Part 20

Husband and wife were immediately separated to undergo their respective trials, which they endured with exemplary fortitude, and which are detailed in the text of the memoirs. When the romantic mummery was over, the two postulants were led back into the temple, with the promise of admission to the divine mysteries. There a man mysteriously draped in a long mantle cried out to them:--“Know ye that the arcanum of our great art is the government of mankind, and that the one means to rule them is never to tell them the truth. Do not foolishly regulate your actions according to the rules of common sense; rather outrage reason and courageously maintain every unbelievable absurdity. Remember that reproduction is the palmary active power in nature, politics, and society alike; that it is a mania with mortals to be immortal, to know the future without understanding the present, and to be spiritual while all that surrounds them is material.”

After this harangue the orator genuflected devoutly before the divinity of the temple and retired. At the same moment a man of gigantic stature led the countess to the feet of the immortal Count de Saint-German, who thus spoke:--

“Elected from my tenderest youth to the things of greatness, I employed myself in ascertaining the nature of veritable glory. Politics appeared to me nothing but the science of deception, tactics the art of assassination, philosophy the ambitious imbecility of complete irrationality; physics fine fancies about Nature and the continual mistakes of persons suddenly transplanted into a country which is utterly unknown to them; theology the science of the misery which results from human pride; history the melancholy spectacle of perpetual perfidy and blundering. Thence I concluded that the statesman was a skilful liar, the hero an illustrious idiot, the philosopher an eccentric creature, the physician a pitiable and blind man, the theologian a fanatical pedagogue, and the historian a word-monger. Then did I hear of the divinity of this temple. I cast my cares upon him, with my incertitudes and aspirations. When he took possession of my soul he caused me to perceive all objects in a new light; I began to read futurity. This universe so limited, so narrow, so desert, was now enlarged. I abode not only with those who are, but with those who were. He united me to the loveliest women of antiquity. I found it eminently delectable to know all without studying anything, to dispose of the treasures of the earth without the solicitation of monarchs, to rule the elements rather than men. Heaven made me liberal; I have sufficient to satisfy my taste; all that surrounds me is rich, loving, predestinated.”

When the service was finished the costume of ordinary life was resumed. A superb repast terminated the ceremony. During the course of the banquet the two guests were informed that the Elixir of Immortality was merely Tokay coloured green or red according to the necessities of the case. Several essential precepts were enjoined upon them, among others that they must detest, avoid, and calumniate men of understanding, but flatter, foster, and blind fools, that they must spread abroad with much mystery the intelligence that the Count de Saint-Germain was five hundred years old, that they must make gold, but dupes before all.

The truth of this singular episode is not attested by any sober biographer. If it occurred as narrated, it doubtless served to confirm Cagliostro in his ambitious projects. The change which had taken place in the adventurer since his second visit to England is well described by Figuier. “His language, his mien, his manners, all are transformed. His conversation turns only on his travels in Egypt, to Mecca, and in other remote places, on the sciences into which he was initiated at the foot of the Pyramids, on the arcana of Nature which his ingenuity has discovered. At the same time, he talks little, more often enveloping himself in mysterious silence. When interrogated with reiterated entreaties, he deigns at the most to draw his symbol--a serpent with an apple in its mouth and pierced by a dart, meaning that human wisdom should be silent on the mysteries which it has unravelled.... Lorenza was transfigured at the same time with her husband. Her ambitions and deportment became worthy of the new projects of Cagliostro. She aimed, like himself, at the glory of colossal successes.”

The initiates of the Count de Saint-Germain passed into Courland, where they established Masonic lodges, according to the sublime rite of Egyptian Freemasonry. The countess was an excellent preacher to captivate hearts and enchant imaginations, her beauty fascinated a large number of Courlandaise nobility. At Mittau, Cagliostro attracted the attention of persons of high rank, who were led by his reputation to regard him as an extraordinary person. By means of his Freemasonry he began to obtain an ascendency over the minds of the nobles, some of whom, discontented with the reigning duke, are actually said to have offered him the sovereignty of the country, as to a divine man and messenger from above. The Italian biography represents him plotting with this end in view. “He pretends,” say the documents of the Holy Inquisition, “that he had virtue enough to resist the temptation, and that he refused the proffered boon from the respect due to sovereigns. His wife has assured us that his refusal was produced by the reflection that his impostures would soon be discovered.” He collected, however, a prodigious number of presents in gold, silver, and money, and repaired to St Petersburg, provided with regular passports. But the prophet soon found that a sufficiently brilliant reputation had not preceded him, and he, therefore, simply announced himself as a physician and chemist, by his retired life and air of mystery soon attracting attention.

His assumption of the _rôle_ of physician leads to a brief consideration of the miraculous cures which have been attributed to him. They are generally referred to a broad application of the principles and methods of Mesmer, his contemporary. They were performed without passes, iron rods, or any of the cumbrous paraphernalia of his rival in the healing art; he trusted simply to the laying on of hands. Moreover, he did not despoil his patients, but rather dispensed his wealth, which now appeared unlimited, among the poor, who flocked to him in great numbers as his reputation increased. The source of this wealth is not accurately known, but it is supposed to have been derived from the Masonic initiates, whose apostle and propagandist he was.

Many of the miraculous cures which Cagliostro performed in Germany spread widely, and in Russia he was soon surrounded by the curious. Lorenza played her own part admirably; she answered discreetly and naturally, making the most outrageous statements with apparently complete unconsciousness. The physician-chemist, besides his healing powers, had his reputation as an alchemist and adept of the arcane sciences. The supposed restoration in a miraculous manner of the infant child of an illustrious nobleman to health exalted him to the pinnacle of celebrity, and his extravagant pretensions, assisted, as they powerfully were, by the naïve beauty of his wife, were beginning to be taken seriously, but the combined result of an amour between Lorenza and Prince Poternki, Prime Minister and favourite of the Czarina, Catherine, and the discovery that the nobleman’s child had been apparently changed, caused them to depart hastily with immense spoils towards the German frontier.

They tarried at Warsaw for a time, and there the Italian biographer tells us that Cagliostro made use of all his artifices to deceive a prince to whom he was introduced, and who was exceedingly anxious to obtain, with the help of the pretended magician, the permanent command of a devil. Cagliostro puffed him up for a long time with the expectation of gratifying this preposterous ambition, and actually procured presents from him to the amount of several thousand crowns. The prince at length perceiving that there was no hope of retaining one of the infernal spirits in his service, wished to make himself master of the earthly affections of the countess, but in this too he was disappointed, the lady positively refusing to comply with his desires. Finding himself thus balked in both his attempts, he abandoned every sentiment but revenge, and intimidated our adventurer and his wife so much by his menaces that they were obliged to restore his presents.

The veracity of this account is not, however, beyond suspicion, and other of his biographers represent Cagliostro proceeding directly to Francfurt and thence to Strasbourg, into which, more wealthy and successful than ever, he made a triumphal entry. The distinguished visitor, the Rosicrucian, the alchemist, the physician, the sublime count, had been expected since early morning by the bourgeois of the old town, and the following extraordinary account in the _Dictionnaire des Sciences Occultes_ has been given by an anonymous biographer.

“On the 19th of September 1780, in a public-house just outside Strasburg, surrounded by a group of humble tipplers, who stared from the little window at the vast crowd collected below them, there might have been remarked the countenance of a bald and wrinkled man, some eighty years of age, and evidently of southern origin; this was the goldsmith Marano. Successive failures, and debts which he did not see fit to liquidate, had forced him to leave Palermo, and he had established himself in his former trade at Strasbourg. Like the rest of the townsfolk he had come out to behold the phenomenal personage whose arrival was expected, and who made a greater sensation than many a powerful monarch. He had come by way of Germany from Varsovia, where he had amassed immense riches, said popular rumour, by the transmutation of base metals into gold, for he was possessed of the secret of the philosophic stone, and had all the incalculable talents of an alchemist.”

“By my faith,” said a hatter, “I am indeed happy since I am destined to behold this illustrious mortal, if indeed he be a mortal.”

“’Tis asserted,” added a druggist, “that he is a son of the Princess of Trebizond, and that he has withal the fine eyes of his mother.”

“Also that he is a lineal descendant of Charles Martel,” said a town clerk.

“He dates still further back,” put in a rope-maker, “for he took part in the marriage feast of Cana.”

“Beyond doubt then, he is the wandering Jew!” exclaimed Marano.

“Still better, some credible persons assert that he was born before the deluge.”

“What hardihood! Yet suppose he is the devil.”

These notions here reproduced with fidelity, and which were adorned by the most extravagant commentaries, were actually at that period in general circulation among the crowd. Some regarded the mysterious Count Cagliostro as an inspired saint, a performer of miracles, a phenomenal personage outside the order of Nature. The cures attributed to him were equally innumerable and unexplainable. Others regarded him merely as an adroit charlatan. Cagliostro himself boldly asserted that all his prodigies were performed under the special favour and help of heaven. He added that the Supreme Being had deigned to accord him the beatific vision, that it was his mission to convert unbelievers and reinstate catholicism, but in spite of this exalted vocation he told fortunes, taught the art of winning at lotteries, interpreted dreams, and held séances of transcendental phantasmagoria.

“But,” contended the rope-maker with much animation, “a man who converses with angels is never the devil.”

“Is he in communication with angels?” cried Marano, struck by the circumstances. “In that case I must see him at all costs. How old is he?”

“Bah!” said the druggist, “as if such a being could have an age! He looks about thirty-six.”

“Oh!” muttered the goldsmith. “What if he were my rascal? My rascal should now be thirty-seven.”

As the hoary Sicilian ruminated over his lamentable past, he was roused by a tumult of voices. The supernal being had arrived, and he passed presently in the road, surrounded by a numerous cortege of couriers, lacqueys, valets, &c., all in magnificent liveries. By his side, in the open carriage, sat Lorenza or Seraphina Feliciani, his wife, who seconded with all her ability the intrigues of her husband, whom reasonable people regarded as a wandering member and emissary of the masonic templars, his opulence insured by contributions from the different lodges of the order.

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!”

Some of the spectators fell on their knees, others seized the unfortunate goldsmith, and the brilliant cortege passed on.

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.

The first question put to them when the awe of their presence had somewhat worn off was as to their situation in the world beyond.

“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.”

“What has become of your learning?” said M. de ---- to Diderot.

“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 most vexes me,” said the Duc de Choiseul, “is the absence of sex where we dwell. Whatever may be said of this fleshly envelope, ’twas by no means so bad an invention.”