to practise as a physician. Lorenza having left him, he found means to punish her by imprisoning her for several months at Sainte Pélagie. He then made a trip through the Netherlands and Germany, and suddenly reappeared at Palermo with the name of the Marquis de Pellegrini. The vindictive jeweller recognised and had him arrested; but Lorenza contrived to form the acquaintance of an influential prince, who procured her husband’s liberation by thrashing the prosecutor’s lawyer as a warning example. Being in a state of terrible impecuniosity when liberated, he pledged articles belonging to his sister, and the poor woman was obliged to pay eleven gold onzas to redeem them, as Göthe tells us in his “Travels in Italy.”
Balsamo then proceeded to Spain, where he travelled in a Prussian uniform, and assumed the name of Dr. Tischio. He made a living by selling a water of beauty, converting hemp into silk, making gold of mercury, melting small diamonds to produce larger stones, but chiefly by predicting lucky numbers in the lottery—a secret he would not have failed to benefit by himself, if he had been completely convinced of its efficiency.
Returning once more to London, he was received there into a Freemasons’ Lodge, and from that moment dates the power he exercised so long, and the noise he made in Europe. Henceforth he only moved in the highest circles, leading the life of a prince, and cleverly giving his intrigues a new and more brilliant character. He managed to obtain an extraordinary influence over minds, especially of women and men of weak character. His portrait and that of Lorenza were worn on fans, rings, and medallions, and busts of him in marble and plaster were sold, bearing the inscription Divo Cagliostro, which was the only name he thenceforth acknowledged.
Even the worthy Dutchmen yielded, like everybody else, to the torrent. At the Hague all the masonic lodges rivalled each other in the brilliancy of the reception they gave Cagliostro, and in that town he was even compelled to open a ladies’ lodge. He invented a new masonic system, which he declared to be Egyptian, and incessantly propagated it, though he did not succeed in having it completely adopted till October, 1784, on the establishment of the grand mother-lodge, “for the triumph of truth,” at Lyons. It was said that he obtained the first idea of the system when in London, from a MS. by one George Copston, but he referred it to Enoch and Elijah, from whom the Egyptian high-priests had it. At the outset he only gave himself out as the Messenger of Elijah, or the Great Copth, but at a later date he promoted himself to the rank of Grand Kofi. He then asserted that he was the produce of the loves of an angel with a woman, and was sent into the world to lead the faithful to a higher degree of perfection by a physical and moral regeneration.
It is permissible to say that Cagliostro’s partizans adored him; they passed hours kneeling at his feet, and believed that the slightest contact with him sufficed to sanctify them. In the lodges, when that passage in the Psalms was chanted, Memento, Domine, David et omnis mansuetudinis ejus, the name of Cagliostro was substituted for that of David. Generally he retained a great part of the organisation and distinctive signs of the ordinary freemasonry, and merely augmented the number of degrees. He also opened lodges for all creeds, especially for the Jews, whom he declared the most honest people on earth. Moreover, he affected religion, combated atheism, and would not permit the saints to be turned into ridicule; hence many persons took him for an agent of the Jesuits, whose monogram he placed everywhere, recommending it to the respect of the faithful. But this affectation was entirely superficial.
On leaving the Hague, Cagliostro spent some time in Venice, and then returned to northern Europe. At Berlin he attracted no sympathy, although he announced to the Prussians that Alexander the Great was still living in Egypt as chief of a band of warrior-Magi, who had gained all his victories for Frederick II. The Prussians, as it appears, would not listen to him, so from Berlin he proceeded to Mittau. In this capital of Courland he operated with considerable success, and for a long time had many fervent and pious adherents belonging to the highest classes. Among these was Eliza von der Recke, who presently recovered her senses and published a very curious book against him. On this new scene Cagliostro pretended that he had been sent by his chiefs to recover, by his magical operations, treasures and documents relating to freemasonry, which had been buried for centuries in the domain of Wilzen. History does not tell us if his efforts were crowned with success.
From Mittau Cagliostro proceeded to St. Petersburg, where he tried to pass as a Spanish colonel, but the ambassador of that country protested against this assumption. Dr. Hugensohn, physician to the empress, also displayed such a determined scepticism, that Cagliostro found it useless to remain in St. Petersburg any longer. He therefore went through Warsaw to Frankfort, and thence to Strasburg, and the brilliant reception offered him in the two latter cities amply requited him for the coldness of the North. He started for Paris in the company of Cardinal de Rohan, but returned to Strasburg in 1781. The physicians who, like the priests, were ever his determined foes, opposed him so zealously that he thought it better to start at full speed for Naples, under the excuse that he was summoned by a dying friend. In November, 1782, he arrived at Bordeaux, as he said, on the invitation of the Minister de Vergenes, and remained in France till he was implicated in the famous trial about the Queen’s necklace. It is not at all probable that he took the slightest part in Madame de Lamotte’s swindling, for he had at his disposal very different means to plunder the Cardinal, and was the man to defend his protector sooner than let him be fleeced by others. It is believed, indeed, that Madame de Lamotte merely implicated him on the trial, because, when the affair became blown, he advised the Cardinal to tell the truth. In this investigation nothing affecting Cagliostro came out, except that on the day when the Cardinal was arrested he had invited the latter to sup in the company of Henri IV., Voltaire, and Rousseau. There was evidently some imposture in this, but it had no connection with the necklace affair. Still, from the beginning of the trial, he was
