Lives of alchemystical philosophers To which is added a...

A great shout rose up when Count Cagliostro passed before the inn. Marano had recognised his man, and flying out had contrived to stop the carriage, shouting as he did so—“Joseph Balsamo! It is Joseph! Coquin, where are my sixty ounces of gold?”

Cagliostro scarcely deigned to glance at the furious goldsmith; but in the middle of the profound silence which the incident occasioned among the crowd, a voice, apparently in the clouds, uttered with great distinctness the following words: “Remove this lunatic, who is possessed by infernal spirits!”

Entering Strasburg in triumph, Cagliostro paused in front of a large hall, where the equerries who had preceded him had already collected a considerable concourse of the sick. The famous empiric entered and cured them all, some simply by touch, others apparently by words or by a gratuity in money, the rest by his universal panacea; but the historian who records these things asserts that the sick persons thus variously treated had been carefully selected, the physician preferring to treat the more serious cases at the homes of the patients.

Cagliostro issued from the hall amidst universal acclamations, and was accompanied by the immense crowd to the doors of the magificent lodging which had been prepared against his arrival. The élite of Strasburg society was invited to a sumptuous repast, which was followed by a séance of transcendental magnetism, when he produced some extraordinary manifestations by the mediation of clairvoyant children of either sex, and whom he denominated his doves or pupils. The unspotted virginity and innocence of these children were an indispensable condition of success. They were chosen by himself, and received a mystical consecration at his hands. Then he pronounced over a crystal vessel, filled with water, the magical formulæ for the evocation of angelic intelligences as they are written in the celestial rituals. Supernal spirits became visible in the depths of the water, and responded to questions occasionally in an intelligible voice, but more often in characters which appeared on the surface of the water, and were visible to the pupils alone, who interpreted them to the public.

Contemporary testimony establishes that these manifestations, as a whole, were genuine, and there is little doubt of the mesmeric abilities of Cagliostro, who had probably become acquainted in the East with the phenomena of virginal lucidity, especially in boys, and had supplemented the oriental methods by the discoveries of Puséygur, which were at that time sufficiently notorious.

For three years Cagliostro remained at Strasburg and was fêted continually. Here he obtained a complete ascendency over the mind of the famous cardinal-archbishop, the Prince de Rohan. His first care, on taking up his abode in the town, was to prove his respect for the clergy by his generosity and zeal. He visited the sick in the hospitals, deferentially participated in the duties of the regular doctors, proposed his new remedies with prudence, did not condemn the old methods, but sought to unite new science with the science which was based on experience. He obtained the reputation of a bold experimenter in chemistry, of a sagacious physician, and a really enlightened innovator. The inhabitants of the crowded quarters regarded him as a man sent from God, operating miraculous cures, and dispensing riches from an inexhaustible source with which he was alone acquainted. Unheard-of cures were cited, and alchemical operations which surpassed even the supposed possibilities of the transmutatory art.

Anything which savoured of the marvellous was an attraction for the cardinal-archbishop, and he longed to see Cagliostro. An anonymous writer states that he sought an interview with him again and again unsuccessfully; for the cardinal-prince of trickery divined even at a distance the character of the prince-cardinal, and enveloped himself in a reserve which, to the imagination of his dupe, was like the loadstone to the magnet. Others represent him, however, courting the favour of the great ecclesiastic’s secretary, and so obtaining an introduction. At the first interview he showed some reserve, but permitted certain dazzling ideas to be glimpsed through the more ordinary tenour of his discourse. After a judicious period he admitted that he possessed a receipt for the manufacture of gold and diamonds. A supposed transmutation completed his conquest of the cardinal, and the Italian historian confesses that he accordingly lavished immense sums upon the virtuous pair, and to complete his folly, agreed to erect a small edifice, in which he was to experience a physical regeneration by means of the supernal and auriferous elixir of Cagliostro. The sum of twenty thousand francs was actually paid the adept to accomplish this operation.

Doubtless during his sojourn at Strasburg he propagated with zeal the mysteries of his Egyptian Freemasonry, and at length, laden with spoils, he repaired to Bordeaux, where he continued his healing in public, and then proceeded to Lyons, where for the space of three months he occupied himself with the foundation of a mother-lodge, and, according to the Italian biographer, here as elsewhere, in less creditable pursuits. At length he arrived at Paris, where, says the same authority, he soon became the object of general conversation, regard, and esteem. His curative powers were now but little exercised, for Paris abounded with mesmerists and healers, and the prodigies of simple magnetism were stale and unprofitable in consequence. He assumed now the rôle of a practical magician, and astonished the city by the evocation of phantoms, which he caused to appear, at the wish of the inquirer, either in a mirror or in a vase of clear water. These phantoms equally represented dead and living beings, and as occasionally collusion appears to have been well-nigh impossible, and as the theory of coincidence is preposterous, there is reason to suppose that he produced results which must sometimes have astonished himself. All Paris at any rate was set wondering at his enchantments and prodigies, and it is seriously stated that Louis XVI. was so infatuated with le divin Cagliostro, that he declared anyone who injured him should be considered guilty of treason.

At Versailles, and in the presence of several distinguished nobles, he is said to have caused the apparition in mirrors, vases, &c., not merely of the spectra of absent or deceased persons, but animated and moving beings of a phantasmal description, including many dead men and women selected by the astonished spectators.

The mystery which surrounded him abroad was deepened even when he received visitors at home. He had lived in the Rue Saint Claude, an isolated house surrounded by gardens and sheltered from the inconvenient curiosity of neighbours. There he established his laboratory, which no one might enter. He received in a vast and sumptuous apartment on the first floor. Lorenza lived a retired life, only being visible at certain hours before a select company, and in a diaphanous and glamourous costume. The report of her beauty spread through the city; she passed for a paragon of perfection, and duels took place on her account. Cagliostro was now no longer young, and Lorenza was in the flower of her charms. He is said for the first time to have experienced the pangs of jealousy on account of a certain Chevalier d’Oisemont, with whom she had several assignations. Private vexations did not, however, interfere with professional thaumaturgy, and the evocation of the illustrious dead was a common occurrence at certain magical suppers which became celebrated through all Paris. These were undoubtedly exaggerated by report, but as they all occurred within the doubtful precincts of his own house of mystery, they were in all probability fraudulent, for it must be distinctly remembered that in his normal character he was an unparalleled trickster, that the genuine phenomena which he occasionally produced were simply supplements to charlatanry, and not that his deceptions were aids to normally genuine phenomena.

On one occasion, according to the Mémoires authentiques pour servir à l’histoire du Comte de Cagliostro, the distinguished thaumaturgist announced that at a private supper, given to six guests, he would evoke the spirits of any dead persons whom they named to him, and that the phantoms, apparently substantial, should seat themselves at the banquet. The repast took place with the knowledge and, it may be supposed, with the connivance of Lorenza. At midnight the guests were assembled; a round table, laid for twelve, was spread, with unheard-of luxury, in a dining-room, where all was in harmony with the approaching Kabbalistic operation. The six guests, with Cagliostro, took their seats, and thus the ominous number thirteen were designed to be present at table.

The supper was served, the servants were dismissed with threats of immediate death if they dared to open the doors before they were summoned. Each guest demanded the deceased person whom he desired to see. Cagliostro took the names, placed them in the pocket of his gold-embroidered vest, and announced that with no further preparation than a simple invocation on his part the evoked spirits would appear in flesh and blood, for, according to the Egyptian dogma, there were in reality no dead. These guests of the other world, asked for and expected with trembling anxiety, were the Duc de Choiseul, Voltaire, d’Alembert, Diderot, the Abbé de Voisenon, and Montesquieu. Their names were pronounced slowly in a loud voice, and with all the concentrated determination of the adept’s will; and after a moment of intolerable doubt, the evoked guests appeared very unobtrusively, and took their seats with the quiet courtesy which had characterised them in life.

“There is no world beyond,” replied d’Alembert. “Death is simply the cessation of the evils which have tortured us. No pleasure is experienced, but, on the other hand, there is no suffering. I have not met with Mademoiselle Lespinasse, but I have not seen Lorignet. There is marked sincerity, moreover. Some deceased persons who have recently joined us inform me that I am almost forgotten. I am, however, consoled. Men are unworthy of the trouble we take about them. I never loved them, now I despise them.”

“I was not learned, as people commonly supposed. My ready wit adapted all that I read, and in writing I borrowed on every side. Thence comes the desultory character of my books, which will be unheard of in half a century. The Encyclopædia, with the merit of which I am honoured, does not belong to me. The duty of an editor is simply to set in order the choice of subjects. The man who showed most talent in the whole of the work was the compiler of its index, yet no one has dreamed of recognising his merits.”

“I praised the enterprise,” said Voltaire, “for it seemed well fitted to further my philosophical opinions. Talking of philosophy, I am none too certain that I was in the right. I have learned strange things since my death, and have conversed with half a dozen Popes. Clement XIV. and Benedict, above all, are men of infinite intelligence and good sense.”

“What is truly a pleasure to me,” said the Abbé Voisenon, “is that amongst us one is perfectly cured of the folly of intelligence. You cannot conceive how I have been bantered about my ridiculous little romances. I had almost confessed that I appreciated these puerilities at their true value, but whether the modesty of an academician is disbelieved in, or whether such frivolity is out of character with my age and profession, I expiate almost daily the mistakes of my mortal existence.”

Amid these marvels, Cagliostro proceeded with the dearest of all his projects, namely, the spread of his Egypto-masonic rite,[AN] into which ladies were subsequently admitted, a course of magic being opened for the purpose by Madame Cagliostro. The postulants admitted to this course were thirty-six in number, and all males were excluded. Thus Lorenza figured as the Grand Mistress of Egyptian Masonry, as her husband was himself the grand and sublime Copt. The fair neophytes were required to contribute each of them the sum of one hundred louis to abstain from all carnal connection with mankind, and to submit to everything which might be imposed on them. A vast mansion was hired in the Rue Verte, Faubourg Saint Honoré, at that period a lonely part of the city. The building was surrounded with gardens and magnificent trees. The séance for initiation took place shortly before midnight on the 7th of August 1785.

On entering the first apartment, says Figuier, the ladies were obliged to disrobe and assume a white garment, with a girdle of various colours. They were divided into six groups, distinguished by the tint of their cinctures. A large veil was also provided, and they were caused to enter a temple lighted from the roof, and furnished with thirty-six arm-chairs covered with black satin. Lorenza, clothed in white, was seated on a species of throne, supported by two tall figures, so habited that their sex could not be determined. The light was lowered by degrees till surrounding objects could scarcely be distinguished, when the Grand Mistress commanded the ladies to uncover their left legs as far as the thigh, and raising the right arm to rest it on a neighbouring pillar. Two young women then entered sword in hand, and with silk ropes bound all the ladies together by the arms and legs. Then after a period of impressive silence, Lorenza pronounced an oration, which is given at length, but on doubtful authority, by several biographers, and which preached fervidly the emancipation of womankind from the shameful bonds imposed on them by the lords of creation.

These bonds were symbolised by the silken ropes from which the fair initiates were released at the end of the harangue, when they were conducted into separate apartments, each opening on the Garden, where they made the most unheard-of experiences. Some were pursued by men who unmercifully persecuted them with barbarous solicitations; others encountered less dreadful admirers, who sighed in the most languishing postures at their feet. More than one discovered the counterpart of her own lover, but the oath they had all taken necessitated the most inexorable inhumanity, and all faithfully fulfilled what was required of them. The new spirit infused into regenerated woman triumphed along the whole line of the six and thirty initiates, who with intact and immaculate symbols re-entered triumphant and palpitating the twilight of the vaulted temple to receive the congratulations of the sovereign priestess.

The Grand Mistress announced that this was the genius of Truth, the immortal, the divine Cagliostro, issued without procreation from the bosom of our father Abraham, and the depositary of all that hath been, is, or shall be known on the universal earth. He was there to initiate them into the secrets of which they had been fraudulently deprived. The Grand Copt thereupon commanded them to dispense with the profanity of clothing, for if they would receive truth they must be as naked as itself. The sovereign priestess setting the example unbound her girdle and permitted her drapery to fall to the ground, and the fair initiates following her example exposed themselves in all the nudity of their charms to the magnetic glances of the celestial genius, who then commenced his revelations.

He informed his daughters that the much abused magical art was the secret of doing good to humanity. It was initiation into the mysteries of Nature, and the power to make use of her occult forces. The visions which they had beheld in the Garden where so many had seen and recognised those who were dearest to their hearts, proved the reality of hermetic operations. They had shewn themselves worthy to know the truth; he undertook to instruct them by gradations therein. It was enough at the outset to inform them that the sublime end of that Egyptian Freemasonry which he had brought from the very heart of the Orient was the happiness of mankind. This happiness was illimitable in its nature, including material enjoyments as much as spiritual peace, and the pleasures of the understanding.

The Marquis de Luchet, to whom we are indebted for this account, concludes the nebulous harangue of Cagliostro by the adept bidding his hearers abjure a deceiving sex, and to let the kiss of friendship symbolise what was passing in their hearts. The sovereign priestess instructed them in the nature of this friendly embrace.

Thereupon the Genius of Truth seated himself again upon the sphere of gold, and was borne away through the roof. At the same time the floor opened, the light blazed up, and a table splendidly adorned and luxuriously spread rose up from the ground. The ladies were joined by their lovers in propria persona; the supper was followed by dancing and various diversions till three o’clock in the morning.

About this time the Count Cagliostro was unwillingly compelled to concede to the continual solicitations of the poor and to resume his medical rôle. In a short time he was raised to the height of celebrity by a miraculous cure of the Prince de Soubise, the brother of the Cardinal de Rohan, who was suffering from a virulent attack of scarlet fever. From this moment the portrait of the adept was to be seen everywhere in Paris.

In the meantime, the cloud in his domestic felicity, to which a brief reference has been made already, began to spread. A certain adventuress, by name Madame de la Motte, surprised Lorenza one day in a tête-à-tête with the Chevalier d’Oisemont. The count at the time was far away from Paris, and the adventuress promised to keep the secret on condition that Lorenza should in turn do all in her power to establish her as an intimate friend in the house, having free entrance therein, and should persuade Cagliostro to place his knowledge and skill at her disposal, if ever she required it. The result of this arrangement was the complicity of Cagliostro in the extraordinary and scandalous affair of the Diamond Necklace. When the plot was exposed, Cagliostro was arrested with the other alleged conspirators, including the principal victim, the Cardinal de Rohan. He was exonerated, not indeed without honour, from the charge of which he was undoubtedly guilty, but his wife had fled to Rome at his arrest, and had rejoined her family. He himself began to tremble at his own notoriety, and grew anxious to leave France. He postponed till a more favourable period his grand project concerning the metropolitan lodge of the Egyptian rite.[AO] A personage, calling himself Thomas Ximenes, and claiming descent from the cardinal of that name, sought to reanimate his former masonic enthusiasm; but the vision of the Bastile seemed to be ever before his eyes, and neither this person, nor the great dignitaries of the Parisian lodges, could prevail with him.

In spite of his acquittal he nourished vengeance against the Court of France, and more than once he confided to his private friends that he should make his voice heard when he had passed the frontier. He prepared to depart, and one day his disconsolate adepts learned that he was on the road to England.

Once in London he recovered his energy. He was received with great honour; many of his disciples from Lyons and Paris followed him. The English masons invited him to the metropolitan lodge, and gave him the first place, that of grand orient. He was entreated to convene a masonic lodge of the Egyptian rite, and consented with some sadness, for the memory of the brilliant Paris lodge which he had been on the point of founding was incessantly before him. He could not console himself for the fall of that beautiful and long-cherished plan, which had cost him so much study, pains, and preaching.

It was from this discreet distance that Cagliostro addressed his famous Letter to the People of France, which was translated into a number of languages, and circulated widely through Europe. It predicted the French Revolution, the demolishment of the Bastile, and the rise of a great prince who would abolish the infamous lettres de cachet, convoke the States-General, and re-establish the true religion.

The publication was intemperate in its language and revolutionary in its sentiments, and close upon its heels followed his well-known quarrel with the Courrier de l’Europe, which resulted in the exposure of the real life of Cagliostro from beginning to end.

Dreading the rage of his innumerable dupes, and extreme measures on the part of his creditors, he hastened to quit London, disembarked in Holland, crossed Germany, took refuge in Basle, where the patriarchal hospitality of the Swiss cantons to some extent reassured the unmasked adept. From the moment, however, of this exposure, the descent of Cagliostro was simply headlong in its rapidity. Nevertheless, he was followed by some of his initiates, who pressed him to return to France, assuring him of the powerful protection of exalted masonic dignitaries. In his hesitation he wrote to the Baron de Breteuil, the king’s minister of the house, but, as it chanced, a personal enemy of the Cardinal de Rohan. Considering Cagliostro as a protégé of the prince, he replied that if he had sufficient effrontery to set foot within the limits of the kingdom, he should be arrested and transferred to a prison in Paris, there to await prosecution as a common swindler, who should answer to the royal justice for his criminal life.

From this moment Cagliostro saw that he was a perpetual exile from France, and feeling in no sense assured of his safety even in Switzerland, he left Basle for Aix, in Savoy. He was ordered to quit that town in eight and forty hours. At Roveredo, a dependency of Austria, the same treatment awaited him. He migrated to Trent, and announced himself as a practitioner of lawful medicine, but the prince-bishop who was sovereign of the country discerned the cloven hoof of the sorcerer beneath the doctor’s sober dress, and showed him in no long space of time his hostility to magical practices. The wandering hierophant of Egyptian masonry, somewhat sorely pressed, took post to Rome, and reached the Eternal City after many vicissitudes. Here, according to Saint-Félix and Figuier, he was rejoined by his wife; according to the Italian biographer, Lorenza had accompanied him in his wanderings, and persuaded him to seek refuge in Rome, being sick unto death of her miserable course of life. The former statement is, on the whole, the most probable, as it is difficult to suppose that she left Italy to rejoin Cagliostro at Passy, and she appears to have returned to him with marked repugnance. She endeavoured to lead him back to religion, which had never been eradicated from her heart. He lived for some time with extraordinary circumspection, and consented at last to see a Benedictine monk, to whom he made his confession. The Holy Inquisition, which doubtless had scrutinised all his movements, is said to have been deceived for a time, and he was favourably received by several cardinals.

He lived for a year in perfect liberty, occupied with the private study of medicine. During this time he endeavoured to obtain loans from the initiates of his Egyptian rite who were scattered over France and Germany, but they did not arrive, and the sublime Copt, the illuminated proprietor of the stone philosophical and the medicine yclept metallic, came once more, to the eternal disgrace of Osiris, Isis, and Anubis, on the very verge of want.

His extremity prompted him to renew his relations with the masonic societies within the area of the Papal States. A penalty of death hung over the initiates of the superior grades, and their lodges were in consequence surrounded with great mystery, and were convened in subterranean places. He was persuaded to found a lodge of Egyptian Freemasonry in Rome itself, from which moment Lorenza reasonably regarded him as lost. One of his own adepts betrayed him; he was arrested on the 27th of September 1789, by order of the Holy Office, and imprisoned in the Castle of St Angelo. An inventory of his papers was taken, and all his effects were sealed up. The process against him was drawn up with the nicest inquisitorial care during the long period of eighteen months. When the trial came on he was defended by the Count Gætano Bernardini, advocate of the accused before the sacred and august tribunal, and to this pleader in ordinary the impartial and benign office, of its free grace and pleasure, did add generously, as counsel, one Monsignor Louis Constantini, “whose knowledge and probity,” saith an unbought and unbuyable witness (inquisitorially inspired), “were generally recognised.”

They did not conceal from him the gravity of his position, advised him to refrain from basing his defence on a series of denials, promising to save him from the capital forfeit, and so he was persuaded to confess everything, was again reconciled to the church; and being almost odoriferous with genuine sanctity, on the 21st of March 1791 he was carried before the general assembly of the purgers of souls by fire, before the Pope on the 7th of the following April, when the advocates pleaded with so much eloquence that they retired in the agonies of incipient strangulation, Cagliostro repeated his avowal, and as a natural consequence of the unbought eloquence and the purchased confession, the penalty of death was pronounced.

When, however, the shattered energies of the advocates were a little recruited, a recommendation of mercy was addressed to the Pope, the sentence was commuted to perpetual imprisonment, and the condemned man was consigned to the Castle of St Angelo. After an imprisonment of two years, he died, God knows how, still in the prime of life, at the age of fifty.