No More Learning

Next, however, as another more lasting resource, he forges;
at first in a small way, and trying his apprentice-hand:
tickets for the theatre, and such trifles. Erelong, however,
we see him fly at higher quarry; by practice he has acquired
perfection in the great art of counterfeiting hands; and will
exercise it on the large or on the narrow scale, for a considera-
tion. Among his relatives is a Notary, with whom he can
insinuate himself; for purpose of study, or even of practice.
In the presses of this Notary lies a Will, which Beppo con-
trives to come at, and falsify "for the benefit of a certain
Religious House. " Much good may it do them! Many
years afterwards the fraud was detected; but Beppo's benefit
in it was spent and safe long before. Thus again the stolid
Biographer expresses horror or wonder that he should have
forged leave-of-absence for a monk, "counterfeiting the
signature of the Superior. " Why not? A forger must forge
what is wanted of him: the Lion truly preys not on mice; yet
shall he refuse such, if they jump into his mouth? Enough,
the indefatigable Beppo has here opened a quite boundless
mine; wherein through his whole life he will, as occasion
calls, dig, at his convenience. Finally, he can predict for-
tunes and show visions,--by phosphorus and legerdemain.
This, however, only as a dilettantism; to take-up the earnest
profession of Magician does not yet enter into his views. Thus
perfecting himself in all branches of his art, does our Balsamo
live and grow. Stupid, pudding-faced as he looks and is,
there is a vulpine astucity in him; and then a wholeness, a
heartiness, a kind of blubbery impetuosity, an oiliness so
plausible-looking: give him only length of life, he will rise to
the top of his profession.
* Consistent enough with such blubbery impetuosity in
Beppo is another fact we find recorded of him, that at this
time he was found "in most brawls," whether in street or
tavern. The way of his business led him into liability to
such; neither as yet had he learned prudence by age. Of
choleric temper, with all his obesity; a square-built, burly,
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? Count Cagliostro 255
vociferous fellow; ever ready with his stroke (if victory
seemed sure); nay, at bottom, not without a certain pig-like
defensive - ferocity, perhaps even something more. Thus,
when you find him making a point to attack, if possible,
"all officers of justice," and deforce them; delivering the
wretched from their talons: was not this, we say, a kind of
dog-faithfulness, and public spirit, either of the mastiff
or of the cur species? Perhaps too there was a touch of
that old Humour and " world-irony" in it. One still more
unquestionable feat he is recorded (we fear, on imperfect
evidence) to have done: "assassinated a canon. "
Remonstrances from growling maternal uncles could not
fail; threats, disdains from ill-affected neighbours; tears
from an expostulating widowed mother: these he shakes
from him like dewdrops from the lion's mane. Still less
could the Police neglect him; him the visibly rising Pro-
fessor of Swindlery; the swashbuckler, to boot, and de-
forcer of bailiffs: he has often been captured, haled to their
bar; yet hitherto, by defect of evidence, by good luck,
intercession of friends, been dismissed with admonition.
Two things, nevertheless, might now be growing clear: first,
that the die was cast with Beppo, and he a scoundrel for life;
second, that such a mixed, composite, crypto-scoundrel life
could not endure, but must unfold itself into a pure, declared
one. The Tree that is planted stands not still; must pass
through all its stages and phases, from the state of acorn
to that of green leafy oak, of withered leafless oak; to the
state of felled timber, finally to that of firewood and ashes.
Not less (though less visibly to dull eyes) the Act that is
done, the condition that has realised itself; above all things,
the Man, with his Fortunes, that has been bom. Beppo,
everyway in vigorous vitality, cannot continue half-painting
half-swindling in Palermo; must develop himself into whole
swindler; and, unless hanged there, seek his bread elsewhere.
What the proximate cause, or signal, of such crisis and
development might be, no man could say; yet most men
would have confidently guessed, The Police. Nevertheless
it proved otherwise; not by the flaming sword of Justice, but
by the rusty dirk of a foolish private individual, is Beppo
driven forth.
Walking one day in the fields (as the bold historic Imagina-
tion will figure) with a certain ninny of a " Goldsmith named
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? 256 Carlyle's Essays
Marano," as they pass one of those rock-chasms frequent in
the fair Island of Sicily, Beppo begins, in his oily, voluble way,
to hint, That treasures often lay hid; that a Treasure lay
hid there, as he knew by some pricking of his thumbs, divining-
rod, or other talismanic monition: which Treasure might,
by aid of science, courage, secrecy and a small judicious
advance of money, be fortunately lifted. The gudgeon
takes; advances, by degrees, to the length of "sixty gold
Ounces; "1 sees magic circles drawn in the wane or in the
full of the moon, blue (phosphorus) flames arise, split twigs
auspiciously quiver; and at length--demands peremptorily
that the Treasure be dug. A night is fixed on: the ninny
Goldsmith, trembling with rapture and terror, breaks ground;
digs, with thick breath and cold sweat, fiercely down, down,
Beppo relieving him: the work advances; when, ah! at a
certain stage of it ( before fruition) hideous yells arise, a jingle
like the emptying of Birmingham; six Devils pounce upon
the poor sheep Goldsmith, and beat him almost to mutton;
mercifully sparing Balsamo,--who indeed has himself sum-
moned them thither, and as it were created them (with
goatskins and burnt cork). Marano, though a ninny, now
knew how it lay; and furthermore that he had a stiletto.
One of the grand drawbacks of swindler-genius! You
accomplish the Problem; and then--the Elementary Quan-
tities, Algebraic Symbols you worked on, will fly in your face!
Hearing of stilettos, our Algebraist begins to look around
him, and view his empire of Palermo in the concrete. An
empire now much exhausted; much infested, too, with
sorrows of all kinds, and every day the more; nigh ruinous,
in short; not worth being stabbed for. There is a world
elsewhere. In any case, the young Raven has now shed his
pens, and got fledged for flying. Shall he not spurn the whole
from him, and soar off? Resolved, performed! Our Beppo
quits Palermo; and, as it proved, on a long voyage: or, as
the Inquisition-Biographer has it, "he fled from Palermo,
and overran the whole Earth. "
Here, then, ends the First Act of Count Alessandro Cagli-
ostro's Life-drama. Let the curtain drop; and hang unrent,
before an audience of mixed feeling, till the First of August.
1 The Sicilian Ounce (Onza) is worth about ten shillings sterling.
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? Count Cagliostro
257
FLIGHT LAST
Before entering on the second Section of Count Beppo's
History, the Editor will indulge in a philosophical reflection.
This Beppic Hegira, or Flight from Palermo, we have now
arrived at, brings us down, in European History, to some-
where about the epoch of the Peace of Paris. Old Feudal
Europe, while Beppo flies forth into the whole Earth, has
just finished the last of her " tavern-brawls," or wars; and
lain down to doze, and yawn, and disconsolately wear-off
the headaches, bruises, nervous prostration and flaccidity
consequent thereon: for the brawl had been a long one,
Seven Years long; and there had been many such, begotten,
as is usual, of intoxication from Pride or other Devil's-drink,
and foul humours in the constitution. Alas, it was not so
much a disconsolate doze, after ebriety and quarrel, that poor
old Feudal Europe had now to undergo, and then on awaken-
ing to drink anew, and quarrel anew: old Feudal Europe has
fallen a-dozing to die! Her next awakening will be with no
tavern-brawl, at the King's Head or Prime Minister tavern;
but with the stern Avatar of Democracy, hymning its world-
thrilling birth- and battle-song in the distant West;--there-
from to go out conquering and to conquer, till it have made
a circuit of all the Earth, and old dead Feudal Europe is bom
again (after infinite pangs! ) into a new Industrial one. At
Beppo's Hegira, as we said, Europe was in the last languor
and stertorous fever-sleep of Dissolution: alas, with us, and
with our sons for a generation or two, it is almost still worse,--
were it not that in Birth-throes there is ever hope, in Death-
throes the final departure of hope.
Now the philosophic reflection we were to indulge in, was
no other than this, most germane to our subject: the porten-
tous extent of Quackery, the multitudinous variety of Quacks
that, along with our Beppo, and under him each in his degree,
,'overran all Europe during that same period, the latter half
of last century. It was the very age of impostors, cut-
purses, swindlers, double - goers, enthusiasts, ambiguous
persons; quacks simple, quacks compound; crackbrained, or
with deceit prepense; quacks and quackeries of all colours
and kinds. How many Mesmerists, Magicians, Cabalists,
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? 258 Carlyle's Essays
Swedenborgians, Illuminati, Crucified Nuns, and Devils of
Loudun! To which the Inquisition-Biographer adds Vam-
pires, Sylphs, Rosicrucians, Freemasons, and an Etcetera.
Consider your Schropfers, Cagliostros, Casanovas, Saint-
Germains, Dr. Grahams; the Chevalier d'Eon, Psalmanazar.
Abbe Paris and the Ghost of Cock-lane! As if Bedlam had
broken loose; as if, rather, in that " spiritual Twelfth-hour
of the night," the everlasting Pit had opened itself, and from
its still blacker bosom had issued Madness and all manner of
shapeless Misbirths, to masquerade and chatter there.
But indeed, if we consider, how could it be otherwise? In
that stertorous last fever-sleep of our European world, must
not Phantasms enough, born of the Pit, as all such are, flit
past, in ghastly masquerading and chattering? A low scarce-
audible moan (in Parliamentary Petitions, Meal-mobs, Popish
Riots, Treatises on Atheism) struggles from the moribund
sleeper: frees him not from his hellish guests and saturnalia:
Phantasms these " of a dying brain. " So too, when the old
Roman world, the measure of its iniquities being full, was
to expire, and (in still bitterer agonies) be born again, had they
not Veneficae, Mathematici, Apolloniuses with the Golden
Thigh, Apollonius' Asses, and False Christs enough,--before
a Redeemer arose!
For, in truth, and altogether apart from such half-figurative
language, Putrescence is not more naturally the scene of
unclean creatures in the world physical, than Social Decay
is of quacks in the world moral. Nay, look at it with the eye
of the mere Logician, of the Political Economist. In such
periods of Social Decay, what is called an overflowing Popu-
lation, that is a Population which, under the old Captains of
Industry (named Higher Classes, Ricos Hombres, Aristocracies
and the like), can no longer find work and wages, increases the
number of Unprofessional, Lackalls, Social Nondescripts;
with appetite of utmost keenness, which there is no known
method of satisfying. Nay more, and perversely enough,
ever as Population augments, your Captains of Industry can
and do dwindle more and more into Captains of Idleness;
whereby the more and more overflowing Population is worse
and worse governed (shown what to do, for that is the only
government): thus is the candle lighted at both ends; and
the number of social Nondescripts increases in double-quick
ratio. Whoso is alive, it is said, " must live;" at all events,
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? Count Cagliostro
259
will live; a task which daily gets harder, reduces to stranger
shifts.
And now furthermore, with general economic distress, in
such a Period, there is usually conjoined the utmost decay
of moral principle: indeed, so universal is this conjunction,
many men have seen it to be a concatenation and causation;
justly enough, except that such have very generally, ever
since a certain religious-repentant feeling went out of date,
committed one sore mistake: what is vulgarly called putting
the cart before the horse. Politico-economical benefactor of
the species! deceive not thyself with barren sophisms:
National suffering is, if thou wilt understand the words,
verily a "judgment of God;" has ever been preceded by
national crime. "Be it here once more maintained before
the world," cries Sauerteig, in one of his Springivurzeln,
"that temporal Distress, that Misery of any kind, is not the
cause of Immorality, but the effect thereof! Among indivi-
duals, it is true, so wide is the empire of Chance, poverty and
wealth go all at hap-hazard; a St. Paul is making tents at
Corinth, while a Kaiser Nero fiddles, in ivory palaces, over
a burning Rome. Nevertheless here too, if nowise wealth and
poverty, yet well-being and ill-being, even in the temporal
economic sense, go commonly in respective partnership with
Wisdom and with Folly: no man can, for a length of time,
be wholly wretched, if there is not a disharmony (a folly and
wickedness) within himself; neither can the richest Crcesus
and never so eupeptic (for he too has his indigestions, and
dies at last of surfeit), be other than discontented, perplexed,
unhappy, if he be a Fool. "--This we apprehend is true, 0
Sauerteig, yet not the whole truth: for there is more than
day's-work and day's-wages in this world of ours: which,
as thou knowest, is itself quite other than a " Workshop and
Fancy-Bazaar," is also a " Mystic Temple and Hall of Doom. "
Thus we have heard of such things as good men struggling
with adversity, and offering a spectacle for the very gods.
"But with a nation," continues he, " where the multitude
of the chances covers, in great measure, the uncertainty of
Chance, it may be said to hold always that general Suffering
is the fruit of general Misbehaviour, general Dishonesty.
Consider it well; had all men stood faithfully to their posts,
the Evil, when it first arose, had been manfully fronted, and
abolished, not lazily blinked, and left to grow, with the foul
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? 2 Go Carlyle's Essays
sluggard's comfort: 'It will last my time. ' Thou foul slug-
gard, and even thief (Faulenzer, ja Dieb)! For art thou not
a thief, to pocket thy day's-wages (be they counted in groschen
or in gold thousands) for this, if it be for anything, for watching
on thy special watch-tower that God's City (which this His
World is, where His children dwell) suffer no damage; and,
all the while, to watch only that thy own ease be not invaded.
--let otherwise hard come to hard as it will and can? Un-
happy! It will last thy time: thy worthless sham of an
existence, wherein nothing but the Digestion was real, will
have evaporated in the interim; it will last thy time: but
will it last thy Eternity? Or what if it should not last thy
time (mark that also, for that also will be the fate of some
such lying sluggard), but take fire, and explode, and consume
thee like the moth! "
The sum of the matter, in any case, is, that national
Poverty and national Dishonesty go together; that con-
tinually increasing social Nondescripts get ever the hungrier,
ever the falser. Now say, have we not here the very making
of Quackery; raw - material, plastic - energy, both in full
action? Dishonesty the raw-material, Hunger the plastic-
energy: what will not the two realise? Nay observe farther
how Dishonesty is the raw-material not of Quacks only,
but also in great part of Dupes. In Goodness, were it never
so simple, there is the surest instinct for the Good; the
uneasiest unconquerable repulsion for the False and Bad.
The very Devil Mephistopheles cannot deceive poor guile-
less Margaret: "it stands written on his brow that he never
loved a living soul! " The like too has many a human
inferior Quack painfully experienced; the like lies in store for
our hero Beppo. But now with such abundant raw-material
not only to make Quacks of, but to feed and occupy them on,
if the plastic-energy of Hunger fail not, what a world shall
we have! The wonder is not that the eighteenth century had
very numerous Quacks, but rather that they were not
innumerable.
In that same French Revolution alone, which burnt-up
so much, what unmeasured masses of Quackism were set
fire to; nay, as foul mephitic fire-damp in that case, were
made to flame in a fierce, sublime splendour; coruscating,
even illuminating! The Count Saint-Germain, some twenty
years later, had found a quite new element, of Fraternisation,
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? Count Cagliostro
261
Sacred right of Insurrection, Oratorship of the Human
Species, wherefrom to body himself forth quite otherwise:
Schropfer needed not now, as Blackguard undeterred, have
solemnly shot himself in the Rosenthal; might have solemnly
sacrificed himself, as Jacobin half-heroic, in the Place de la
Revolution. For your quack-genius is indeed born, but also
made; circumstances shape him or stunt him. Beppo
Balsamo, born British in these new days, could have con-
jured fewer Spirits; yet had found a living and glory, as
Castlereagh Spy, Irish Associationist, Blacking-Manufacturer,
Book-Publisher, Able Editor. Withal too the reader will
observe that Quacks, in every time, are of two sorts: the
Declared Quack; and the Undeclared, who, if you question
him, will deny stormfully, both to others and to himself;
of which two quack-species the proportions vary with the
varying capacity of the age. If Beppo's was the age of the
Declared, therein, after all French Revolutions, we will grant,
lay one of its main distinctions from ours; which is it not
yet, and for a generation or two, the age of the Undeclared?
Alas, almost a still more detestable age;--yet now (by God's
grace), with Prophecy, with irreversible Enactment, registered
in Heaven's chancery,--where thou too, if thou wilt look,
mayst read and know, That its death-doom shall not linger.
Be it speedy, be it sure! --And so herewith were our philo-
sophical reflection, on the nature, causes, prevalence, decline
and expected temporary destruction of Quackery, concluded;
and now the Beppic poetic Narrative can once more take
its course.
Beppo, then, like a Noah's Raven, is out upon that watery
waste of dissolute, beduped, distracted European Life, to see
if there is any carrion there. One unguided little Raven, in
the wide-weltering "Mother of Dead Dogs:" will he not
come to harm; will he not be snapt-up, drowned, starved
and washed to the Devil there? No fear of him,--for a time.
His eye (or scientific judgment), it is true, as yet takes-in only
a small section of it; but then his scent (instinct of genius) is
prodigious: several endowments, forgery and others, he has
unfolded into talents; the two sources of all quack-talent,
Cunning and Impudence, are his in richest measure.
As to his immediate course of action and adventure, the
foolish Inquisition-Biographer, it must be owned, shows
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? 262 Carlylc's Essays
himself a fool, and can give us next to no insight. Like
enough, Beppo " fled to Messina; " simply as to the nearest
city, and to get across to the mainland: but as to this " certain
Althotas " whom he met there, and voyaged with to Alexan-
dria in Egypt, and how they made hemp into silk, and
realised much money, and came to Malta, and studied in
the Laboratory there, and then the certain Althotas died,--
of all this what shall be said? The foolish Inquisition-
Biographer is uncertain whether the certain Althotas was a
Greek or a Spaniard: but unhappily the prior question is not
settled, whether he was at all. Superfluous it seems to put
down Beppo's own account of his procedure; he gave multi-
farious accounts, as the exigencies of the case demanded: this
of the "certain Althotas," and hemp made into false silk,
is as verisimilar as that other of the "sage Althotas," the
heirship-apparent of Trebisond, and the Scherif of Mecca's
"Adieu, unfortunate Child of Nature. " Nay the guesses of
the ignorant world; how Count Cagliostro had been travelling-
tutor to a Prince (name not given), whom he murdered and
took the money from; with others of the like,--were perhaps
still more absurd. Beppo, we can see, was out and away,--
the Devil knew whither. Far, variegated, painful might his
roamings be. A plausible-looking shadow of him shows
itself hovering over Naples and Calabria; thither, as to a
famed high-school of Laziness and Scoundrelism, he may
likely enough have gone to graduate. Of the Malta Labora-
tory, and Alexandrian hemp-silk, the less we say the better.
This only is clear: That Beppo dived deep down into the
lugubrious-obscure regions of Rascaldom; like a Knight to
the palace of his Fairy; remained unseen there, and returned
thence armed at all points.
If we fancy, meanwhile, that Beppo already meditated
becoming Grand Cophta, and riding at Strasburg in the Cardi-
nal's carriage, we mistake much. Gift of Prophecy has been
wisely denied to man. Did a man foresee his life, and not
merely hope it, and grope it, and so, by Necessity and Freewill,
make and fabricate it into a reality, he were no man, but
some other kind of creature, superhuman or subterhuman.
No man sees far; the most see no farther than their noses.
From the quite dim uncertain mass of the future, "which
lies there," says a Scottish Humorist, " uncombed, uncarded,
like a mass of tarry wool proverbially ill to spin," they spin
!
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? Count Cagliostro
263
out, better or worse, their rumply, infirm thread of Existence,
and wind it up, up,--till the spool is full; seeing but some
little half-yard of it at once; exclaiming, as they look into
the betarred entangled mass of Futurity, We shall see!
The first authentic fact with regard to Beppo is, that his
swart squat figure becomes visible in the Corso and Campo
Vaccino of Rome; that he " lodges at the Sign of the Sun in
the Rotonda," and sells pen-drawings there. Properly they
are not pen-drawings; but printed engravings or etchings,
to which Beppo, with a pen and a little Indian ink, has added
the degree of scratching to give them the air of such. There-
by mainly does he realise a thin livelihood. From which we
infer that his transactions in Naples and Calabria, with
Althotas and hemp-silk, or whatever else, had not turned to
much.
Forged pen-drawings are no mine of wealth: neither was
Beppo Balsamo anything of an Adonis; on the contrary, a
most dusky, bull-necked, mastiff-faced, sinister-looking in-
dividual: nevertheless, on applying for the favour of the hand
of Lorenza Feliciani, a beautiful Roman donzella, " dwelling
near the Trinity of the Pilgrims," the unfortunate child of
Nature prospers beyond our hopes. Authorities differ as
to the rank and status of this fair Lorenza: one account says,
she was the daughter of a Girdle-maker; but adds erroneously
that it was in Calabria. The matter must remain suspended.
Certain enough, she was a handsome buxom creature; "both
pretty and ladylike," it is presumable; but having no offer,
in a country too prone to celibacy, took-up with the bull-
necked forger of pen-drawings, whose suit too was doubtless
pressed with the most flowing rhetoric. She gave herself
in marriage to him; and the parents admitted him to quarter
in their house, till it should appear what was next to be
done.
Two kitchen-fires, says the Proverb, burn not on one
hearth: here, moreover, might be quite special causes of
discord. Pen-drawing, at best a hungry concern, has now
exhausted itself, and must be given up; but Beppo's house-
hold prospects brighten, on the other side: in the charms
of his Lorenza he sees before him what the French call " a
Future confused and immense. " The hint was given; and,
with reluctance, or without reluctance (for the evidence
leans both ways), was taken and reduced to practice: Signor
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? 264' Carlyle's Essays
and Signora Balsamo are forth from the old Girdler's house,
into the wide world, seeking and finding adventures.
The foolish Inquisition-Biographer, with painful scientific
accuracy, furnishes a descriptive catalogue of all the suc-
cessive Cullies (Italian Counts, French Envoys, Spanish
Marquises, Dukes and Drakes) in various quarters of the
known world, whom this accomplished pair took-in; with
the sums each yielded, and the methods employed to bewitch
him. Into which descriptive catalogue, why should we here
so much as cast a glance? Cullies, the easy cushions on
which knaves and knavesses repose and fatten, have at all
times existed, in considerable profusion: neither can the
fact of a clothed animal, Marquis or other, having acted in
that capacity to never such lengths, entitle him to mention
in History. We pass over these. Beppo, or as we must now
learn to call him, the Count, appears at Venice, at Marseilles,
at Madrid, Cadiz, Lisbon, Brussels; makes scientific pilgrim-
age to Quack Saint-Germain in Westphalia, religious-commer-
cial to Saint Saint-James in Compostella, to Our Lady in
Loretto: south, north, east, west, he shows himself; finds
everywhere Lubricity and Stupidity (better or worse pro-
vided with cash), the two elements on which he thaumaturgi-
cally can work and live. Practice makes perfection; Beppo
too was an apt scholar. By all methods he can awaken
the stagnant imagination; cast maddening powder in the
eyes.
Already in Rome he has cultivated whiskers, and put-on
the uniform of a Prussian Colonel: dame Lorenza is fair to
look upon; but how much fairer, if by the air of distance and
dignity you lend enchantment to her! In other places, the
Count appears as real Count; as Marquis Pellegrini (lately
from foreign parts); as Count this and Count that, Count
Proteus-Incognito; finally as Count Alessandro Cagliostro. 1
Figure him shooting through the world with utmost rapidity;
ducking-under here, when the sword-fishes of Justice make
a dart at him; ducking-up yonder in new shape, at the
distance of a thousand miles; not unprovided with forged
vouchers of respectability; above all, with that best voucher
of respectability, a four-horse carriage, beef-eaters, and open
1 Not altogether an invention this last; for his granduncle (a bell-
founder at Messina? ) was actually surnamed Cagliostro, as well as
named Giuseppe. --O. Y.
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? Count Cagliostro 265
purse, for Count Cagliostro has ready-money and pays his
way. At some Hotel of the Sun, Hotel of the Angel, Gold
Lion, or Green Goose, or whatever Hotel it is, in whatever
world-famous capital City, his chariot-wheels have rested;
sleep and food have refreshed his live-stock, chiefly the pearl
and soul thereof, his indispensable Lorenza, now no longer
Dame Lorenza, but Countess Seraphina, looking seraphic
enough! Moneyed Donothings, whereof in this vexed Earth
there are many, ever lounging about such places, scan and
comment on the foreign coat-of-arms; ogle the fair foreign
woman; who timidly recoils from their gaze, timidly responds
to their reverences, as in halls and passages, they obsequiously
throw themselves in her way: erelong one moneyed Do-
nothing, from amid his tags and tassels, sword-belts, fop-
tackle, frizzled hair without brains beneath it, is heard
speaking to another: "Seen the Countess? --Divine creature
that! "--and so the game is begun.
Let not the too sanguine reader, meanwhile, fancy that it
is all holiday and heyday with his Lordship. The course of
scoundrelism, any more than that of true love, never did
run smooth. Seasons there may be when Count Proteus-
Incognito has his epaulettes torn from his shoulders; his
garment-skirts dipt close by the buttocks; and is bid sternly
tarry at Jericho till his beard be grown. Harpies of Law
defile his solemn feasts; his light bums languid; for a space
seems utterly snuffed out, and dead in malodorous vapour.
Dead only to blaze up the brighter! There is scoundrel-life
in Beppo Cagliostro; cast him among the mud, tread him
out of sight there, the miasmata do but stimulate and refresh
him, he rises sneezing, is strong and young again.
Behold him, for example, again in Palermo, after having
seen many men and many Jands; and how he again escapes
thence. Why did he return to Palermo? Perhaps to astonish
old friends by new grandeur; or for temporary shelter, if
the Continent were getting hot for him; or perhaps in the
mere way of general trade. He is seized there, and clapt in
- prison, for those foolish old businesses of the treasure-digging
Goldsmith, of the forged Will.
"The manner of his escape," says one, whose few words on
this obscure matter are so many light-points for us," deserves
to be described. The Son of one of the first Sicilian Princes,
and great landed Proprietors (who moreover had filled
nw s
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? 266 Carlyle's Essays
important stations at the Neapolitan Court), was a person that
united with a strong body and ungovernable temper all the
tyrannical caprice, which the rich and great, with cultivation,
think themselves entitled to exhibit.
"Donna Lorenza had contrived to gain this man; and on
him the fictitious Marchese Pellegrini founded his security.
The Prince testified openly that he was the protector of this
stranger pair: but what was his fury when Joseph Balsamo,
at the instance of those whom he had cheated, was cast into
prison! He tried various means to deliver him; and as these
would not prosper, he publicly, in the President's ante-
chamber, threatened the plaintiffs' Advocate with the
frightfulest misusage if the suit were not dropt, and Balsamo
forthwith set at liberty. As the Advocate declined such
proposal, he clutched him, beat him, threw him on the floor,
trampled him with his feet, and could hardly be restrained
from still farther outrages, when the President himself came
running out at the tumult, and commanded peace.
"This latter, a weak, dependent man, made no attempt to
punish the injurer; the plaintiffs and their Advocate grew
fainthearted; and Balsamo was let go; not so much as a
registration in the Court-Books specifying his dismissal,
who occasioned it, or how it took place. " 1
Thus sometimes, a friend in the court is better than a
penny in the purse! Marchese Pellegrini "quickly thereafter
left Palermo, and performed various travels, whereof my
author could impart no clear information. " Whether, or
how far, the Game-chicken Prince went with him is not hinted.
So it might, at times, be quite otherwise than in coach-
and-four that our Cagliostro journeyed. Occasionally we find
him as outrider journeying on horseback; only Seraphina
and her sop (whom she is to suck and eat) lolling on carriage-
cushions; the hardy Count glad that hereby he can have the
shot paid. Nay sometimes he looks utterly poverty-struck
and has to journey one knows not how. Thus one briefest
but authentic-looking glimpse of him presents itself in Eng-
land, in the year 1772: no Count is he here, but mere Signor
Balsamo again; engaged in house-painting, for which he has
a most peculiar talent. Was it true that he painted the
country-house of "a Doctor Benemore:" and having not
painted, but only smeared it, was refused payment, and got
1 Goethe's Werke, b. zzviii. 132.
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? Count Cagliostro
267
a lawsuit with expenses instead? If Doctor Benemore have
left any representatives in this Earth, they are desired to
speak out. We add only, that if young Beppo had one of the
prettiest wives, old Benemore had one of the ugliest daughters;
and so, putting one thing to another, matters might not be
so bad.
For it is to be observed, that the Count, on his own side,
even in his days of highest splendour, is not idle. Faded
dames of quality have many wants: the Count has not studied
in the convent Laboratory, or pilgrimed to the Count Saint-
Germain, in Westphalia, to no purpose. With loftiest
condescension he stoops to impart somewhat of his super-
natural secrets,--for a consideration. Rowland's Kalydor
is valuable; but what to the Beautifying-water of Count
Alessandro! He that will undertake to smooth wrinkles, and
make withered green parchment into a fair carnation skin,
is he not one whom faded dames of quality will delight to
honour? Or again, let the Beautifying-water succeed or not,
have not such dames, if calumny may be in aught believed,
another want? This want, too, the indefatigable Cagliostro
will supply,--for a consideration. For faded gentlemen of
quality the Count likewise has help. Not a charming Coun-
tess alone; but a " Wine of Egypt" (cantharides not being
unknown to him), sold in drops, more precious than nectar;
which what faded gentleman of quality would not purchase
with anything short of life? Consider now what may be
done with potions, washes, charms, love-philtres, among a
class of mortals, idle from the mother's womb; rejoicing to
be taught the Ionic dances, and meditating of love from
their tender nails!
Thus waxing, waning, broad - shining, or extinct, an
inconstant but unwearied Moon, rides on its course the
Cagliostric star. Thus are Count and Countess busy in
their vocation; thus do they spend the golden season of
their youth,--shall we say, "for the Greatest Happiness of
the greatest number"? Happy enough, had there been no
sumptuary or adultery or swindlery Law-acts; no Heaven
above, no Hell beneath; no flight of Time, and gloomy land
of Eld and Destitution and Desperation, towards which, by
law of Fate, they see themselves, at all moments, with
frightful regularity, unaidably drifting.
The prudent man provides against the inevitable. Already
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? 268 Carlyle's Essays
Count Cagliostro, with his love-philtres, his cantharidic Wine
of Egypt; nay far earlier, by his blue-flames and divining-
rods, as with the poor sheep Goldsmith of Palermo; and
ever since, by many a significant hint thrown out where the
scene suited,--has dabbled in the Supernatural. As his
seraphic Countess gives signs of withering, and one luxuriant
branch of industry will die and drop off, others must be pushed
into budding. Whether it was in England during what he
called his " first visit" in the year 1776 (for the before-first,
house-smearing visit was, reason or none, to go for nothing)
that he first thought of Prophecy as a trade, is unknown:
certain enough, he had begun to practise it then; and this in-
deed not without a glimpse of insight into the English national
character. Various, truly, are the pursuits of mankind;
whereon they would fain, unfolding the future, take Destiny
by surprise: with us, however, as a nation of shopkeepers,
they may be all said to centre in this one, Put money in thy
purse I 0 for a Fortunatus'- Pocket, with its ever-new
coined gold;--if, indeed, the true prayer were not rather:
0 for a Crassus'-Drink, of liquid gold, that so the accursed
throat of Avarice might for once have enough and to spare!
Meanwhile whoso should engage, keeping clear of the gallows,
to teach men the secret of making money, were not he
a Professor sure of audience? Strong were the general
Scepticism; still stronger the general Need and Greed.
Count Cagliostro, from his residence in Whitcombe Street,
it is clear, had looked into the mysteries of the Little-go; by
occult science knew the lucky number. Bish as yet was not;
but Lotteries were; gulls also were. The Count has his
Language-master, his Portuguese Jew, his nondescript Ex-
Jesuits, whom he puts forth as antennae, into coffee-houses,
to stir-up the minds of men. "Lord" Scott (a swindler
swindled), and Miss Fry, and many others, were they here,
could tell what it cost them: nay, the very Lawbooks, and
Lord Mansfield and Mr. Howarth speak of hundreds, and
jewel-boxes, and quite handsome booties. Thus can the
bustard pluck geese, and, if Law do get the carcass, live upon
their giblets;--now and then, however, finds a vulture, too
tough to pluck.
The attentive reader is no doubt curious to understand all
the What and the How of Cagliostro's procedure while England
was the scene. As we too are, and have been; but un-
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? Count Cagliostro
269
happily all in vain. To that English Life of uncertain
gender none, as was said, need in their utmost extremity
repair. Scarcely the very lodging of Cagliostro can be
ascertained; except incidentally that it was once in Whit-
combe Street; for a few days, in Warwick Court, Holborn;
finally, for some space, in the King's Bench Jail. Vain
were it, meanwhile, for any reverencer of genius to pilgrim
thither, seeking memorials of a great man. Cagliostro is
clean gone: on the strictest search, no token never so faint
discloses itself. He went, and left nothing behind him;--
except perhaps a few cast-clothes, and other inevitable
exuviae, long since, not indeed annihilated (this nothing can
be), yet beaten into mud, and spread as new soil over the
general surface of Middlesex and Surrey; floated by the
Thames into old Ocean; or flitting, the gaseous parts of them,
in the universal Atmosphere, borne thereby to remotest
corners of the Earth, or beyond the limits of the Solar System!
So fleeting is the track and habitation of man; so wondrous
the stuff he builds of; his house, his very house of houses
(what we call his body), were he the first of geniuses, will
evaporate in the strangest manner, and vanish even whither
we have said.
To us on our side, however, it is cheering to discover, for
one thing, that Cagliostro found antagonists worthy of him:
the bustard plucking geese, and living on their giblets, found
not our whole Island peopled with geese, but here and there,
as above hinted, with vultures, with hawks of still sharper
quality than his. Priddle, Aylett, Saunders, O'Reilly: let
these stand forth as the vindicators of English national
character. By whom Count Alessandro Cagliostro, as in
dim fluctuating outline indubitably appears, was bewritted,
arrested, fleeced, hatchelled, bewildered and bedevilled, till
the very Jail of King's Bench seemed a refuge from them.
A wholly obscure contest, as was natural; wherein, however,
to all candid eyes the vulturous and falconish character of our
Isle fully asserts itself; and the foreign Quack of Quacks,
with all his thaumaturgic Hemp-silks, Lottery-numbers,
Beauty-waters, Seductions, Phosphorus-boxes, and Wines
of Egypt, is seen matched, and nigh throttled, by the natural
unassisted cunning of English Attorneys. Whereupon the
bustard, feeling himself so pecked and plucked, takes wing,
and flies to foreign parts.
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? 270 Carlyle's Essays
One good thing he has carried with him, notwithstanding:
initiation into some primary arcana of Freemasonry. The
Quack of Quacks, with his primitive bias towards the super-
natural-mystificatory,must long have had his eye on Masonry;
which, with its blazonry and mummery, sashes, drawn sabres,
brothers Terrible, brothers Venerable (the whole so imposing
by candle-light), offered the choicest element for him. All
men profit by Union with men; the quack as much as an-
other; nay in these two words, Sworn Secrecy, alone has he
not found a very talisman! Cagliostro, then, determines on
Masonship. It was afterwards urged that the Lodge to
which he and his Seraphina got admission, for she also was
made a Mason, or Masoness, and had a riband-garter solemnly
bound on, with order to sleep in it for a nighty--was a Lodge
of low rank in the social scale; numbering not a few of the
pastrycook and hairdresser species. To which it could only
be replied, that these alone spoke French; that a man and
mason, though he cooked pastry, was still a man and mason.
Be this as it might, the apt Recipiendary is rapidly promoted
through the three grades of Apprentice, Companion, Master;
at the cost of five guineas. That of his being first raised into
the air, by means of a rope and pulley fixed in the ceiling,
"during which the heavy mass of his body must assuredly
have caused him a dolorous sensation;" and then being
forced blindfold to shoot himself (though with privily dis-
loaded pistol), in sign of courage and obedience: all this we
can esteem an apocrypha,--palmed on the Roman Inquisition,
otherwise prone to delusion. Five guineas, and some foolish
froth-speeches, delivered over liquor and otherwise, was the
cost. If you ask now, In what London Lodge was it?
Alas, we know not, and shall never know. Certain only that
Count Alessandro is a master-mason; that having once
crossed the threshold, his plastic genius will not stop there.
Behold, accordingly, he has bought from a "Bookseller"
certain manuscripts belonging to " one George Cofton, a man
absolutely unknown to him" and to us, which treat of the
"Egyptian Masonry "! In other words, Count Alessandro
will blow with his new five-guinea bellows; having always
occasion to raise the wind.
With regard specially to that huge soap-bubble of an
Egyptian Masonry which he blew, and as conjuror caught
many flies with, it is our painful duty to say a little; not
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? Count Cagliostro
271
much. The Inquisition-Biographer, with deadly fear of
heretical and democratical and black-magical Freemasons
before his eyes, has gone into the matter to boundless depths;
commenting, elucidating, even confuting: a certain exposi-
tory masonic Order-Book of Cagliostro's which he has laid
hand on, opens the whole mystery to him. The ideas he
declares to be Cagliostro's; the composition all a disciple's,
for the Count had no gift that way. What, then, does the
disciple set forth,--or, at lowest, the Inquisition-Biographer
say that he sets forth? Much, much that is not to the point.
Understand, however, that once inspired, by the abso-
lutely unknown George Cofton, with the notion of Egyptian
Masonry, wherein as yet lay much " magic and superstition,"
Count Alessandro resolves to free it of these impious ingre-
dients, and make it a kind of Last Evangel, or Renovator of
the Universe,--which so needed renovation. "As he did
not believe anything in matter of Faith," says our wooden
Familiar, "nothing could arrest him. " True enough: how
did he move along, then; to what length did he go?
"In his system he promises his followers to conduct them
to perfection, by means of a physical and moral regeneration;
to enable them by the former (or physical) to find the prime
matter, or Philosopher's Stone, and the acacia which consoli-
dates in man the forces of the most vigorous youth, and
renders him immortal; and by the latter (or moral) to pro-
cure them a Pentagon, which shall restore man to his
primitive state of innocence, lost by original sin. The
Founder supposes that this Egyptian Masonry was instituted
by Enoch and Elias, who propagated it in different parts
of the world: however, in time it lost much of its purity and
splendour. And so, by degrees, the Masonry of men had been
reduced to pure buffoonery; and that of women being almost
entirely destroyed, having now for most part no place in
common Masonry. Till at last, the zeal of the Grand Cophta
(so are the High-priests of Egypt named) had signalised itself
by restoring the Masonry of both sexes to its pristine lustre. "
With regard to the great question of constructing this in-
valuable Pentagon, which is to abolish Original Sin: how
you have to choose a solitary mountain, and call it Sinai;
and build a Pavilion on it to be named Sion, with twelve
sides, in every side a window, and three stories, one of which
is named Ararat; and there, with Twelve Masters, each
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? 272 Carlyle's Essays
at a window, yourself in the middle of them, to go through
unspeakable formalities, vigils, removals, fasts, toils, dis-
tresses, and hardly get your Pentagon after all,--with regard
to this great question and construction, we shall say nothing.
As little concerning the still grander and painfuller process -
of Physical Regeneration, or growing young again; a thing
not to be accomplished without a forty-days' course of
medicine, purgations, sweating-baths, fainting-fits, root-diet,
phlebotomy, starvation and desperation, more perhaps than
it is all worth. Leaving these interior solemnities, and
many high moral precepts of union, virtue, wisdom, and
doctrines of immortality and what not, will the reader
care to cast an indifferent glance on certain esoteric cere-
monial parts of this Egyptian Masonry,--as the Inquisition-
Biographer, if we miscellaneously cull from him, may enable
us?
"In all these ceremonial parts," huskily avers the wooden
Biographer, " you find as much sacrilege, profanation, super-
stition and idolatry, as in common Masonry: invocations of
the holy Name, prosternations, adorations lavished on the
Venerable, or head of the Lodge; aspirations, insufflations,
incense-burnings, fumigations, exorcisms of the Candidates
and the garments they are to take; emblems of the sacrosanct
Triad, of the Moon, of the Sun, of the Compass, Square, and
a thousand-thousand other iniquities and ineptitudes, which
are now well known in the world. "
"We above made mention of the Grand Cophta. By
this title has been designated the founder or restorer of
Egyptian Masonry. Cagliostro made no difficulty in ad-
mitting " (to me the Inquisitor) "that under such name he
was himself meant: now in this system the Grand Cophta
is compared to the Highest: the most solemn acts of worship
are paid him; he has authority over the Angels; he is
invoked on all occasions; everything is done in virtue of his
power; which you are assured he derives immediately from
God. Nay more: among the various rites observed in this
exercise of Masonry, you are ordered to recite the Vent
Creator spiritus, the Te Deum, and some Psalms of David:
to such an excess is impudence and audacity carried, that in
the Psalm, Memento, Domine, David et omnis mansuetudinis
ejus, every time the name David occurs, that of the Grand
Cophta is to be substituted.