking Pig, fattened by Cagliostro, but cooked, carved and
selected from by the Sieur Morande,--under bet of Five
Thousand Guineas sterling that, next morning thereafter,
he the Sieur Morande shall be dead, and Count Cagliostro be
alive I The poor Sieur durst not cry, Done; and backed-out
of the transaction, making wry faces. Thus does a kind of
red coppery splendour encircle our Archquack's decline; thus
with brow of brass, grim smiling, does he meet his destiny.
But suppose we should now, from these foreign scenes turn
homewards, for a moment, into the native alley in Palermo!
Palermo, with its dinginess, its mud or dust, the old black
Balsamo House, the very beds and chairs, all are still standing
there; and Beppo has altered so strangely, has wandered so
far away. Let us look; for happily we have the fairest
opportunity.
In April 1787, Palermo contained a Traveller of a thousand;
no other than the great Goethe from Weimar. At his Table-
d'h6te he heard much of Cagliostro; at length also of a certain
Palermo Lawyer, who had been engaged by the French
Government to draw up an authentic genealogy and memoir
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? 294 Carlyle's Essays
of him. This Lawyer, and even the rude draft of his Memoir,
he with little difficulty gets to see; inquires next whether it
were not possible to see the actual Balsamo Family, whereof
it appears the mother and a widowed sister still survive. For
this matter, however, the Lawyer can do nothing; only refer
him to his Clerk; who again starts difficulties: To get at
those genealogic Documents he has been obliged to invent
some story of a Government-Pension being in the wind for
those poor Balsamos; and now that the whole matter is
finished, and the Paper sent off to France, has nothing so
much at heart as to keep out of their way:
"So said the Clerk. However, as I could not abandon my
purpose, we after some study concerted that I should give
myself out for an Englishman, and bring the family news of
Cagliostro, who had lately got out of the Bastille, and gone
to London.
"At the appointed hour, it might be three in the afternoon,
we set forth. The house lay in the corner of an Alley, not far
from the main street named II Casaro. We ascended a
miserable staircase, and came straight into the kitchen. A
woman of middle stature, broad and stout, yet not corpulent,
stood busy washing the kitchen-dishes. She was decently
dressed; and, on our entrance, turned-up the one end of her
apron, to hide the soiled side from us. She joyfully recog-
nised my conductor, and said: 'Signor Giovanni, do you
bring us good news? Have you made out anything? '
"He answered: 'In our affair, nothing yet; but here is a
Stranger that brings a salutation from your Brother, and can
tell you how he is at present. '
"The salutation I was to bring stood not in our agreement:
meanwhile, one way or other, the introduction was accom-
plished. 'You know my Brother? ' inquired she. --' AH
Europe knows him,' answered I; 'and I fancied it would
gratify you to hear that he is now in safety and well; as, of
late, no doubt you have been anxious about him. '--' Step
in,' said she; 'I will follow you directly;' and with the
Clerk I entered the room.
"It was large and high; and might, with us, have passed
for a saloon; it seemed, indeed, to be almost the sole lodging
of the family. A single window lighted the large walls, which
had once had colour; and on which were black pictures of
saints, in gilt frames, hanging round. Two large beds, with-
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295
out curtains, stood at one wall; a brown press, in the form
of a writing-desk, at the other. Old rush-bottomed chairs,
the backs of which had once been gilt, stood by; and the tiles
of the floor were in many places worn deep into hollows. For
the rest, all was cleanly; and we approached the family,
which sat assembled at the one window, in the other end of
the apartment.
"Whilst my guide was explaining, to the old Widow
Balsamo, the purpose of our visit, and by reason of her deaf-
ness had to repeat his words several times aloud, I had time
to observe the chamber and the other persons in it. A girl
of about sixteen, well formed, whose features had become
uncertain by small-pox, stood at the window; beside her
a young man, whose disagreeable look, deformed by the
same disease, also struck me. In an easy-chair, right before
the window, sat or rather lay a sick, much misshapen person,
who appeared to labour under a sort of lethargy.
'' My guide having made himself understood, we were
invited to take seats. The old woman put some questions
to me; which, however, I had to get interpreted before I
could answer them, the Sicilian dialect not being quite at
my command.
"Meanwhile I looked at the aged widow with satisfaction.
She was of middle stature, but well shaped; over her regular
features, which age had not deformed, lay that sort of peace
usual with people that have lost their hearing; the tone of
her voice was soft and agreeable.
"I answered her questions; and my answers also had
again to be interpreted for her.
'' The slowness of our conversation gave me leisure to
measure my words. I told her that her son had been ac-
quitted in France, and was at present in England, where he
met with good reception. Her joy, which she testified at
these things, was mixed with expressions of a heartfelt piety;
and as she now spoke a little louder and slower, I could the
better understand her.
"In the mean time the daughter had entered; and taken
her seat beside my conductor, who repeated to her faithfully
what I had been narrating. She had put-on a clean apron;
had set her hair in order under the net-cap. The more I
looked at her, and compared her with her mother, the more
striking became the difference of the two figures. A viva-
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? 296 Carlyle's Essays
cious healthy Sensualism (Sinnlichkeit) beamed forth from the
whole structure of the daughter; she might be a woman of
about forty. With brisk blue eyes she looked sharply round;
yet in her look I could trace no suspicion. When she sat,
her figure promised more height than it showed when she rose:
her posture was determinate, she sat with her body leaned
forwards, the hands resting on the knees. For the rest, hei
physiognomy, more of the snubby than the sharp sort,
reminded me of her Brother's Portrait, familiar to us in
engravings. She asked me several things about my journey,
my purpose to see Sicily; and was sure I would come back,
and celebrate the Feast of Saint Rosalia with them.
'' As the grandmother, meanwhile, had again put some
questions to me, and I was busy answering her, the daughter
kept speaking to my companion half-aloud, yet so that I
could take occasion to ask what it was. He answered:
Signora Capitummino was telling him that her Brother owed
her fourteen gold Ounces; on his sudden departure from
Palermo, she had redeemed several things for him that were
in pawn; but never since that day had either heard from him,
or got money or any other help, though it was said he had
great riches, and made a princely outlay. Now would not I
perhaps undertake on my return, to remind him, in a hand-
some way, of the debt, and procure some assistance for her;
nay would I not carry a Letter with me, or at all events get
it carried? I offered to do so. She asked where I lodged,
whither she must send the Letter to me? I avoided naming
my abode, and offered to call next day towards night, and
receive the Letter myself.
"She thereupon described to me her untoward situation:
how she was a widow with three children, of whom the one
girl was getting educated in a convent, the other was here
present, and her son just gone out to his lesson. How,
beside these three children, she had her mother to maintain;
and moreover out of Christian love had taken the unhappy
sick person there to her house, whereby the burden was
heavier; how all her industry would scarcely suffice to get
necessaries for herself and hers. She knew indeed that God
did not leave good works unrewarded; yet must sigh very
sore under the load she had long borne.
"The young people mixed in the dialogue, and our con-
versation grew livelier. While speaking with the others, I
! I
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? Count Cagliostro 297
could hear the good old widow ask her daughter: If I be-
longed, then, to their holy Religion? I remarked also that
the daughter strove, in a prudent way, to avoid an answer;
signifying to her mother, so far as I could take it up: That
the Stranger seemed to have a kind feeling towards them;
and that it was not well-bred to question any one straightway
on that point.
"As they heard that I was soon to leave Palermo, they
became more pressing, and importuned me to come back;
especially vaunting the paradisaic days of the Rosalia Festival,
the like of which was not to be seen and tasted in all the world.
"My attendant, who had long been anxious to get off, at
last put an end to the interview by his gestures; and I pro-
mised to return on the morrow evening, and take the Letter.
My attendant expressed his joy that all had gone off so well,
and we parted mutually content.
"You may fancy the impression this poor and pious, well-
dispositioned family had made on me. My curiosity was
satisfied; but their natural and worthy bearing had raised an
interest in me, which reflection did but increase.
"Forthwith, however, there arose for me anxieties about
the following day. It was natural that this appearance of
mine, which, at the first moment, had taken them by surprise,
should, after my departure, awaken many reflections. By
the Genealogy I knew that several others of the family were
in life: it was natural that they should call their friends
together, and in the presence of all, get those things repeated
which, the day before, they had heard from me with admira-
tion. My object was attained; there remained nothing more
than, in some good fashion, to end the adventure. I accord-
ingly repaired next day, directly after dinner, alone to their
house. They expressed surprise as I entered. The Letter
was not ready yet, they said; and some of their relations
wished to make my acquaintance, who towards night would
be there.
"I answered, that having to set off to-morrow morning, and
visits still to pay, and packing to transact, I had thought it
better to come early than not at all.
"Meanwhile the son entered, whom yesterday I had not
seen. He resembled his sister in size and figure. He brought
the Letter they were to give me; he had, as is common in
those parts, got it written out of doors, by one of their
II 704 u
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? 298 Carlyle's Essays
Notaries that sit publicly to do such things. The young man
had a still, melancholy and modest aspect; inquired after his
Uncle, asked about his riches and outlays, and added sorrow-
fully, Why had he so forgotten his kindred? ' It were our
greatest fortune,' continued he, 'should he once return
hither, and take notice of us: but,' continued he, 'how
came he to let you know that he had relatives in Palermo?
It is said, he everywhere denies us, and gives himself out for
a man of great birth. ' I answered this question, which had
now arisen by the imprudence of my Guide at our first
entrance, in such sort as to make it seem that the Uncle,
though he might have reason for concealing his birth from the
public, did yet, towards his friends and acquaintance, keep it
no secret.
"The sister, who had come up during this dialogue, and
by the presence of her brother, perhaps also by the absence
of her yesterday's friend, had got more courage, began also
to speak with much grace and liveliness. They begged me
earnestly to recommend them to their Uncle, if I wrote to
him; and not less earnestly, when once I should have made
this journey through the Island, to come back and pass the
Rosalia Festival with them.
"The mother spoke in accordance with her children.
'Sir,' said she, 'though it is not seemly, as I have a grown
daughter, to see stranger gentlemen in my house, and one
has to guard against both danger and evil-speaking, yet shall
you ever be welcome to us, when you return to this city. '
"' O yes,' answered the young ones, 'we will lead the
Gentleman all round the Festival; we will show him every-
thing, get a place on the scaffolds, where the grand sights are
seen best. What will he say to the great Chariot, and more
than all, to the glorious Illumination! '
"Meanwhile the Grandmother had read the Letter and
again read it. Hearing that I was about to take leave, she
arose, and gave me the folded sheet. 'Tell my son,' began
she with a noble vivacity, nay with a sort of inspiration, ' Tell
my son how happy the news have made me, which you
brought from him! Tell him that I clasp him to my heart'--
here she stretched out her arms asunder, and pressed them
again together on her breast --' that I daily beseech God
and our Holy Virgin for him in prayer; that I give him and
his wife my blessing; and that I wish before my end to see
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? Count Cagliostro
299
him again with these eyes, which have shed so many tears
for him. '
"The peculiar grace of the Italian tongue favoured the
choice and noble arrangement of these words, which more-
over were accompanied with lively gestures, wherewith that
nation can add such a charm to spoken words.
"I took my leave, not without emotion. They all gave
me their hands; the children showed me out; and as I went
down stairs, they jumped to the balcony of the kitchen-
window, which projected over the street; called after me,
threw me salutes, and repeated, that I must in no wise forget
to come back. I saw them still on the balcony, when I
turned the corner. " 1
Poor old Felicita, and must thy pious prayers, thy motherly
blessings, and so many tears shed by those old eyes, be all in
vain! To thyself, in any case, they were blessed. --As for
the Signora Capitummino, with her three fatherless children,
shall we not hope at least, that the fourteen gold Ounces were
paid, by a sure hand, and so her heavy burden, for some space,
lightened a little? Alas, no, it would seem; owing to
accidents, not even that! 2
Count Cagliostro, all this while, is rapidly proceeding with
his Fifth Act; the red coppery splendour darkens more
and more into final gloom. Some boiling muddleheads of a
dupeable sort there still are in England: Popish-Riot Lord
George, for instance, will walk with him to Count Barthelemy's
or D'Adhemar's; and, in bad French and worse rhetoric,
abuse the Queen of France: but what does it profit? Lord
George must one day (after noise enough) revisit Newgate
for it; and in the meanwhile, hard words pay no scores.
Apothecary Swinton begins to get wearisome; French spies
look ominously in; Egyptian Pills are slack of sale; the old
vulturous Attorney-host anew scents carrion, is bestirring
itself anew: Count Cagliostro, in the May of 1787, must once
more leave England. But whither? Ah, whither! At Bale,
at Bienne, over Switzerland, the game is up. At Aix in
Savoy, there are baths, but no gudgeons in them: at Turin,
his Majesty of Sardinia meets you with an order to begone
'on the instant. A like fate from the Emperor Joseph at
Roveredo;--before the Liber memorialis de Caleostro dum
esset Roboretti could extend to many pages! Count Front-of-
1 Goethe's Werke (Italidnische Reise), xxviii. 146. * Ibid.
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? 300 Carlyle's Essays
brass begins confessing himself to priests: yet "at Trent
paints a new hieroglyphic Screen,"--touching last flicker of
a light that once burnt so high! He pawns diamond buckles;
wanders necessitous hither and thither; repents, unrepents;
knows not what to do. For Destiny has her nets round him;
they are straitening, straitening; too soon he will be ginned!
Driven out from Trent, what shall he make of the new
hieroglyphic Screen, what of himself? The wayworn Grand-
Cophtess has begun to blab family secrets; she longs to be
in Rome, by her mother's hearth, by her mother's grave; in
any nook, where so much as the shadow of refuge waits her.
To the desperate Count Front-of-brass all places are nearly
alike: urged by female babble, he will go to Rome, then;
why not? On a May-day, of the year 1789 (when such glori-
ous work had just begun in France, to him all forbidden! ),
he enters the Eternal City; it was his doom-summons that
called him thither. On the 29th of next December, the Holy
Inquisition, long watchful enough, detects him founding some
feeble moneyless ghost of an Egyptian Lodge; "picks him
off," as the military say, and locks him hard and fast in the
Castle of St. Angelo:
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che 'ntrate!
Count Cagliostro did not lose all hope: nevertheless a few
words will now suffice for him. In vain, with his mouth of
pinchbeck and his front of brass, does he heap chimera on
chimera; demand religious Books (which are freely given
him); demand clean Linen, and an interview with his Wife
(which are refused him); assert now that the Egyptian
Masonry is a divine system, accommodated to erring and
gullible men, which the Holy Father, when he knows it, will
patronise; anon that there are some four millions of Free-
masons, spread over Europe, all sworn to exterminate Priest
and King, wherever met with: in vain! they will not acquit
him, as misunderstood Theophilanthropist; will not emit
him, in Pope's pay, as renegade Masonic Spy: "he can't get
out. " Donna Lorenza languishes, invisible to him, in a
neighbouring cell; begins at length to confess I Whereupon
he too, in torrents, will emit confessions and forestall her:
these the Inquisition pocket and sift (whence this Life of
Balsamo); but will not let him out. In fine, after some
eighteen months of the weariest hounding, doubling, worrying
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? Count Cagliostro 301
and standing at bay, His Holiness gives sentence: The
Manuscript of Egyptian Masonry is to be burnt by hand of
the common Hangman, and all that intermeddle with such
Masonry are accursed; Giuseppe Balsamo, justly forfeited
of life for being a Freemason, shall nevertheless in mercy be
forgiven; instructed in the duties of penitence, and even
kept safe thenceforth and till death,--in ward of Holy Church.
Ill-starred Acharat, must it so end with thee? This was in
April 1791.
He addressed (how vainly! ) an appeal to the French
Constituent Assembly. As was said, in Heaven, in Earth,
or in Hell there was no Assembly that could well take his
part. For four years more, spent one knows not how,--
most probably in the furor of edacity, with insufficient
cookery, and the stupor of indigestion,--the curtain lazily
falls. There rotted and gave way the cordage of a tough
heart. One summer morning of the year 1795, the Body of
Cagliostro is still found in the prison of St. Leo; but Cagli-
ostro's Self has escaped,--whither no man yet knows. The
brow of brass, behold how it has got all unlacquered; these
pinchbeck lips can lie no more: Cagliostro's work is ended,
and now only his account to present. As the Scherif of
Mecca said, " Nature's unfortunate child, adieu! "
Such, according to our comprehension thereof, is the rise,
progress, grandeur and decadence of the Quack of Quacks.
Does the reader ask, What good was in it; Why occupy his
time and ours with the biography of such a miscreant? We
answer, It was stated on the very threshold of this matter,
in the loftiest terms, by Herr Sauerteig, that the Lives of all
Eminent Persons, miscreant or creant, ought to be written.
high believing potentates, what is an incredulous "Coun
M. "? His pockets are distended with ducats and diamonds:
he is off to Vienna, to Frankfort, to Strasburg, by extra post
and there also will work miracles. "The train he commonl)
took with him," says the Inquisition-Biographer, "corre
sponded to the rest; he always travelled post, with a consider-
able suite: couriers, lackeys, body-servants, domestics of all
sorts, sumptuously dressed, gave an air of reality to the high
birth he vaunted. The very liveries he got made at Paris
cost twenty louis each. Apartments furnished in the height
of the mode; a magnificent table, open to numerous guests;
rich dresses for himself and his wife, corresponded to this
luxurious way of life. His feigned generosity likewise made
a great noise. Often he gratuitously doctored the poor, and
even gave them alms. " 1
In the inside of all this splendid travelling and lodging
economy are to be seen, as we know, two suspicious-looking
rouged or unrouged figures, of a Count and a Countess;
lolling on their cushions there, with a jaded, haggard kind of
aspect; they eye one another sullenly, in silence, with a scarce-
suppressed indignation; for each thinks the other does not
work enough and eats too much. Whether Dame Lorenza
followed her peculiar side of the business with reluctance or
with free alacrity, is a moot-point among Biographers: not
so that, with her choleric adipose Archquack, she had a sour
1 Cagliostro dimasqul a Varsovic, en 1780, pp. 35 et seq. (Paris, 1786. )
* Vie de Joseph Balsamo, p. 41.
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? Count Cagliostro
285
ife of it, and brawling abounded. If we look still farther
nwards, and try to penetrate the inmost self-consciousness,
vhat in another man would be called the conscience, of the
\rchquack himself, the view gets most uncertain; little or
lothing to be seen but a thick fallacious haze. Which indeed
oas the main thing extant there. Much in the Count Front-
i'airain remains dubious; yet hardly this: his want of clear
. nsight into anything, most of all into his own inner man.
Cunning in the supreme degree he has; intellect next to none.
Nay, is not cunning (couple it with an esurient character) the
natural consequence of defective intellect? It is properly the
vehement exercise of a short, poor vision; of an intellect sunk,
bemired; which can attain to no free vision, otherwise it
would lead the esurient man to be honest.
Meanwhile gleams of muddy light will occasionally visit all
mortals; every living creature (according to Milton, the very
Devil) has some more or less faintresemblance to a Conscience;
must make inwardly certain auricular confessions,absolutions,
professions of faith,--were it only that he does not yet quite
loathe, and so proceed to hang himself. What such a Porcus
as Cagliostro might specially feel, and think, and be, were diffi-
cult in any case to say; much more when contradiction and
mystification, designed and unavoidable, so involve the
matter. One of the most authentic documents preserved of
him is the Picture of his Visage. An Effigies once universally
diffused; in oil-paint, aquatint, marble, stucco, and perhaps
gingerbread, decorating millions of apartments: of which
remarkable Effigies one copy, engraved in the line-manner,
happily still lies here. Fittest of visages; worthy to be worn
by the Quack of Quacks! A most portentous face of scoundrel-
ism: a fat, snub, abominable face; dew-lapped, flat-nosed,
greasy, full of greediness, sensuality, oxlike obstinacy; a fore-
head impudent, refusing to be ashamed; and then two eyes
turned up seraphically languishing, as in divine contemplation
and adoration; a touch of quiz too; on the whole, perhaps
the most perfect ? quack - face produced by the eighteenth
century. There he sits, and seraphically languishes, with this
epigraph:
De I'A mi des Humains reconnaisscz les traits:
Tous ses jours sont marquis par de nouveaux bienfaits,
II prolonge la vie, it secourt I'indigence;
Le plaisir d'ttre utile est seul sa recompense.
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? 286 Carlyle's Essays
A probable conjecture were, that this same Theosophy,
Theophilanthropy, Solacement of the Poor, to which our Arch-
quack now more and more betook himself, might serve not
only as bird-lime for external game, but also half-uncon-
sciously as salve for assuaging his own spiritual sores. Am
not I a charitable man? could the Archquack say: if I have
erred myself, have I not, by theosophic unctuous discourses,
removed much cause of error? The lying, the quackery,
what are these but the method of accommodating yourself
to the temper of men; of getting their ear, their dull long ear,
which Honesty had no chance to catch? Nay, at worst, is
not this an unjust world; full of nothing but beasts of prey,
four-footed or two-footed? Nature has commanded, saying:
Man, help thyself. Ought not the man of my genius, since he
was not born a Prince, since in these scandalous times he has
not been elected a Prince, to make himself one? If not by
open violence, for which he wants military force, then surely
by superior science,--exercised in a private way. Heal the
diseases of the Poor, the far deeper diseases of the Ignorant;
in a word, found Egyptian Lodges, and get the means of
founding them. --By such soliloquies can Count Front-of-
brass Pinchbeckostom, in rare atrabiliar hours of self-
questionings, compose himself. For the rest, such hours are
rare: the Count is a man of action and digestion, not of
self - questioning; usually the day brings its abundant
task; there is no time for abstractions,--of the metaphysical
sort.
Be this as it may, the Count has arrived at Strasburg; is
working higher wonders than ever. At Strasburg, indeed, in
the year 1783, occurs his apotheosis; what we can call the
culmination and Fourth Act of his Life-drama. He was here
for a number of months; in full blossom and radiance, the
envy and admiration of the world. In large hired hospitals,
he with open drug-box containing " Extract of Saturn," and
even with open purse, relieves the suffering poor; unfolds
himself lamb-like, angelic to a believing few, of the rich
classes; turns a silent minatory lion-face to unbelievers, were
they of the richest. Medical miracles have in all times been
common: but what miracle is this of an Oriental or Occidental
Serene-Excellence, who, "regardless of expense," employs
himself not in preserving game, but in curing sickness, in
illuminating ignorance? Behold how he dives, at noonday,
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? Count Cagliostro
287
into the infectious hovels of the mean; and on the equipages,
haughtinesses, and even dinner-invitations of the great, turns
anly his negatory front-of-brass! The Prince Cardinal de
Rohan, Archbishop of Strasburg, first-class peer of France,
ol the Blood-royal of Brittany, intimates a wish to see him!
he answers: "If Monseigneur the Cardinal is sick, let him
come, and I will cure him; if he is well, he has no need of me,
I none of him. " 1
Heaven meanwhile has sent him a few disciples: by a nice
tact, he knows his man; to one speaks only of Spagiric Medi-
cine, Downfall of Tyranny, and the Egyptian Lodge; to
another, of quite high matters, beyond this diurnal sphere, of
visits from the Angel of Light, visits from him of Darkness;
passing a Statue of Christ, he will pause with a wondrously
accented plaintive "Ha! " as of recognition, as of thousand-
years remembrance; and when questioned, sink into mysteri-
ous silence. Is he the Wandering Jew, then? Heaven
knows! At Strasburg, in a word, Fortune not only smiles
but laughs upon him: as crowning favour, he finds here the
richest, inflammablest, most open-handed Dupe ever yet
vouchsafed him; no other than that same many-titled Louis
de Rohan; strong in whose favour, he can laugh again at
Fortune.
Let the curious reader look at him, for an instant or two,
through the eyes of two eye-witnesses: the Abb6 Georgel,
Prince Louis's diplomatic Factotum, and Herr Meiners, the
Gottingen Professor:
>> "Admitted at length," says our too-prosing Jesuit Abbd,
"to the sanctuary of this jEsculapius, Prince Louis saw,
according to his own account, in the incommunicative man's
^physiognomy, something so dignified, so imposing, that he
felt penetrated with a religious awe, and reverence dictated
his address. Their interview, which was brief, excited more
keenly than ever his desire of farther acquaintance. He
attained it at length: and the crafty empiric graduated so
cunningly his words and procedure, that he gained, without
appearing to court it, the Cardinal's entire confidence, and
the greatest ascendency over his will. 'Your soul,' said he
,one day to the Prince, 'is worthy of mine; you deserve to
be made participator of all my secrets. ' Such an avowal
captivated the whole faculties, intellectual and moral, of a
1 Mtmoircs de I'Abbi Georgel, ii. 48.
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? 288 Carlyle's Essays
man who at all times had hunted after secrets of alchymy and
botany. From this moment their union became intimate
and public: Cagliostro went and established himself at
Saverne, while his Eminency was residing there; theii
solitary interviews were long and frequent. " . . . " I re-
member once, having learnt, by a sure way, that Baron de
Planta (his Eminency's man of affairs) had frequent, most
expensive orgies, in the Archiepiscopal Palace, where Tokaj
wine ran like water, to regale Cagliostro and his pretended
wife, I thought it my duty to inform the Cardinal: his answei
was, 'I know it; I have even authorised him to commit
abuses, if he judge fit. '" . . . " He came at last to have nc
other will than Cagliostro's: and to such a length had it gone,
that this sham Egyptian, finding it good to quit Strasburg
for a time, and retire into Switzerland, the Cardinal, apprised
thereof, despatched his Secretary as well to attend him, as
to obtain Predictions from him; such were transmitted
in cipher to the Cardinal on every point he needed to
consult of "1--
"Before ever I arrived in Strasburg" (hear now the as
prosing Protestant Professor), "I knew almost to a certainty
that I should not see Count Cagliostro; at least, not get to
speak with him. From many persons I had heard that he,
on no account, received visits from curious Travellers, in a
state of health; that such as, without being sick, appeared
in his audiences were sure to be treated by him, in the brutal-
est way, as spies. " . . . " Nevertheless, though I saw not
this new god of Physic near at hand and deliberately, but
only for a moment as he rolled on in a rapid carriage, I fancy
myself to be better acquainted with him than many that have
lived in his society for months. " "My unavoidable convic-
tion is, that Count Cagliostro, from of old, has been more of
a cheat than an enthusiast; and also that he continues a
cheat to this day.
"As to his country I have ascertained nothing. Some
make him a Spaniard, others a Jew, or an Italian, or a
Ragusan; or even an Arab, who had persuaded some Asiatic
Prince to send his son to travel in Europe, and then murdered
the youth, and taken possession of his treasures. As the
self-styled Count speaks badly all the languages you hear
from him, and has most likely spent the greater part of his
1 Georgel, ubi supra.
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? Count Cagliostro
289
life under feigned names far from home, it is probable enough
no sure trace of his origin may ever be discovered. "
"On his first appearance in Strasburg he connected him-
self with the Freemasons; but only till he felt strong enough
to stand on his own feet: he soon gained the favour of the
Praetor and the Cardinal; and through these the favour of
the Court, to such a degree that his adversaries cannot so
much as think of overthrowing him. With the Praetor and
Cardinal he is said to demean himself as with persons who
were under boundless obligation to him, to whom he was
under none: the equipage of the Cardinal he seems to use as
freely as his own. He pretends that he can recognise Atheists
or Blasphemers by the smell; that the vapour from such
throws him into epileptic fits; into which sacred disorder he,
like a true juggler, has the art of falling when he likes. In
public he no longer vaunts of rule over spirits, or other
magical arts; but I know, even as certainly, that he still
pretends to evoke spirits, and by their help and apparition
to heal diseases, as I know this other fact, that he understands
no more of the human system, or the nature of its diseases,
or the use of the commonest therapeutic methods, than any
other quack. "
"According to the crediblest accounts of persons who have
long observed him, he is a man to an inconceivable degree
choleric {heftig), heedless, inconstant; and therefore doubt-
less it was the happiest idea he ever in his whole life came
upon, this of making himself inaccessible; of raising the
most obstinate reserve as a bulwark round him; without
which precaution he must long ago have been caught at
fault.
"For his own labour he takes neither payment nor present:
when presents are made him of such a sort as cannot without
offence be refused, he forthwith returns some counter-present,
of equal or still higher value. Nay he not only takes nothing
from his patients, but frequently admits them, months long,
to his house and his table, and will not consent to the smallest
recompense. With all this disinterestedness (conspicuous
enough, as you may suppose), he lives in an expensive way,
- plays deep, loses almost constantly to ladies; so that, accord-
ing to the very lowest estimate, he must require at least
20,000 livres a-year. The darkness which Cagliostro has,
on purpose, spread over the sources of his income and outlay,
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? 290 Carlyle's Essays
contributes even more than his munificence and miraculous
cures to the notion that he is a divine extraordinary man,
who has watched Nature in her deepest operations, and among
other secrets stolen that of Gold-making from her. " . . .
"With a mixture of sorrow and indignation over our age, I
have to record that this man has found acceptance, not only
among the great, who from of old have been the easiest be-
witched by such, but also with many of the learned, and even
physicians and naturalists. "1
Halcyon days; only too good to continue! All glory runs
its course; has its culmination, and then its often precipitous
decline. Eminency Rohan, with fervid temper and small in-
struction, perhaps of dissolute, certainly of dishonest manners,
in whom the faculty of Wonder had attained such prodigious
development, was indeed the very stranded whale for jackals
to feed on: unhappily, however, no one jackal could long be
left in solitary possession of him. A sharper-toothed she-
jackal now strikes in; bites infinitely deeper; stranded whale
and he-jackal both are like to become her prey. A young
French Mantua-maker, "Countess de La Motte-Valois,
descended from Henri II. by the bastard line," without
Extract of Saturn, Egyptian Masonry, or any verbal con-
ference with Dark Angels,--has genius enough to get her
finger in the Archquack's rich Hermetic Projection, appropri-
ate the golden proceeds, and even finally break the crucible.
Prince Cardinal Louis de Rohan is off to Paris, under her
guidance, to see the long-invisible Queen, or Queen's Appari-
tion; to pick up the Rose in the Garden of Trianon, dropt
by her fair sham-royal hand; and then--descend rapidly to
the Devil, and drag Cagliostro along with him.
The intelligent reader observes, we have now arrived at
that stupendous business of the Diamond Necklace: into the
dark complexities of which we need not here do more than
glance: who knows but, next month, our Historical Chapter,
written specially on this subject, may itself see the light?
Enough, for the present, if we fancy vividly the poor whale
Cardinal, so deep in the adventure that Grand-Cophtic
"predictions transmitted in cipher " will no longer illumin-
ate him; but the Grand Cophta must leave all masonic or
other business, happily begun in Naples, Bourdeaux, Lyons,
and come personally to Paris with predictions at first hand.
1 Meiners: Briefe iiber die Schweis (as quoted in Mirabeau).
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? Count Cagliostro
291
"The new Calchas," says poor Abbe Georgel, "must have
read the entrails of his victim ill; for, on issuing from these
communications with the Angel of Light and of Darkness, he
prophesied to the Cardinal that this happy correspondence,"
with the Queen's Similitude, " would place him at the highest
point of favour; that his influence in the Government would
soon become paramount; that he would use it for the propaga-
tion of good principles, the glory of the Supreme Being, and
the happiness of Frenchmen. " The new Calchas was indeed
at fault: but how could he be otherwise? Let these high
Queen's-favours, and all terrestrial shiftings of the wind,
turn as they will, his reign, he can well see, is appointed to be
temporary; in the mean while, Tokay flows like water;
prophecies of good, not of evil, are the method to keep it
flowing. Thus if, for Circe de La Motte-Valois, the Egyptian
Masonry is but a foolish enchanted cup wherewith to turn her
fat Cardinal into a quadruped, she herself converse-wise, for
the Grand Cophta, is one who must ever fodder said quad-
ruped with Court hopes, and stall-feed him fatter and fatter,
--it is expected, for the knife of both parties. They are
mutually useful; live in peace, and Tokay festivity, though
mutually suspicious, mutually contemptuous. So stand
matters through the spring and summer months of the
year 1785.
But fancy next that--while Tokay is flowing within doors,
and abroad Egyptian Lodges are getting founded, and gold
and glory, from Paris as from other cities, supernaturally
'coming in,--the latter end of August has arrived, and with it
Commissary Chesnon, to lodge the whole unholy Brotherhood,
from Cardinal down to Sham-queen, in separate cells of the
Bastille! There, for nine long months, let them howl and wail,
in bass or in treble; and emit the falsest of false Memoires;
among which that Memoire -pour le Comle de Cagliostro, en
presence des autres Co-Accuses, with its Trebisond Acharats,
Scherifs of Mecca, and Nature's unfortunate Child, all gravely
printed with French types in the year 1786, may well bear
the palm. Fancy that Necklace or Diamonds will nowhere
unearth themselves; that the Tuileries Palace sits struck
'with astonishment and speechless chagrin; that Paris, that
all Europe, is ringing with the wonder. That Count Pront-
of-Brass Pinchbeckostom, confronted, at the judgment-bar,
with a shrill glib Circe de La Motte, has need of all his
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? 292 Carlyle's Essays
eloquence; that nevertheless the Front-of-brass prevails, and
exasperated Circe "throws a candlestick at him. " Finally,
that on the 31st of May 1786, the assembled Parliament of
Paris, "at nine in the evening, after a sitting of eighteen
hours," has solemnly pronounced judgment: and now that
Cardinal Louis is gone "to his estates;" Countess de La
Motte is shaven on the head, branded, with red-hot iron,
"V" (Voleuse) on both shoulders, and confined for life to
the Salpetriere; her Count wandering uncertain, with dia-
monds for sale, over the British Empire; that the Sieur de
Villette, for handling a queen's pen, is banished forever; the
too-queenlike Demoiselle Gay d'Oliva (with her unfathered
infant) " put out of Court; "--and Grand Cophta Cagliostro
liberated indeed, but pillaged, and ordered forthwith to take
himself away. His disciples illuminate their windows; but
what does that avail? Commissary Chesnon, Bastille-
Governor De Launay cannot recollect the least particular
of those priceless effects, those gold-rouleaus, repeating
watches of his: he must even retire to Passy that very night,
and two days afterwards, sees nothing for it but Boulogne
and England. Thus does the miserable pickle - herring
tragedy of the Diamond Necklace wind itself up, and wind
Cagliostro once more to inhospitable shores.
Arrived here, and lodged tolerably in "Sloane Street,
Knightsbridge," by the aid of a certain Mr. Swinton, whilom
broken Wine-merchant, now Apothecary, to whom he carries
introductions, he can drive a small trade in Egyptian pills,
such as one "sells in Paris at thirty-shillings the dram;"
in unctuously discoursing to Egyptian Lodges; in "giving
public audiences as at Strasburg,"--if so be any one will
bite. At all events, he can, by the aid of amanuensis-disciples,
compose and publish his Lettre au Peuple Anglais; setting
forth his unheard-of generosities, unheard-of injustices
suffered, in a world not worthy of him, at the hands of English
Lawyers, Bastille-Governors, French Counts, and others4,
his Lettre aux Francais, singing to the same tune, predicting
too, what many inspired Editors had already boded, that
"the Bastille would be destroyed," and " a King would come
who should govern by States - General. " But, alas, the
shafts of Criticism are busy with him; so many hostile eyes
look towards him; the world, in short, is getting too hot for
him. Mark, nevertheless, how the brow of brass quails not;
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? Count Cagliostro
293
nay a touch of his old poetic Humour, even in this sad crisis,
unexpectedly unfolds itself.
One De Morande, Editor of a Courrier de VEurope published
here at that period, has for some time made it his distinction
to be the foremost of Cagliostro's enemies. Cagliostro, endur-
ing much in silence, happens once, in some " public audience,"
to mention a practice he had witnessed in Arabia the Stony:
the people there, it seems, are in the habit of fattening a few
pigs annually, on provender mixed with arsenic, whereby the
whole pig-carcass by and by becomes, so to speak, arsenical;
the arsenical pigs are then let loose in the woods; eaten by
lions, leopards and other ferocious creatures; which latter
naturally all die in consequence, and so the woods are cleared
af them. This adroit practice the Sieur Morande thought a
proper subject for banter; and accordingly, in his Seven-
teenth and two following Numbers, made merry enough with
it. Whereupon Count Front-of-brass, whose patience has
limits, writes as Advertisement (still to be read in old files of
the Public Advertiser, under date September 3,1786), a French
Letter, not without causticity and aristocratic disdain;
challenging the witty Sieur to breakfast with him, for the
9th of November next, in the face of the world, on an actual
Sucking Pig, fattened by Cagliostro, but cooked, carved and
selected from by the Sieur Morande,--under bet of Five
Thousand Guineas sterling that, next morning thereafter,
he the Sieur Morande shall be dead, and Count Cagliostro be
alive I The poor Sieur durst not cry, Done; and backed-out
of the transaction, making wry faces. Thus does a kind of
red coppery splendour encircle our Archquack's decline; thus
with brow of brass, grim smiling, does he meet his destiny.
But suppose we should now, from these foreign scenes turn
homewards, for a moment, into the native alley in Palermo!
Palermo, with its dinginess, its mud or dust, the old black
Balsamo House, the very beds and chairs, all are still standing
there; and Beppo has altered so strangely, has wandered so
far away. Let us look; for happily we have the fairest
opportunity.
In April 1787, Palermo contained a Traveller of a thousand;
no other than the great Goethe from Weimar. At his Table-
d'h6te he heard much of Cagliostro; at length also of a certain
Palermo Lawyer, who had been engaged by the French
Government to draw up an authentic genealogy and memoir
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? 294 Carlyle's Essays
of him. This Lawyer, and even the rude draft of his Memoir,
he with little difficulty gets to see; inquires next whether it
were not possible to see the actual Balsamo Family, whereof
it appears the mother and a widowed sister still survive. For
this matter, however, the Lawyer can do nothing; only refer
him to his Clerk; who again starts difficulties: To get at
those genealogic Documents he has been obliged to invent
some story of a Government-Pension being in the wind for
those poor Balsamos; and now that the whole matter is
finished, and the Paper sent off to France, has nothing so
much at heart as to keep out of their way:
"So said the Clerk. However, as I could not abandon my
purpose, we after some study concerted that I should give
myself out for an Englishman, and bring the family news of
Cagliostro, who had lately got out of the Bastille, and gone
to London.
"At the appointed hour, it might be three in the afternoon,
we set forth. The house lay in the corner of an Alley, not far
from the main street named II Casaro. We ascended a
miserable staircase, and came straight into the kitchen. A
woman of middle stature, broad and stout, yet not corpulent,
stood busy washing the kitchen-dishes. She was decently
dressed; and, on our entrance, turned-up the one end of her
apron, to hide the soiled side from us. She joyfully recog-
nised my conductor, and said: 'Signor Giovanni, do you
bring us good news? Have you made out anything? '
"He answered: 'In our affair, nothing yet; but here is a
Stranger that brings a salutation from your Brother, and can
tell you how he is at present. '
"The salutation I was to bring stood not in our agreement:
meanwhile, one way or other, the introduction was accom-
plished. 'You know my Brother? ' inquired she. --' AH
Europe knows him,' answered I; 'and I fancied it would
gratify you to hear that he is now in safety and well; as, of
late, no doubt you have been anxious about him. '--' Step
in,' said she; 'I will follow you directly;' and with the
Clerk I entered the room.
"It was large and high; and might, with us, have passed
for a saloon; it seemed, indeed, to be almost the sole lodging
of the family. A single window lighted the large walls, which
had once had colour; and on which were black pictures of
saints, in gilt frames, hanging round. Two large beds, with-
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? Count Cagliostro
295
out curtains, stood at one wall; a brown press, in the form
of a writing-desk, at the other. Old rush-bottomed chairs,
the backs of which had once been gilt, stood by; and the tiles
of the floor were in many places worn deep into hollows. For
the rest, all was cleanly; and we approached the family,
which sat assembled at the one window, in the other end of
the apartment.
"Whilst my guide was explaining, to the old Widow
Balsamo, the purpose of our visit, and by reason of her deaf-
ness had to repeat his words several times aloud, I had time
to observe the chamber and the other persons in it. A girl
of about sixteen, well formed, whose features had become
uncertain by small-pox, stood at the window; beside her
a young man, whose disagreeable look, deformed by the
same disease, also struck me. In an easy-chair, right before
the window, sat or rather lay a sick, much misshapen person,
who appeared to labour under a sort of lethargy.
'' My guide having made himself understood, we were
invited to take seats. The old woman put some questions
to me; which, however, I had to get interpreted before I
could answer them, the Sicilian dialect not being quite at
my command.
"Meanwhile I looked at the aged widow with satisfaction.
She was of middle stature, but well shaped; over her regular
features, which age had not deformed, lay that sort of peace
usual with people that have lost their hearing; the tone of
her voice was soft and agreeable.
"I answered her questions; and my answers also had
again to be interpreted for her.
'' The slowness of our conversation gave me leisure to
measure my words. I told her that her son had been ac-
quitted in France, and was at present in England, where he
met with good reception. Her joy, which she testified at
these things, was mixed with expressions of a heartfelt piety;
and as she now spoke a little louder and slower, I could the
better understand her.
"In the mean time the daughter had entered; and taken
her seat beside my conductor, who repeated to her faithfully
what I had been narrating. She had put-on a clean apron;
had set her hair in order under the net-cap. The more I
looked at her, and compared her with her mother, the more
striking became the difference of the two figures. A viva-
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? 296 Carlyle's Essays
cious healthy Sensualism (Sinnlichkeit) beamed forth from the
whole structure of the daughter; she might be a woman of
about forty. With brisk blue eyes she looked sharply round;
yet in her look I could trace no suspicion. When she sat,
her figure promised more height than it showed when she rose:
her posture was determinate, she sat with her body leaned
forwards, the hands resting on the knees. For the rest, hei
physiognomy, more of the snubby than the sharp sort,
reminded me of her Brother's Portrait, familiar to us in
engravings. She asked me several things about my journey,
my purpose to see Sicily; and was sure I would come back,
and celebrate the Feast of Saint Rosalia with them.
'' As the grandmother, meanwhile, had again put some
questions to me, and I was busy answering her, the daughter
kept speaking to my companion half-aloud, yet so that I
could take occasion to ask what it was. He answered:
Signora Capitummino was telling him that her Brother owed
her fourteen gold Ounces; on his sudden departure from
Palermo, she had redeemed several things for him that were
in pawn; but never since that day had either heard from him,
or got money or any other help, though it was said he had
great riches, and made a princely outlay. Now would not I
perhaps undertake on my return, to remind him, in a hand-
some way, of the debt, and procure some assistance for her;
nay would I not carry a Letter with me, or at all events get
it carried? I offered to do so. She asked where I lodged,
whither she must send the Letter to me? I avoided naming
my abode, and offered to call next day towards night, and
receive the Letter myself.
"She thereupon described to me her untoward situation:
how she was a widow with three children, of whom the one
girl was getting educated in a convent, the other was here
present, and her son just gone out to his lesson. How,
beside these three children, she had her mother to maintain;
and moreover out of Christian love had taken the unhappy
sick person there to her house, whereby the burden was
heavier; how all her industry would scarcely suffice to get
necessaries for herself and hers. She knew indeed that God
did not leave good works unrewarded; yet must sigh very
sore under the load she had long borne.
"The young people mixed in the dialogue, and our con-
versation grew livelier. While speaking with the others, I
! I
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? Count Cagliostro 297
could hear the good old widow ask her daughter: If I be-
longed, then, to their holy Religion? I remarked also that
the daughter strove, in a prudent way, to avoid an answer;
signifying to her mother, so far as I could take it up: That
the Stranger seemed to have a kind feeling towards them;
and that it was not well-bred to question any one straightway
on that point.
"As they heard that I was soon to leave Palermo, they
became more pressing, and importuned me to come back;
especially vaunting the paradisaic days of the Rosalia Festival,
the like of which was not to be seen and tasted in all the world.
"My attendant, who had long been anxious to get off, at
last put an end to the interview by his gestures; and I pro-
mised to return on the morrow evening, and take the Letter.
My attendant expressed his joy that all had gone off so well,
and we parted mutually content.
"You may fancy the impression this poor and pious, well-
dispositioned family had made on me. My curiosity was
satisfied; but their natural and worthy bearing had raised an
interest in me, which reflection did but increase.
"Forthwith, however, there arose for me anxieties about
the following day. It was natural that this appearance of
mine, which, at the first moment, had taken them by surprise,
should, after my departure, awaken many reflections. By
the Genealogy I knew that several others of the family were
in life: it was natural that they should call their friends
together, and in the presence of all, get those things repeated
which, the day before, they had heard from me with admira-
tion. My object was attained; there remained nothing more
than, in some good fashion, to end the adventure. I accord-
ingly repaired next day, directly after dinner, alone to their
house. They expressed surprise as I entered. The Letter
was not ready yet, they said; and some of their relations
wished to make my acquaintance, who towards night would
be there.
"I answered, that having to set off to-morrow morning, and
visits still to pay, and packing to transact, I had thought it
better to come early than not at all.
"Meanwhile the son entered, whom yesterday I had not
seen. He resembled his sister in size and figure. He brought
the Letter they were to give me; he had, as is common in
those parts, got it written out of doors, by one of their
II 704 u
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? 298 Carlyle's Essays
Notaries that sit publicly to do such things. The young man
had a still, melancholy and modest aspect; inquired after his
Uncle, asked about his riches and outlays, and added sorrow-
fully, Why had he so forgotten his kindred? ' It were our
greatest fortune,' continued he, 'should he once return
hither, and take notice of us: but,' continued he, 'how
came he to let you know that he had relatives in Palermo?
It is said, he everywhere denies us, and gives himself out for
a man of great birth. ' I answered this question, which had
now arisen by the imprudence of my Guide at our first
entrance, in such sort as to make it seem that the Uncle,
though he might have reason for concealing his birth from the
public, did yet, towards his friends and acquaintance, keep it
no secret.
"The sister, who had come up during this dialogue, and
by the presence of her brother, perhaps also by the absence
of her yesterday's friend, had got more courage, began also
to speak with much grace and liveliness. They begged me
earnestly to recommend them to their Uncle, if I wrote to
him; and not less earnestly, when once I should have made
this journey through the Island, to come back and pass the
Rosalia Festival with them.
"The mother spoke in accordance with her children.
'Sir,' said she, 'though it is not seemly, as I have a grown
daughter, to see stranger gentlemen in my house, and one
has to guard against both danger and evil-speaking, yet shall
you ever be welcome to us, when you return to this city. '
"' O yes,' answered the young ones, 'we will lead the
Gentleman all round the Festival; we will show him every-
thing, get a place on the scaffolds, where the grand sights are
seen best. What will he say to the great Chariot, and more
than all, to the glorious Illumination! '
"Meanwhile the Grandmother had read the Letter and
again read it. Hearing that I was about to take leave, she
arose, and gave me the folded sheet. 'Tell my son,' began
she with a noble vivacity, nay with a sort of inspiration, ' Tell
my son how happy the news have made me, which you
brought from him! Tell him that I clasp him to my heart'--
here she stretched out her arms asunder, and pressed them
again together on her breast --' that I daily beseech God
and our Holy Virgin for him in prayer; that I give him and
his wife my blessing; and that I wish before my end to see
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? Count Cagliostro
299
him again with these eyes, which have shed so many tears
for him. '
"The peculiar grace of the Italian tongue favoured the
choice and noble arrangement of these words, which more-
over were accompanied with lively gestures, wherewith that
nation can add such a charm to spoken words.
"I took my leave, not without emotion. They all gave
me their hands; the children showed me out; and as I went
down stairs, they jumped to the balcony of the kitchen-
window, which projected over the street; called after me,
threw me salutes, and repeated, that I must in no wise forget
to come back. I saw them still on the balcony, when I
turned the corner. " 1
Poor old Felicita, and must thy pious prayers, thy motherly
blessings, and so many tears shed by those old eyes, be all in
vain! To thyself, in any case, they were blessed. --As for
the Signora Capitummino, with her three fatherless children,
shall we not hope at least, that the fourteen gold Ounces were
paid, by a sure hand, and so her heavy burden, for some space,
lightened a little? Alas, no, it would seem; owing to
accidents, not even that! 2
Count Cagliostro, all this while, is rapidly proceeding with
his Fifth Act; the red coppery splendour darkens more
and more into final gloom. Some boiling muddleheads of a
dupeable sort there still are in England: Popish-Riot Lord
George, for instance, will walk with him to Count Barthelemy's
or D'Adhemar's; and, in bad French and worse rhetoric,
abuse the Queen of France: but what does it profit? Lord
George must one day (after noise enough) revisit Newgate
for it; and in the meanwhile, hard words pay no scores.
Apothecary Swinton begins to get wearisome; French spies
look ominously in; Egyptian Pills are slack of sale; the old
vulturous Attorney-host anew scents carrion, is bestirring
itself anew: Count Cagliostro, in the May of 1787, must once
more leave England. But whither? Ah, whither! At Bale,
at Bienne, over Switzerland, the game is up. At Aix in
Savoy, there are baths, but no gudgeons in them: at Turin,
his Majesty of Sardinia meets you with an order to begone
'on the instant. A like fate from the Emperor Joseph at
Roveredo;--before the Liber memorialis de Caleostro dum
esset Roboretti could extend to many pages! Count Front-of-
1 Goethe's Werke (Italidnische Reise), xxviii. 146. * Ibid.
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? 300 Carlyle's Essays
brass begins confessing himself to priests: yet "at Trent
paints a new hieroglyphic Screen,"--touching last flicker of
a light that once burnt so high! He pawns diamond buckles;
wanders necessitous hither and thither; repents, unrepents;
knows not what to do. For Destiny has her nets round him;
they are straitening, straitening; too soon he will be ginned!
Driven out from Trent, what shall he make of the new
hieroglyphic Screen, what of himself? The wayworn Grand-
Cophtess has begun to blab family secrets; she longs to be
in Rome, by her mother's hearth, by her mother's grave; in
any nook, where so much as the shadow of refuge waits her.
To the desperate Count Front-of-brass all places are nearly
alike: urged by female babble, he will go to Rome, then;
why not? On a May-day, of the year 1789 (when such glori-
ous work had just begun in France, to him all forbidden! ),
he enters the Eternal City; it was his doom-summons that
called him thither. On the 29th of next December, the Holy
Inquisition, long watchful enough, detects him founding some
feeble moneyless ghost of an Egyptian Lodge; "picks him
off," as the military say, and locks him hard and fast in the
Castle of St. Angelo:
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che 'ntrate!
Count Cagliostro did not lose all hope: nevertheless a few
words will now suffice for him. In vain, with his mouth of
pinchbeck and his front of brass, does he heap chimera on
chimera; demand religious Books (which are freely given
him); demand clean Linen, and an interview with his Wife
(which are refused him); assert now that the Egyptian
Masonry is a divine system, accommodated to erring and
gullible men, which the Holy Father, when he knows it, will
patronise; anon that there are some four millions of Free-
masons, spread over Europe, all sworn to exterminate Priest
and King, wherever met with: in vain! they will not acquit
him, as misunderstood Theophilanthropist; will not emit
him, in Pope's pay, as renegade Masonic Spy: "he can't get
out. " Donna Lorenza languishes, invisible to him, in a
neighbouring cell; begins at length to confess I Whereupon
he too, in torrents, will emit confessions and forestall her:
these the Inquisition pocket and sift (whence this Life of
Balsamo); but will not let him out. In fine, after some
eighteen months of the weariest hounding, doubling, worrying
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:23 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Count Cagliostro 301
and standing at bay, His Holiness gives sentence: The
Manuscript of Egyptian Masonry is to be burnt by hand of
the common Hangman, and all that intermeddle with such
Masonry are accursed; Giuseppe Balsamo, justly forfeited
of life for being a Freemason, shall nevertheless in mercy be
forgiven; instructed in the duties of penitence, and even
kept safe thenceforth and till death,--in ward of Holy Church.
Ill-starred Acharat, must it so end with thee? This was in
April 1791.
He addressed (how vainly! ) an appeal to the French
Constituent Assembly. As was said, in Heaven, in Earth,
or in Hell there was no Assembly that could well take his
part. For four years more, spent one knows not how,--
most probably in the furor of edacity, with insufficient
cookery, and the stupor of indigestion,--the curtain lazily
falls. There rotted and gave way the cordage of a tough
heart. One summer morning of the year 1795, the Body of
Cagliostro is still found in the prison of St. Leo; but Cagli-
ostro's Self has escaped,--whither no man yet knows. The
brow of brass, behold how it has got all unlacquered; these
pinchbeck lips can lie no more: Cagliostro's work is ended,
and now only his account to present. As the Scherif of
Mecca said, " Nature's unfortunate child, adieu! "
Such, according to our comprehension thereof, is the rise,
progress, grandeur and decadence of the Quack of Quacks.
Does the reader ask, What good was in it; Why occupy his
time and ours with the biography of such a miscreant? We
answer, It was stated on the very threshold of this matter,
in the loftiest terms, by Herr Sauerteig, that the Lives of all
Eminent Persons, miscreant or creant, ought to be written.
