Cagliostro E-Book

W. R. H. Trowbridge

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

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Beschreibung

The mention of Cagliostro always suggests the marvellous, the mysterious, the unknown. There is something cabalistic in the very sound of the name that, considering the occult phenomena performed by the strange personality who assumed it, is curiously appropriate. As an incognito it is, perhaps, the most suitable ever invented. The name fits the man like a glove; and, recalling the mystery in which his career was wrapped, one involuntarily wonders if it has ever been cleared up. In a word, what was Cagliostro really? Charlatan, adventurer, swindler, whose impostures were finally exposed by the ever-memorable Necklace Affair in which he was implicated? Or "friend of humanity," as he claimed, whose benefactions excited the enmity of the envious, who took advantage of his misfortunes to calumniate and ruin him? Knave, or martyr—which?

Leseprobe

CAGLIOSTRO

Count Cagliostro.

CAGLIOSTRO

THE SPLENDOUR AND MISERY OF A MASTER OF MAGIC

BY

W. R. H. TROWBRIDGE

PREFACE

Though much has been written about Cagliostro, most of it is confined to articles in encyclopedias and magazines, or to descriptive paragraphs in works dealing with magic, freemasonry and the period in which he lived.[1] This material may be described as a footnote which has been raised to the dignity of a page of history. It is based on contemporary records inspired by envy, hatred and contempt in an age notoriously passionate, revengeful and unscrupulous. It is, moreover, extremely superficial, being merely a repetition of information obtained second-hand by compilers apparently too ignorant or too lazy to make their own investigations. Even M. Funck-Brentano, whose brilliant historical monographs have earned him a deservedly high reputation, is not to be relied upon. In the sequel[2] to his entertaining account of the affair of the Diamond Necklace, the brief chapter he devotes to Cagliostro contains so many inaccuracies as to suggest that, like the majority of his predecessors, he was content to impart his information without previously taking the trouble to examine the sources from which it was derived.

It has been said that every book on Cagliostro must be a book against him. With this opinion I totally disagree. In choosing Cagliostro as the subject of an historical memoir I was guided at first, I admit, by the belief that he was the arch-impostor he is popularly supposed to be. With his mystery, magic, and highly sensational career he seemed just the sort of picturesque personality I was in search of. The moment, however, I began to make my researches I was astonished to find how little foundation there was in point of fact for the popular conception. The deeper I went into the subject—how deep this has been the reader may gather from the Bibliography, which contains but a portion of the material I have sifted—the more convinced I became of the fallacy of this conception. Under such circumstances there seemed but two alternatives open to me: either to abandon the subject altogether as unsuited for the purpose I had in view, or to follow the line of least resistance and, dishonestly adhering to the old method, which from custom had almost become de rigueur, help to perpetuate an impression I believed to be unfounded and unjust.

On reflection I have adopted neither course. Irritation caused by the ignorance and carelessness of the so-called “authorities” awoke a fresh and unexpected interest in their victim; and I decided to stick to the subject I had chosen and treat it for the first time honestly. As Baron de Gleichen says in his Souvenirs, “Enough ill has been said of Cagliostro. I intend to speak well of him, because I think this is always preferable providing one can, and at least I shall not bore the reader by repeating what he has already heard.”

Such a statement made in connection with such a character as Cagliostro is popularly supposed to be will, no doubt, expose me to the charge of having “whitewashed” him. This, however, I emphatically deny. “Whitewashing,” as I understand this term, is a plausible attempt to portray base or detestable characters as worthy of esteem by palliating their vices and attributing noble motives to their crimes. This manner of treating historical figures is certainly not one of which I can be accused, as those who may have read previous biographical books of mine will admit. Whatever sympathy for Cagliostro my researches may have evoked it has always been exceeded by contempt of those who, combining an unreasoning prejudice with a slovenly system of compilation, have repeated the old charges against him with parrot-like stupidity. The object of this book is not so much an attempt to vindicate Cagliostro as to correct and revise, if possible, what I believe to be a false judgment of history.

W. R. H. Trowbridge

London, August 1910.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The books and documents relating to Cagliostro are very numerous. Their value, however, is so questionable that in making a critical choice it is extremely difficult to avoid including many that are worthless.

In the French Archives:

A dossier entitled Documents à l’aide desquels la police de Paris a cherché à établir, lors du procès du Collier, que Cagliostro n’était autre qu’un aventurier nommé Joseph Balsamo, qui avait déjà séjourné à Paris en 1772:

Lettre adressée par un anonyme au commissaire Fontaine, remise de Palerme, le 2 Nov., 1786.

Plainte adressée à M. de Sartine par J. Balsamo contre sa femme.

Ordre de M. de Sartine au commissaire Fontaine de dresser procès-verbal de la capture de la dame Balsamo, 23 Janvier, 1773.

Procès-verbal de capture de la dame Balsamo, 1 Fevrier, 1773.

Interrogatoire de la dame Balsamo, 20 Fevrier, 1773.

Rapport au Ministre.

The above have also been printed in full in Emile Campardon’s Marie Antoinette et le Procès du Collier.

The following documents are unprinted:

Procès-verbal de capture des sieur et dame Cagliostro.

Procès-verbal de perquisition fait par le commissaire Chesnon le 23 Août, 1785, chez le sieur Cagliostro.

Interrogatoire de Cagliostro le 30 Janvier, 1786.

Minute des confrontations des témoins de Cagliostro.

Procès-verbal de la remise faite à Cagliostro, lors de sa mise en liberté, des effets saisis à son domicile le jour de sa mise en êtat d’arrestation.

Journal du libraire Hardy.

Copie d’une lettre écrite de Londres par un officier français remise á Paris le 19 Juillet 1786.

Lettre au peuple français.

Published Works:

Vie de Joseph Balsamo, connu sous le nom de Comte Cagliostro; extraite de la procédure instruite contre lui à Rome, en 1790, traduite d’après l’original italien, imprimé à la Chambre Apostolique.

Courier de l’Europe, gazette anglo-française, September, October, November, 1786; also Gazette de Hollande, Gazette d’Utrecht, Gazette de Leyde, Gazette de Florence, Courier du Bas-Rhin, Journal de Berlin, Public Advertizer, Feuille Villageoise, and Moniteur Universel.

Cagliostro démasqué à Varsovie en 1780.

Nachricht von des berüchtigten Cagliostro aufenthalte in Mitau, im jahre 1779 (Countess Elisa von der Recke).

Lettres sur la Suisse en 1781 (J. B. de Laborde).

Geschichten, geheime und räthselhafte Menschen (F. Bulau); or the French translation by William Duckett Personnages Énigmatiques.

Souvenirs de Baron de Gleichen.

Souvenirs de la Marquise de Créquy.

Correspondance littéraire (Grimm).

Mémoires récréatifs, scientifiques, et anecdotiques du physicien—aéronaute E. G. Roberson.

Mémoires authentiques de Comte Cagliostro (spurious, by the Marquis de Luchet).

Mémoires de Brissot, Abbé Georgel, Baronne d’Oberkirch, Madame du Hausset, Grosley, Bachaumont, Métra, Casanova, Comte Beugnot, and Baron de Besenval.

Réflexions de P. J. J. N. Motus.

Cagliostro: La Franc-Maçonnerie et l’Occultisme au XVIIIᵉ siècle (Henri d’Alméras).

Orthodoxie Maçonnique (Ragon).

La Franc-Maçonne, ou Révélations des Mystères des Francs-Maçons.

Annales de l’origine du Grand Orient en France.

Acta Latomorum (Thory).

Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du Jacobinisme (Abbé Barruel).

Histoire du Merveilleux (Figuier).

Histoire de la Franc-Maçonnerie (Clavel).

Histoire philosophique de la Maçonnerie (Kauffmann et Cherpin).

Les Sectes et les sociétés secrètes (Comte Le Couteulx de Canteleu).

Schlosser’s History of the Eighteenth Century.

Histoire de la Révolution Française: Les Révolutionnaires Mystiques (Louis Blanc).

Histoire de France: XVIIIᵉ siècle (Henri Martin).

Histoire de France: L’Affaire du Collier (Michelet).

Recueil de toutes les pièces (31) qui out paru dans l’affaire de M. le Cardinal de Rohan.

Marie Antoinette et le Procès du Collier (Emile Campardon).

L’Affaire du Collier (Funck-Brentano).

The Diamond Necklace (Henry Vizetelly).

Marie Antoinette et le Procès du Collier (Chaix d’Est-Ange).

La Dernière Pièce du fameux Collier.

Mémoire du Sieur Sacchi.

Lettre de Labarthe à l’archéologue Seguier.

Lettre d’un Garde du Roi (Manuel).

Lettres du Comte de Mirabeau à ... sur Cagliostro et Lavater.

Requête au Parlement par le Comte de Cagliostro.

Mémoire pour le Comte de Cagliostro, demandeur, contre M. Chesnon le fils et le sieur de Launay.

Lettre au Peuple Anglais par le Comte de Cagliostro.

Theveneau de Morande (Paul Robiquet).

Liber Memorialis de Caleostro dum esset Roboretti.

Alessandro di Cagliostro. Impostor or Martyr? (Charles Sotheran).

Count Cagliostro (Critical and Miscellaneous Essays; Carlyle).

Vieux papiers, vieilles maisons (G. Lenôtre).

Italiänische Reise (Goethe).

CONTENTS

PART I

Chap.

I

The Power of Prejudice

II

Giuseppe Balsamo

PART II

I

Cagliostro in London

II

Eighteenth Century Occultism

III

Masked and Unmasked

IV

The Conquest of the Cardinal

V

Cagliostro in Paris

VI

The Diamond Necklace Affair

VII

Cagliostro Returns to London

VIII

“Nature’s Unfortunate Child”

Index

CAGLIOSTRO

PART I

CHAPTER I

THE POWER OF PREJUDICE

I

The mention of Cagliostro always suggests the marvellous, the mysterious, the unknown. There is something cabalistic in the very sound of the name that, considering the occult phenomena performed by the strange personality who assumed it, is curiously appropriate. As an incognito it is, perhaps, the most suitable ever invented. The name fits the man like a glove; and, recalling the mystery in which his career was wrapped, one involuntarily wonders if it has ever been cleared up. In a word, what was Cagliostro really? Charlatan, adventurer, swindler, whose impostures were finally exposed by the ever-memorable Necklace Affair in which he was implicated? Or “friend of humanity,” as he claimed, whose benefactions excited the enmity of the envious, who took advantage of his misfortunes to calumniate and ruin him? Knave, or martyr—which?

This question is more easily answered by saying what Cagliostro was not than what he was. It has been stated by competent judges—and all who have studied the subject will agree with them—that there is, perhaps, no other equally celebrated figure in modern history whose character is so baffling to the biographer. Documents and books relating to him abound, but they possess little or no value. The most interesting are frequently the most unreliable. The fact that material so questionable should provide as many reasons for rejecting its evidence—which is, by the way, almost entirely hostile—as for accepting it, has induced theosophists, spiritualists, occultists, and all who are sympathetically drawn to the mysterious to become his apologists. By these amiable visionaries Cagliostro is regarded as one of the princes of occultism whose mystical touch has revealed the arcana of the spiritual world to the initiated, and illumined the path along which the speculative scientist proceeds on entering the labyrinth of the supernatural. To them the striking contrasts with which his agitated existence was chequered are unimpeachable witnesses in his favour, and they stubbornly refuse to accept the unsatisfactory and contemptuous explanation of his miracles given by those who regard him as an impostor.

Unfortunately, greater weight is attached to police reports than to theosophical eulogies; and something more substantial than the enthusiasm of the occultists is required to support their contention. However, those who take this extravagant (I had almost said ridiculous) view of Cagliostro may obtain what consolation they can from the fact—which cannot be stated too emphatically—that though it is utterly impossible to grant their prophet the halo they would accord him, it is equally impossible to accept the verdict of his enemies.

In reality, it is by the evil that has been said and written of him that he is best known. In his own day, with very few exceptions, those whom he charmed or duped—as you will—by acts that in any case should have inspired gratitude rather than contempt observed a profound silence. When the Necklace Affair opened its flood-gates of ridicule and calumny, his former admirers saw him washed away with indifference. To defend him was to risk being compromised along with him; and, no doubt, as happens in our own times, the pleasure of trailing in the mud one who has fallen was too delightful to be neglected. It is from this epoch—1785—when people were engaged in blighting his character rather than in trying to judge it, that nearly all the material relating to Cagliostro dates. With only such documents, then, to hand as have been inspired by hate, envy, or simply a love of detraction, the difficulty of forming a correct opinion of him is apparent.

The portrait Carlyle has drawn of Cagliostro is the one most familiar to English readers. Now, though Carlyle’s judgments have in the main been upheld by the latest historians (who have had the advantage of information to which he was denied access), nevertheless, like everybody else, he made mistakes. In his case, however, these mistakes were inexcusable, for they were due, not to the lack of data, but to the strong prejudices by which he suffered himself to be swayed to the exclusion of that honesty and fairness he deemed so essential to the historian. He approached Cagliostro with a mind already biassed against him. Distasteful at the start, the subject on closer acquaintance became positively repugnant to him. The flagrant mendacity of the documentary evidence—which, discount it as he might, still left the truth in doubt—only served to strengthen his prejudice. It could surely be no innocent victim of injustice who aroused contempt so malevolent, hatred so universal. The mystery in which he masqueraded was alone sufficient to excite suspicion. And yet, whispered the conscience of the historian enraged at the mendacity of the witnesses he consulted, what noble ideals, what lofty aspirations misjudged, misunderstood, exposed to ridicule, pelted with calumny, may not have sought shelter under that mantle of mystery?

“Looking at thy so attractively decorated private theatre, wherein thou actedst and livedst,” he exclaims, “what hand but itches to draw aside thy curtain; overhaul thy paste-boards, paint-pots, paper-mantles, stage-lamps; and turning the whole inside out, find thee in the middle thereof!”

And suiting the action to the word, he clutches with an indignant hand at that metaphorical curtain; but in the very act of drawing it aside his old ingrained prejudice asserts itself. Bah! what else but a fraud can a Grand Cophta of Egyptian Masonry be? Can a Madame von der Recke, a Baroness d’Oberkirch, whose opinions at least are above suspicion, be other than right? The man is a shameless liar; and if he has been so shamelessly lied about in turn, he has only got what he deserved. And exasperated that such a creature should have been permitted even for a moment to cross the threshold of history, Carlyle dropped the curtain his fingers “itched to draw aside” and proceeded to empty all the vials of his wrath on Cagliostro.

In his brilliant essay, in the Diamond Necklace, in theFrench Revolution—wherever he meets him—he brands him as a “King of Liars,” a “Prince of Scoundrels,” an “Arch-Quack,” “Count Front of Brass-Pinch-beckostrum,” “Bubby-jock,” “a babbling, bubbling Turkey-cock,” et cetera. But such violence defeats its intention. When on every page the historian’s conscience is smitten with doubts that prejudice cannot succeed in stilling, the critical and inquisitive reader comes to the conclusion he knows less about the real Cagliostro at the end than he did at the beginning. He has merely seen Carlyle in one of his fine literary rages; it is all very interesting and memorable, but by no means what he wanted. As a matter of fact, in this instance Carlyle’s judgment is absolutely at sea; and the modern biographers of Cagliostro do not even refer to it.

Nevertheless, these writers have come pretty much to the same conclusion. M. Henri d’Alméras, whose book on Cagliostro is the best, speaking of the questionable evidence that so incensed Carlyle, declares “the historian, even in handling it with care, finds himself willy-nilly adopting the old prejudice. That is to say, every book written on Cagliostro, even under the pretext of rehabilitating him, can only be a book against him.” But while holding to the old conventional opinion, he considers that “a rogue so picturesque disarms anger, and deserves to be treated with indulgence.” D’Alméras pictures Cagliostro as a sort of clown, which is certainly the most curious view ever taken of the “Front of Brass,” and even more unjustifiable than Carlyle’s.

“What a good-natured, amusing, original rascal!” he exclaims. “The Figaro of Alchemy, more intelligent than Diafoirus, and more cunning than Scapin. And with what imperturbable serenity did he lie in five or six languages, as well as in a gibberish that had no meaning at all. To lie like that gives one a great superiority over the majority of one’s fellow-men. He did not lie because he was afraid to speak the truth, but because, as in the case of many another, falsehood was in him an excessive development of the imagination. He was himself, moreover, the first victim of his lies. By the familiar phenomenon of auto-suggestion, he ended by believing what he said from force of saying it. If he was successful, in a certain sense, he deserved to be.”

From all of which it may be gathered that whether Cagliostro is depicted as an Apostle of Light by his friends the occultists, or a rank impostor by his enemies, of whom Carlyle is the most implacable and d’Alméras the most charitably inclined, the real man has been as effectually hidden from view by prejudice as by the mystery in which he wrapped himself. But heavy though the curtain is that conceals him, it is perhaps possible for the hand that “itches” to draw it aside. As a matter of fact, no really honest attempt has ever been made to do so. It is true it is only a fleeting, somewhat nebulous, glimpse that can be obtained of this singular personality. There is, moreover, one condition to be observed. Before this glimpse can be obtained it is essential that some attempt should be made to discover, if possible, who Cagliostro was.

II

Considering that one has only to turn to the biographical dictionaries and encyclopedias to find it definitely asserted that “Count Cagliostro” was the best known of many aliases assumed by Giuseppe Balsamo, a Sicilian adventurer born in Palermo in 1743 or 1748, the above statement would appear to be directly contrary to recorded fact. For though biographical dictionaries and encyclopedias are notoriously superficial and frequently misleading, they are perhaps in this instance accurate enough for the purpose of casual inquiry, which is after all what they are compiled for. Indeed, this Balsamo legend is so plausible an explanation of the mystery of Cagliostro’s origin that, for lack of any other, it has satisfied all who are entitled to be regarded as authorities. The evidence, however, on which they have based their belief is circumstantial rather than positive.

Now circumstantial evidence, as everybody knows, is not always to be trusted. There are many cases on record of persons having been condemned on the strength of it who were afterwards found to be innocent. In this particular case, moreover, doubts do exist, and all “authorities” have admitted the fact. Those prejudiced against Cagliostro have agreed to attach no importance to them, those prejudiced in his favour the greatest. To the occultists they are the rock on which their faith in him is founded. Their opinion, however, may be ruled aside as untenable, for the doubts are entirely of a negative character, and suggest no counter-theory of identity whatever.

Nevertheless, since they exist they are worth examining—not so much for the purpose of questioning the accuracy of the “authorities” as to show how the Balsamo legend, which plays so important a part in the history of Cagliostro, originated.

It was not till Cardinal Rohan entangled him in the Diamond Necklace Affair that the name of Cagliostro hitherto familiar only to a limited number of people who, as the case might be, had derived benefit or suffered misfortune from a personal experience of his fabulous powers, acquired European notoriety.

The excitement caused by this cause célèbre, as is well known, was intense and universal. The arrest of the Cardinal in the Oeil-de-Boeuf at Versailles, in the presence of the Court and a great concourse of people from Paris, as he was about to celebrate mass in the Royal Chapel on Assumption Day, on the charge of having purchased a necklace for 1,600,000 livres for the Queen, who denied all knowledge of the transaction; the subsequent disappearance of the jewel and the suspicion of intent to swindle the jeweller which attached itself to both Queen and Cardinal; the further implication of the Countess de Lamotte, with her strangely romantic history; of Cagliostro, with his mystery and magic; and of a host of other shady persons—these were elements sensational enough to strike the dullest imagination, fire the wildest curiosity, and rivet the attention of all Europe upon the actors in so unparalleled a drama.

CARDINAL DE ROHAN

(From an old French print)

After the Cardinal, whose position as Grand Almoner of France (a sort of French Archbishop of Canterbury, so to speak) made him the protagonist of this drama, the self-styled Count Cagliostro was the figure in whom the public were most interested. The prodigies he was said to have performed, magnified by rumour, and his strange undecipherable personality gave him an importance out of all proportion to the small part he played in the famous Affair of the Necklace. Speculation as to his origin was naturally rife. But neither the police nor the lawyers could throw any light on his past. The evidence of the Countess de Lamotte, who in open court denounced him as an impostor formerly known as Don Tiscio, a name under which she declared he had fleeced many people in various parts of Spain, was too palpably untrustworthy and ridiculous to be treated seriously. Cagliostro himself did, indeed, attempt to satisfy curiosity, but the fantastic account he gave of his career only served—as perhaps he intended—to deepen its mystery.

The more it was baffled, the keener became the curiosity to discover a secret so cleverly guarded. The “noble traveller,” as he described himself with ridiculous pomposity on his examination, confessed that Cagliostro was only one of the several names he had assumed in the course of his life. An alias—he had termed it incognito—is always suspicious. Coupled, as it was in his case, with alchemical experiments, prognostications, spiritualist séances, and quack medicines, it suggested rascality. From ridicule to calumny is but a step, and for every voice raised in defence of his honesty there were a dozen to decry him.

On the day he was set at liberty—for he had no difficulty in proving his innocence—eight or ten thousand people came en masse to offer him their congratulations. The court-yard, the staircase, the very rooms of his house in the Rue St. Claude were filled with them. But this ovation, flattering though it was to his vanity, was intended less as a mark of respect to him than as an insult to the Queen, who was known to regard the verdict as a stigma on her honour, and whose waning popularity the hatred engendered by this scandalous affair had completely obliterated. Banished the following day by the Government, which sought to repair the prestige of the throne by persecuting and calumniating those who might be deemed instrumental in shattering it, Cagliostro lost what little credit the trial had left him. Whoever he was, the world had made up its mind what he was, and its opinion was wholly unfavourable to the “noble traveller.”

From France, which he left on June 21, 1786, Cagliostro went to England. It was here, in the following September, that the assertion was made for the first time by the Courier de l’Europe, a French paper published in London, that he was Giuseppe Balsamo. This announcement, made with every assurance of its accuracy, was at once repeated by other journals throughout Europe. It would be interesting, though not particularly important, to know how the Courier de l’Europe obtained its information. It is permissible, however, to conjecture that the Anglo-French journal had been informed of the rumour current in Palermo at the time of Cagliostro’s imprisonment in the Bastille that he was a native of that city, and on investigating the matter decided there were sufficient grounds for identifying him with Balsamo.

Be this as it may, it is the manner in which the statement made by the Courier de l’Europe appears to be confirmed that gives the whole theory its weight.

On December 2, 1876—dates are important factors in the evidence—Fontaine, the chief of the Paris police, received a very curious anonymous letter from Palermo. The writer began by saying that he had read in the Gazette de Leyde of September 25 an article taken from the Courier de l’Europe stating that the “famous Cagliostro was called Balsamo,” from which he gathered that the Balsamo referred to was the same who in 1773 had caused his wife to be shut up in Sainte Pélagie at Paris for having deserted him, and who had afterwards applied to the courts for her release. To confirm Fontaine in this opinion, he gave him in detail the history of this Balsamo’s career, which had been imparted to him on June 2 by the said Balsamo’s uncle, Antonio Braconieri, who was firmly convinced that his nephew, of whom he had heard nothing for some years, was none other than Cagliostro. As he learnt this the day after Cagliostro’s acquittal and release from the Bastille, the news of which could not have reached Palermo in less than a week, it proves that Braconieri’s conviction was formed long before the Press began to maintain it.

In fact the anonymous writer stated that this conviction was prevalent in Palermo as far back as the previous year, when the news arrived there of the arrest of Cagliostro in connection with the Diamond Necklace Affair.

He went on to say that he had personally ridiculed the report at the time, but having reflected on the grounds that Braconieri had given him for believing it “he had come to the conclusion that Count Cagliostro was Giuseppe Balsamo of Palermo or that Antonio Braconieri, his uncle, was a scoundrel worthy of being the uncle of M. le Comte de Cagliostro.” As it was not till November 2 that this somewhat ingenuous person sent anonymously to Fontaine the information he had received on June 2 from Braconieri, his reflections on the veracity of the latter, one suspects, were scarcely complimentary. However, such doubts as he might still have cherished were finally set at rest on October 31, when Antonio Braconieri met him in one of the chief thoroughfares of Palermo and showed him a Gazette de Florence which confirmed everything Braconieri had told him more than four months before. Hereupon, the anonymous individual, convinced at last beyond the shadow of a doubt that the “soi-disant Count Cagliostro was really Giuseppe Balsamo of Palermo,” decided to inform the chief of the Paris police of his discovery.

Such is the history of the proofs in favour of the Balsamo legend. Now to examine the proofs.

As the late M. Émile Campardon was the first to unearth this anonymous letter together with the official report upon it in the National Archives, and as his opinion is the one commonly accepted, it will be sufficient to quote what he has to say on the subject.

“The adventures,” he asks, “of Giuseppe Balsamo and those of Alessandro Cagliostro—do they belong to the history of the same career? Was the individual who had his wife shut up in Sainte Pélagie in 1773 the same who in 1786 protested so vehemently against the imprisonment of his wife?[3]

“Everything goes to prove it. The Countess Cagliostro was born in Rome; Balsamo’s wife was likewise a Roman. The maiden name of both was Feliciani.

“Madame Balsamo was married at fourteen; the Countess Cagliostro at the time of her marriage was still a child.

“Cagliostro stated at his trial that his wife did not know how to write; Madame Balsamo at her trial also declared she could not write.

“Her husband at any rate could. At the time of his petition against his wife Balsamo signed two documents which are still to be seen in the Archives. By comparing—as Fontaine had done—these two signatures with a letter written whilst in the Bastille by Cagliostro the experts declared the writing of Balsamo and that of Cagliostro to be identically the same.

“Furthermore, according to the statement of Antonio Braconieri, Balsamo had frequently written him under the name of Count Cagliostro. Nor had he invented the name, for Giuseppe Cagliostro of Messina, steward of the Prince of Villafranca, was Braconieri’s uncle, and consequently Giuseppe Balsamo’s great-uncle.

“If to these probabilities one adds certain minor resemblances—such as Cagliostro’s declaration that Cardinal Orsini and the Duke of Alba could vouch for the truth of the account he gave of himself, who were personages by whom Balsamo was known to have been employed; the fact that Cagliostro spoke the Sicilian dialect, and that Balsamo had employed magic in his swindling operations—it is scarcely credible that lives and characters so identical could belong to two different beings.”

The arguments in favour of this hypothesis are very plausible and apparently as convincing as such circumstantial evidence usually is. It is possible, however, as stated above, to question the accuracy of the conclusion thus reached for the following reasons.

(1) The basis of the supposition that the Countess Cagliostro and Madame Balsamo were the same rests entirely on coincidence.

Granted that both happened to be Romans, that the maiden name of both was Feliciani, that both were married extremely young, and that neither could write. The fact that both were Romans is no argument at all. Though their maiden name was Feliciani, it was a comparatively common one—there were several families of Feliciani in Rome, and for that matter all over Italy. Madame Balsamo’s father came from Calabria. Her Christian name was Lorenza. The statement that the Countess Cagliostro was likewise called Lorenza and changed her name to Seraphina, by which she was known, is based entirely on supposition. That both were married very young and that neither knew how to write, scarcely calls for comment. Italian women usually married in early girlhood, and very few, if any, of the class to which Seraphina Cagliostro and Lorenza Balsamo belonged could write.

SERAPHINIA FELICHIANI.

COMTESSE DE CAGLIOSTRO.

(From a very rare French print)

(2) The testimony of the experts as to the remarkable similarity between the writing of Balsamo and Cagliostro requires something more than an official statement to that effect to be convincing. At the time the experts made their report, the French Government were trying to silence the calumnies with which Marie Antoinette was being attacked by making the character of Cagliostro and others connected with the Necklace Affair appear as bad as possible. The Parisian police in the interest of the Monarchy, jumped at the opportunity of identifying the mysterious Cagliostro with the infamous Balsamo. The experts’ evidence is, to say the least, questionable.

(3) The fact that Giuseppe Balsamo had an uncle called Giuseppe Cagliostro is the strongest argument in favour of the identification theory. There is no reason to doubt Antonio Braconieri’s statement that he had received letters from his nephew signed “Count Cagliostro.” However, the writer of the anonymous letter declared that, desiring to prove Braconieri’s word as to the existence of Giuseppe Cagliostro of Messina, he discovered that there were two families of the name in that city. The prefix Cagli, moreover, is not unusual in Sicilian, Calabrian and Neapolitan names. The selection of it by Cagliostro as an incognito may have been accidental, or invented because of its peculiar cabalistic suggestion as suitable for the occult career on which he embarked, or it may have been suggested to him by some one of the name he had met when wandering about southern Italy. As his identification with Balsamo is based principally on coincidence, it is surely equally permissible to employ a coincidence as the basis of one of the many arguments in an attempt at refutation.

(4) As to the minor points of resemblance between Cagliostro and Balsamo given as “probabilities” for supposing them identical: in considering that Cagliostro used as references the names of Cardinal Orsini and the Duke of Alba, by whom Balsamo was known to have been employed at one time, the fantastic account he gave of himself at his trial should be remembered. One of the principal reasons for disbelieving him was the fact that these personages were dead and so unable to verify or deny his statement. Again, though the Sicilian dialect was undoubtedly Balsamo’s mother-tongue, no one could ever make out to what patois Cagliostro’s extraordinary abracadabra of accent belonged. But nothing can be weaker than to advance their use of magic and alchemy as a reason for identifying them. Magic and alchemy were the common stock-in-trade of every adventurer in Europe in the eighteenth century.

So much for criticism of the “official” proof.

There is, however, another reason for doubting the identity of the two men. It is the most powerful of all, and has hitherto apparently escaped the attention of those who have taken this singular theory of identification for granted.

Nobody that had known Balsamo ever saw Cagliostro.

The description of Balsamo’s features given by Antonio Braconieri resembles that which others have given of Cagliostro’s personal appearance as far as it goes. Unfortunately, it merely proves that both were short, had dark complexions, and peculiarly bright eyes. As for their noses, Braconieri described Balsamo’s as being écrasé; it is a much more forcible and unflattering term than has ever been applied to the by no means uncommon shape of Cagliostro’s nasal organ. There were many pictures of Cagliostro scattered over Europe at the time of the Necklace Affair. In Palermo, where the interest taken in him was great, few printsellers’ windows, one would imagine, but would have contained his portrait. Braconieri certainly is likely to have seen it; and had the resemblance to Balsamo been undeniable, he would surely have attached the greatest importance to it as a proof of the identity he desired to establish. As a matter of fact, he barely mentions it.

Again, one wonders why nobody who had known Balsamo ever made the least attempt to identify Cagliostro with him either at the time of the trial or when the articles in the Courier de l’Europe brought him a second time prominently before the public. Now Balsamo was known to have lived in London in 1771, when his conduct was so suspicious to the police that he deemed it advisable to leave the country. He and his wife accordingly went to Paris, and it was here that, in 1773, the events occurred which brought both prominently under the notice of the authorities. Six years after Balsamo’s disappearance from London, Count Cagliostro appeared in that city, and becoming involved with a set of swindlers in a manner that made him appear a fool rather than a knave, spent four months in the King’s Bench jail. How is it, one asks, that the London police, who “wanted” Giuseppe Balsamo, utterly failed to recognize him in the notorious Cagliostro?

Now granting that the police, as well as the persons whom Balsamo fleeced in London in 1771, had forgotten him in 1777, and that all who could have recognized him as Cagliostro in 1786, when the Courier de l’Europe exposed him, were dead, is it probable that the same coincidences would repeat themselves in Paris? If the Parisian police, who were doing their best to discover traces of Cagliostro’s antecedents in 1785 and 1786 had quite forgotten the Balsamo who brought the curious action against his wife in 1773, is it at all likely that the various people the Balsamos had known in their two-years’ residence in Paris would all have died in the meantime? People are always to be found to identify criminals and suspicious characters to whom the attention of the police is prominently drawn. But before the sort of Sherlock Holmes process of identification employed by the Courier de l’Europe and the Parisian police, not a soul was ever heard to declare that Cagliostro and Balsamo were the same.

******

To the reader who, knowing little or nothing of Cagliostro, takes up this book with an unbiassed mind, the above objections to the Balsamo legend may seem proof conclusive of its falsity. This would, however, be to go further than I, who attach much greater importance to these doubts than historians are inclined to do, care to admit. They merely show that it is neither right nor excusable to treat as a conviction what is purely a conjecture.

If this conclusion, wrapping as it does the origin and early life of Cagliostro once more in a veil of mystery, be accepted, it will go far to remove the prejudice which has hitherto made the answer to that other and more important question “What was Cagliostro?” so unsatisfactory.

CHAPTER II

GIUSEPPE BALSAMO

I

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

Now, not only is it extremely difficult, when not altogether impossible, to verify the information we have concerning Balsamo, but the very integrity of those from whom the information is derived, is questionable. These tainted sources, so to speak, from which there meanders a confused and maze-like stream of contradictory details and unverifiable episodes, are (1) Balsamo’s wife, Lorenza, (2) the Editor of the Courier de l’Europe, and (3) the Inquisition-biographer of Cagliostro.

Lorenza’s statement is mainly the itinerary of the wanderings of herself and husband about Europe from their marriage to her imprisonment in Paris in 1773. Such facts as it purports to give as to the character of their wanderings are very meagre, and coloured so as to depict her in a favourable light. The dossier containing the particulars of her arrest is in the Archives of Paris, where it was discovered by the French Government in 1786, and where it is still to be seen. Query: considering the suspicious circumstances that led to its discovery, is the dossier a forgery?

Opposed to the evidence of the Courier de l’Europe are the character, secret motives, and avowed enmity of the Editor.

As to the life of Balsamo,[4] published anonymously in Rome in 1791, under the auspices of the Inquisition, into whose power Cagliostro had fallen, the tone of hostility in which it is written, excessive even from an ultra-Catholic point of view, its lack of precision, and the absence of dates which makes it impossible to verify its statements, have caused critics of every shade of opinion, to consider it partially, if not wholly, unauthenticated.

It purports to be the confession of Cagliostro, extracted either by torture or the fear of torture, during his trial by the Inquisition. That Cagliostro did indeed “confess” is quite likely. But what sort of value could such a confession possibly have? The manner in which the Inquisition conducted its trials has rendered its verdicts suspect the world over. His condemnation was decided on from the very start, as the charge on which he was arrested proves—as will be shown in due course—and to escape torture, perhaps also in the hope of acquittal, Cagliostro was ready enough to oblige his terrible judges and “confess” whatever they wished.

It is, moreover, a question whether the adventures related in the Vie de Joseph Balsamo are those of one or of several persons. As it is quite inconceivable that the Cagliostro of the Necklace Affair could ever have been the very ordinary adventurer here depicted, it has been suggested—and there is much to support the view—that Giuseppe Balsamo, as known to history, is a sort of composite individual manufactured out of all the rogues of whom the Inquisition-writer had any knowledge.

One thing, however, may be confidently asserted: whether the exploits of Giuseppe Balsamo were partially or wholly his, imaginary or real, they are at any rate typical of the adventurer of the age.

Like Cagliostro, he boasted a noble origin, and never failed on the various occasions of changing his name to give himself a title. There is, however, no reason to suppose that he was in any way related to, or even aware of the existence of the aristocratic family of the same name who derived their title from the little town of Balsamo near Monza in the Milanese. As a matter of fact the name was a fairly common one in Italy, and the Balsamos of Palermo were of no consequence whatever. Nothing is known of Giuseppe’s father, beyond the fact that he was a petty tradesman who became bankrupt, and died at the age of forty-five, a few months after the birth of his son. Pietro Balsamo was thought to be of mixed Jewish and Moorish extraction, which would account for his obscurity and the slight esteem in which his name was held in Palermo, where the Levantines were the scum of the population.

Such scant consideration as the family may have enjoyed was due entirely to Giuseppe’s mother, who though of humble birth was of good, honest Sicilian stock. Through her he could at least claim to have had a great-grandfather, one Matteo Martello, whom it has been supposed Cagliostro had in mind when in his fantastic account of himself at the time of the Necklace Affair he claimed to be descended from Charles Martel, the founder of the Carlovingian dynasty. This Matteo Martello had two daughters, the youngest of whom Vincenza married Giuseppe Cagliostro of Messina, whose name and relationship to Giuseppe Balsamo is the chief argument in the attempt to prove the identity of the latter with Cagliostro. Vincenza’s elder sister married Giuseppe Braconieri and had three children, Felice, Matteo, and Antonio Braconieri. The former was Giuseppe’s mother. He had also a sister older than himself, Maria, who became the wife of Giovanni Capitummino. On the death of her husband she returned with her children to live with her mother, all of whom Goethe met when in Palermo in 1787.

The poverty in which Pietro Balsamo died obliged his widow to appeal to her brother for assistance. Fortunately they were in a position and willing to come to her relief. Matteo, the elder, was chief clerk in the post-office at Palermo; while Antonio was bookkeeper in the firm of J. F. Aubert & Co. Both brothers, as well as their sister, appear to have been deeply religious, and it is not unlikely that the severity and repression to which Giuseppe was continually subjected may have fostered the spirit of rebellion, already latent in him, which was to turn him into the blackguard he became.

It manifested itself at an early age. From the Seminary of San Rocco, where he received his first schooling, he ran away several times. As the rod, which appears to have played an important part in the curriculum of the seminary, failed to produce the beneficial results that are supposed to ensue from its frequent application, his uncles, anxious to get rid of so troublesome a charge, decided to confide the difficult task of coaxing or licking him into shape to the Benfratelli of Cartegirone. Giuseppe was accordingly enrolled as a novice in this brotherhood, whose existence was consecrated to the healing of the sick, and placed under the supervision of the Convent-Apothecary. He was at the time thirteen.

According to the Inquisition-biographer, it was in the laboratory of the convent that Cagliostro learnt “the principles of chemistry and medicine” which he afterwards practised with such astonishing results. If so, he must have been gifted with remarkable aptitude, which both his conduct and brief sojourn at Cartegirone belie. For whatever hopes his mother and uncles may have founded on the effect of this pious environment were soon dispelled. He had not been long in the convent before he manifested his utter distaste for the life of a Brother of Mercy. Naturally insubordinate and bold he determined to escape; but as experience had taught him at the Seminary of San Rocco that running away merely resulted in being thrashed and sent back, and as he had neither the means nor the desire to go anywhere save home to Palermo, he cunningly cast about in his mind to obtain his release from the Brothers themselves. This was not easy to accomplish, but in spite of the severe punishment his wilfully idle and refractory conduct entailed he was persistent and finally succeeded in wearing out the patience of the long-suffering monks.

From the manner in which he attained his object Carlyle detects in him a “touch of grim humour—or deep world-irony, as the Germans call it—the surest sign, as is often said, of a character naturally great.” It was a universal custom in all religious associations that one of their number during meals should read aloud to the others passages from the Lives of the Saints. This dull and unpopular task having one day been allotted to Giuseppe—probably as a punishment—he straightway proceeded, careless of the consequences, to read out whatever came into his head, substituting for the names of the Saints those of the most notable courtezans of Palermo. The effect of this daring sacrilege was dire and immediate. With fist and foot the scandalized monks instantly fell upon the boy and having belaboured him, as the saying is, within an inch of his life, indignantly packed him back to Palermo as hopelessly incorrigible and utterly unworthy of ever becoming a Benfratello.

No fatted calf, needless to say, was killed to celebrate the return of the prodigal. But Giuseppe having gained his object, took whatever chastisement he received from his mother and uncles philosophically, and left them to swallow their mortification as best they could. However, sorely tried though they were, they did not even now wash their hands of him. Somehow—just how it would be difficult to say—one forms a vague idea he was never without a plausible excuse for his conduct. Adventurers, even the lowest, more or less understand the art of pleasing; and many little things seem to indicate that with all his viciousness his disposition was not unattractive. On the contrary there is much in the character of his early villainies to suggest his powers of persuasion were considerable.

Thus, after his expulsion from Cartegirone the Inquisition-biographer tells us that he took lessons in drawing for which, no doubt, he must have given some proof of talent and inclination. Far, however, from showing any disposition to conform to the wishes of his uncles, who for his mother’s sake, if not for his own, continued to take an interest in him, the boy rapidly went from bad to worse. As neither reproof nor restraint produced any effect on his headstrong and rebellious nature he appears to have been permitted to run wild, perhaps because he had reached an age when it was no longer possible to control his actions. Nor were the acquaintances he formed of the sort to counteract a natural tendency to viciousness. He was soon hand in glove with all the worst characters of the town.

“There was no fight or street brawl,” says the indignant Inquisition-biographer, “in which he was not involved, no theft of which he was not suspected. The band of young desperadoes to which he belonged frequently came into collision with the night-watch, whose prisoners, if any, they would attempt to set free. Even the murder of a canon was attributed to him by the gossips of the town.”

In a word Giuseppe Balsamo became a veritable “Apache” destined seemingly sooner or later for the galleys or the gallows. Such a character, it goes without saying, could not fail to attract the notice of the police. He more than once saw the inside of the Palermo jail; but from lack of sufficient proof, or from the nature of the charge against him, or owing to the intercession of his estimable uncles, as often as he was arrested he was let off again.

Even his drawing-lessons, while they lasted, were perverted to the most ignoble ends. To obtain the money he needed he began, like all thieves, with petty thefts from his relations. One of his uncles was his first victim. In a similar way he derived profit from a love-affair between his sister and a cousin. As their parents put obstacles in the way of their meeting Giuseppe offered to act as go-between. In a rash moment they accepted his aid, and he profited by the occasion to substitute forged letters in the place of those he undertook to deliver, by means of which he got possession of the presents the unsuspecting lovers were induced to exchange. Encouraged by the skill he displayed in imitating hand-writing and copying signatures—which seems to have been the extent of his talent for drawing—he turned it to account in other and more profitable ways. Somehow—perhaps by hints dropped by himself in the right quarter—his proficiency in this respect, and his readiness to give others the benefit of it for a consideration, got known. From forging tickets to the theatre for his companions, he was employed to forge leave-of-absence passes for monks, and even to forge a will in favour of a certain Marquis Maurigi, by which a religious institution was defrauded of a large legacy.

There is another version of this affair which the Inquisition-writer has naturally ignored, and from which it would appear that it was the marquis who was defrauded of the legacy by the religious institution. But be this trifling detail as it may, the fact remains that the forgery was so successfully effected that it was not discovered till several years later, when some attempt was made to bring Balsamo to justice, which the impossibility of ascertaining whether he was alive or dead, rendered abortive.

Such sums of money, however, as he obtained in this way must of necessity have been small. It could only have been in copper that his “Apache” friends and the monks paid him for the theatre-tickets and convent-passes he forged for them. Nor was the notary by whom he was employed to forge the will, and who, we are told, was a relation, likely to be much more liberal. In Palermo then, as to-day, scores of just such youths as Giuseppe Balsamo were to be found ready to perform any villainy for a fifty centime piece. He accordingly sought other means of procuring the money he needed and as none, thanks to his compatriots’ notorious credulity, was likely to prove so remunerative as an appeal to their love of the marvellous, he had recourse to what was known as “sorcery.”

It is to the questionable significance attached to this word that the prejudice against Cagliostro, whose wonders were attributed to magic, has been very largely due. For it is only of comparatively recent date that “sorcery” so-called has ceased to be anathema, owing to the belated investigations of science, which is always, and perhaps with reason, suspicious of occult phenomena, by which the indubitable existence of certain powers—as yet only partially explained—active in some, passive in others, and perhaps latent in all human beings, has been revealed. And even still, so great is the force of tradition, many judging from the frauds frequently perpetrated by persons claiming to possess these secret powers, regard with suspicion, if not with downright contempt, all that is popularly designated as sorcery, magic, or witchcraft.

But this is not the place to discuss the methods by which those who work miracles obtain their results. Suffice it to say, there has been from time immemorial a belief in the ability of certain persons to control the forces of nature. Nowhere is this belief stronger than in Sicily. There the “sorcerer” is as common as the priest; not a village but boasts some sibyl, seer, or wonder-worker. That all are not equally efficient, goes without saying. Some possess remarkable powers, which they themselves would probably be unable to explain. Others, like Giuseppe Balsamo, are only able to deceive very simple or foolish people easy to deceive.