the Governor desired to make an equal demonstration on shore. Accordingly, as soon as the first gun was fired, the batteries commenced, and again at sunset, when another royal salute was fired from the ship it was echoed, gun for gun, from the town. The sunset salute was fired by the particular desire of the loyal “Furies”—absence, it is said, makes the heart grow fonder, and the Fury had been absent five years from home.
The number of guns fired in the combined salutes of noon and sunset make up the exact number of years of her Majesty’s age—forty-two; may she live, at least, as many years as symbolised by the combined Spanish and English salutes—eighty-four!
At 2 a.m., 26th, the Fury terminated her visit to Santa Cruz, which was, and will continue to be, couleur de rose to all connected with it. The last of the glorious Peak was seen more than one hundred miles off, and it finally disappeared with the setting sun.
CAGLIOSTRO.
The subject of my paper is probably the man of the last century who has most engaged the attention of writers in every branch of literature. In our day Dumas, the unapproachable, has made him the hero of a famous romance, while Carlyle has written many winged words about him. Other authors of lesser calibre have tried their hand with him, and at the first blush it might be supposed that a subject less promising for novelty could hardly have been selected. There is one side of Cagliostro’s polygonal life (if I may use the term), however, which has not yet been duly regarded. Of the countless books published about him no two agree on simple facts: his birth, his influence, and even his swindling have been variously described. In this short sketch, in a word, I purpose to tell the truth about the arch impostor whose clumsy juggling makes one feel ashamed of one’s ancestors for letting themselves be deluded by such transparent frauds. Frederick Bülau, in his celebrated work “Geheime Geschichten und räthselhafte Menschen,” has completely succeeded in analysing the life of the great Copth, and the following details derived from his work, though they may prove disappointing, can be relied on for their accuracy.
Joseph Balsamo was born at Palermo on June 8, 1743, his father being a bankrupt bookseller, with a more than strong suspicion of Judaism about him. At the age of thirteen the lad was sent to the monastery of the Brothers of Mercy at Cartagirone, where he gained the affections of the frater apothecary, from whom he apparently acquired the elementary ideas he possessed on the various branches of medicine, which served him in good stead at a later date. During the lad’s stay with the pious fathers, he caused them considerable annoyance, one of his favourite tricks which scandalised them greatly being to substitute the names of brigands and light women for those of the male and feminine saints mentioned in the chapter of the martyrology he had to read during supper. The result was, that Joseph was turned out without a character. On his return to Palermo he appears to have lived by his wits, and he had considerable skill in fencing and drawing. The former accomplishment repeatedly got him into trouble, while the latter he employed to improve himself in forgery. One of the tricks he played is not without its humorous side: he obtained from a jeweller of the name of Murano sixty gold ounces, on a promise to help him in discovering an immense treasure buried in a cavern by the sea-shore; but when they reached it, the hapless jeweller was attacked by half-a-dozen demons, dressed all in red, who gave him a tremendous thrashing.
For this and similar matters,—which brought him into unpleasant collision with the police,—Balsamo thought it advisable to quit Palermo for a while, and he proceeded to Messina, where he formed the acquaintance of one Altolas—the sage Althotas of his own and Dumas’ romances—a clever Spanish or Greek adventurer, who had already travelled over a great portion of the East, and was probably an adroit conjuror. It seems certain that Balsamo made several trips to the Archipelago, Asia Minor, and Egypt, with this Altolas, who initiated him in his various tricks. While wandering about in this way, Balsamo picked up that smattering of Eastern languages which he afterwards employed to dazzle his dupes. At Malta he lived on intimate terms with the Grand Master Pinto,—not, as he says in his Life, because he was a son of a princess of Trebizonde, but as one of the numerous adventurers who profited by the Grand Master’s passion for alchymy. At any rate, Balsamo gained such credit with Pinto, that the latter gave him very strong letters of recommendation to Rome and Naples. At Rome especially, Baron de Bretteville, Envoy of the Maltese order to the Holy See, introduced him to the first houses: and at a later date Balsamo used to boast of the peculiar favour in which he stood with Pope Clement XIII. and Cardinal York. In 1770, he married a simple servant girl, Lorenza Feliciani, with whom he fell in love for her great beauty. It is probable that this marriage was only a speculation, and that he hoped to derive profit from his wife’s exceeding loveliness. In fact, he never behaved as a severe husband, and most indulgently closed his eyes to any eccentricities on the part of the fair Lorenza, who, in gratitude, was always his most docile instrument.
At this time Balsamo lived by forging letters of credit with two accomplices, Agliata and Nicastro. The latter having denounced him, Balsamo fled with Agliata to Bergamo, where he gave himself out as an officer in the service of the King of Prussia, but the police would not believe him. Whereupon Agliata bolted, taking with him the entire wardrobe of his partners, whom he left in a state of perfect denudation. Balsamo and his wife, in order to get out of the scrape, were obliged to assume a pilgrim’s dress, and announced that they were about to undertake a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella. They next turned up in London, where Lorenza made plenty of money, defrauding a Quaker, among others, of one hundred guineas. As for Balsamo, it appears that during his first stay in London, he was convicted no less than ten times of swindling. The result was that he thought it better to be off to Paris, but the faculty of that city refused him permission
