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.
From the single instance cited of Giuseppe’s skill in this direction one infers his magical gifts were of the crystal-gazing, sand-divination kind—the ordinary kind with which everybody is more or less familiar, if only by name. According to the Inquisition-biographer, “one day whilst he and his companions were idling away the time together the conversation having turned upon a certain girl whom they all knew, one of the number wondered what she was doing at that moment, whereupon Giuseppe immediately offered to gratify him. Marking a square on the ground he made some passes with his hands above it, after which the figure of the girl was seen in the square playing at tressette with three of her friends.” So great was the effect of this exhibition of clairvoyance, thought-transference, hypnotic suggestion, what you will, upon the amazed Apaches that they went at once to look for the girl and “found her in the same attitude playing the very game and with the very persons that Balsamo had shown them.”
The fact that such phenomena are of quite common occurrence and to be witnessed any day in large cities and summer-resorts on payment of fees, varying according to the renown of the performer, has robbed them if not of their attraction at least of their wonder. One has come to take them for granted. Whatever may be the scientific explanation of such occult—the word must serve for want of a better—power as Giuseppe possessed, he himself, we may be sure, would only have been able to account for it as “sorcery.” He was not likely to be a whit less superstitious than the people with whom he associated. Indeed, his faith in the efficacy of the magic properties attributed by vulgar superstition to sacred things would appear to have been greater than his faith in his own supernatural powers.
It is reported of him on one occasion that “under pretext of curing his sister, who he said was possessed of a devil, he obtained from a priest in the country a little cotton dipped in holy oil,” to which, doubtless, he attached great importance as the means of successfully performing some wonder he had no confidence in his own powers to effect. Such cryptic attributes as he had been endowed with must have been very slight, or undeveloped, for there is no reference whatever to the marvellous in the swindles of his subsequent history in which one would expect him to have employed it. Very probably whatever magnetic, hypnotic, or telepathic faculty he possessed was first discovered by the apothecary under whom he was placed in the laboratory at Cartegirone, who, like all of his kind, no doubt, experimented in alchemy and kindred sciences. If so, he certainly did not stay long enough with the Benfratelli to turn his mysterious talent to account or to obtain more than the merest glimpse of the “sorcery,” of which, though banned by the Church, the monasteries were the secret nursery.
Be this as it may, needless to say those who had witnessed Giuseppe’s strange phenomenon required no further proof of his marvellous power, which rapidly noised abroad and exaggerated by rumour gave the young “sorcerer” a reputation he only wanted an opportunity of exploiting for all it was worth. How long he waited for this opportunity is not stated, but he was still in his teens when it eventually turned up in the person of a “certain ninny of a goldsmith named Marano,” whose superstition, avarice, and gullibility made him an easy dupe.
One day in conversation with this man, who had been previously nursed to the proper pitch of cupidity, as one nurses a constituency before an election, Giuseppe informed him under pledge of the strictest secrecy that he knew of a certain cave not far from Palermo, in which a great treasure was buried. According to a superstition prevalent in Sicily, where belief in such treasure was common, it was supposed to be guarded by demons, and as it would be necessary to hire a priest to exorcize them, Giuseppe offered to take Marano to the spot and assist him in lifting the hidden wealth for the consideration of “sixty ounces of gold.”[5]
Whatever objection Marano might have had to part with such a sum was overcome by the thought of gaining probably a hundred times as much. He accordingly paid the money and set out one night with Giuseppe, the priest, and another man who was in the secret. On arriving at the cave, preparatory to the ceremony of exorcism, the priest proceeded to evoke the demons, which was done with due solemnity by means of magic circles and symbols drawn upon the ground, incantations in Latin, et cetera. Suddenly hideous noises were heard, there was a flash and splutter of blue fire, and the air was filled with sulphur. Marano, who was waiting in the greatest terror for the materialization of the powers of darkness, in which he firmly believed, and who, he had been told, on such occasions sometimes got beyond the control of the exorcist, was commanded to dig where he stood. But scarcely had his spade struck the ground when the demons themselves appeared with shrieks and yells—some goat-herds hired for the occasion, as horrible as paint, burnt cork, and Marano’s terrified imagination could paint them—and fell upon the wretched man. Whereupon Giuseppe and his confederates took to their heels, leaving their dupe in a fit on the ground.
Fool that he was, it did not take the goldsmith on recovering his senses long to discover that he had been victimized. Indifferent to the ridicule to which he exposed himself he lost no time in bringing an action against Giuseppe for the recovery of the money of which he had been defrauded, swearing at the same time to have the life of the swindler as well. Under such circumstances Palermo was no longer a safe place for the sorcerer, and taking time by the forelock he fled.
II
At this stage in Balsamo’s career even the Inquisition-biographer ceases to vouch for the accuracy of what he relates.
“Henceforth,” he confesses, “we are obliged to accept Cagliostro’s own assertions”—wrung from him in the torture chamber of the Castle of St. Angelo, be it remembered—“without the means of verifying them, as no further trace of his doings is to be found elsewhere.”
Considering that accuracy, to which no importance has been attached in all previous books on Cagliostro, is the main object of this, after such a statement the continuation of Balsamo’s history would appear to be superfluous. Apart, however, from their romantic interest, Balsamo’s subsequent adventures are really an aid to accuracy. For the character of the man as revealed by them will be found to be so dissimilar to Cagliostro’s as to serve more forcibly than any argument to prove how slight are the grounds for identifying the two.
By relating what befell Balsamo on fleeing from Palermo one may judge, from the very start, of the sort of faith to be placed in his Inquisition-biographer. In Cagliostro’s own account of his life—which will be duly reported in its proper place—his statements in regard to the “noble Althotas,” that remarkable magician by whom he avowed he was brought up, were regarded as absolutely ridiculous. Nevertheless for the sole purpose apparently of proving Cagliostro’s identity with Balsamo the Inquisition-biographer drags this individual whose very existence is open to doubt into the life of the latter, and unblushingly plunges the two into those fabulous and ludicrous adventures, of which the description caused so much mirth at the time of the Necklace Affair.
Thus the imaginative Inquisition-biographer declares it was at Messina, whither he went on leaving Palermo, that Balsamo met the “noble Althotas,” whose power “to dematerialize himself” was, to judge from the last occasion on which he was reported to have been seen in the flesh at Malta, only another way of saying that he was clever in evading the police. But as Balsamo after having “overrun the whole earth” with Althotas emerges once more into something like reality at Naples, in the company of the renegade priest who had assisted in the fleecing of Marano, it is not unreasonable to suppose that this city and not Messina was his immediate destination on leaving Palermo.
He did not stay long, however, at Naples. Owing either to a quarrel with the priest over their ill-gotten funds, or to a hint from the police whose suspicions his conduct aroused, he went to Rome. The statement that on his arrival he presented a letter of introduction from the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta—one of his adventures with Althotas—to the Baron de Bretteville, the envoy from Malta to the Holy See, by whom in turn he was introduced to Cardinals York and Orsini, is scarcely worth refuting. For if the Palermo Apache ever entered the salon of a Roman noble it could of course only have been via the escalier de service.
The Inquisition-biographer, however, quickly reduces him to a situation much more in keeping with his character and condition. “Not long,” he says, “after his arrival in Rome, Balsamo was sentenced to three days in jail for quarrelling with one of the waiters at the sign of the Sun, where he lodged.” On his release, he was, as is highly probable forced to live by his wits, and instead of consorting with Cardinals and diplomatists turned his attention to drawing. But as his talent in this respect appears to have been as limited as his knowledge of the occult, it is not surprising that the revenue he derived from the sketches he copied, or from old prints, freshened up and passed off as originals, was precarious.
Love, however, is the great consoler of poverty. About this time Balsamo conceived a violent passion for Lorenza Feliciani, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a “smelter of copper” who lived in an alley close to the Church of the Trinita de’ Pellegrini—one of the poorest quarters of Rome. Marriage followed the love-making, and Lorenza, in spite of her tender years, in due course became his wife. This event—which is one of the few authenticated ones in Balsamo’s career—took place in “April 1769 in the Church of San Salvatore in Campo.”
As the sale of her husbands pen-and-ink sketches, which in Lorenza’s estimation at least were “superb,” was not remunerative at the best of times, the young couple made their home at first with the bride’s parents. And now for perhaps the only time in his life a decent and comfortable existence was open to Balsamo. He had a young and, according to all accounts, a beautiful wife, whom he loved and by whom he was loved; he had a home, and the chance of adopting his father-in-law’s more lucrative, if less congenial, trade—of settling down, in a word, and turning over a new leaf. But he was a born blackguard and under the circumstances it is not surprising that he should have had the nostalgie de la boue. In other words his Apache nature asserted itself, and he had no sooner married than he proceeded with revolting cynicism to turn his wife’s charms to account.
But Lorenza, being at this stage of her career as innocent as she was ignorant, very naturally objected to his odious proposal. By dint, however, of persuasion and argument he finally succeeded in indoctrinating her with his views, to the great indignation of her parents, who, scandalized by such conduct, after frequent altercations finally turned the couple out of the house. Whereupon Lorenza decided to abandon any remaining scruples she had and assist her husband to the best of her ability.
Among the acquaintances they made in this way were two Sicilians of the worst character, Ottavio Nicastro, who finished on the gallows, and a self-styled Marquis Agliata. The latter being an accomplished forger was not long in discovering a similar talent in the husband of Lorenza, by whose charms he had been smitten. He accordingly proposed to take him into partnership, a proposition which Balsamo was ready enough to accept. Nicastro, however, feeling himself slighted by the close intimacy between the two, from which he was excluded, informed the police of their doings; but as he was foolish enough to quarrel with them beforehand, they suspected his intention, and defeated it by a hurried flight.
If Lorenza is to be believed, their intention was to go to Germany, and it was perhaps with this end in view that Agliata had, as the Inquisition-biographer asserts, previously forged the brevet of a Prussian colonelcy for Balsamo. At any rate, once out of the Papal States they proceeded very leisurely, swindling right and left as they went. At Loretto they obtained “fifty sequins” from the governor of the town by means of a forged letter of introduction from Cardinal Orsini. In this way they got as far as Bergamo, where the crafty Agliata decided to adopt different tactics. He accordingly gave out that he was a recruiting agent of the King of Prussia; but by some chance the suspicions of the authorities were aroused, whereupon Agliata, having somehow got wind of the fact, without more ado decamped, leaving the Balsamos to shift for themselves. Scarcely had he gone when the sbirri arrived to arrest him. Not finding him, they seized the Balsamos as his accomplices; they, however, succeeded in clearing themselves, and on being released were ordered to leave the town. As Agliata had gone off with all the money, they were obliged to sell their effects to obey this injunction; and not daring to return to Rome, they proceeded to Milan, where they arrived almost destitute.
Beggary was now their only means of existence, but even beggary may be profitable providing one knows how to beg. According to the Countess de Lamotte, who spoke from experience, there was “only one way of asking alms, and that was in a carriage.” In fine, “to get on” as a beggar, as in every profession, requires ability. It is the kind of ability with which Balsamo was abundantly gifted. Aware that the pilgrims he saw wandering about Italy from shrine to shrine subsisted on wayside charity, he conceived the ingenious expedient of imitating them. As the objective of this expiatory vagabondage he selected St. James of Compostella, one of the most popular shrines at the time in Christendom, and consequently one to which a pilgrimage might most easily be exploited.
So setting out from Milan, staff in hand, mumbling paternosters, fumbling their beads, begging their way from village to village, from presbytery to presbytery, and constantly on the alert for any chance of improving their condition, the couple took the road to Spain. Of this tour along the Riviera to Barcelona, where the “pilgrimage” ended, Lorenza, on being arrested three years later in Paris, gave an account which the Inquisition-biographer has embellished, and which in one particular at least has been verified by no less a person than Casanova.
As it happened, this prince of adventurers—who in obedience to a time-honoured convention is never mentioned in print, by English writers bien entendu, without condemnation, though in private conversation people wax eloquent enough over him—was himself wandering about the South of France at the time. Arriving in Aix-en-Provence in 1770, he actually stopped in the same inn as the Balsamos, who excited his curiosity by their lavish distribution of alms to the poor of the town. Being a man who never missed a single opportunity of improving any acquaintance that chance might throw in his way, he called upon the couple, and recorded his impression in those fascinating Memoirs of his, of which the authenticity is now fully established and, what is more to the point, of which all the details have been verified.[6]
“I found the female pilgrim,” he says, “seated in a chair looking like a person exhausted with fatigue, and interesting by reason of her youth and beauty, singularly heightened by a touch of melancholy and by a crucifix of yellow metal six inches long which she held in her hand. Her companion, who was arranging shells on his coat of black baize, made no movement—he appeared to intimate by the looks he cast at his wife I was to attend to her alone.”
From the manner in which Lorenza conducted herself on this occasion she appears to have had remarkable aptitude for acting the rôle her husband had given her.
“We are going on foot,” she said in answer to Casanova’s questions, “living on charity the better to obtain the mercy of God, whom I have so often offended. Though I ask only a sou in charity, people always give me pieces of silver and gold”—a hint Casanova did not take—“so that arriving at a town we have to distribute to the poor all that remains to us, in order not to commit the sin of losing confidence in the Eternal Providence.”
Whatever doubts Casanova may have had as to her veracity, the Inquisition-biographer most certainly had none. He declares that the “silver and gold” of which she and her husband were so lavish at Aix was a shameful quid pro quo obtained from some officers at Antibes whom she had fascinated.
Unfortunately there is no Casanova at Antibes to verify him or to follow them to London via Barcelona, Madrid, and Lisbon. Lorenza is very explicit as to where they went on leaving Aix, and as to the time they remained in the various places they visited. The Inquisition-biographer, faute de mieux, is obliged to confirm her itinerary, but he has his revenge by either denying everything else she says, or by putting the worst construction upon it. At all events, between them one gets the impression that the pilgrims, for some reason or other, abandoned their pilgrimage before reaching the shrine of St. James of Compostella; that Lorenza was probably more truthful than she meant to be when she says they left Lisbon “because the climate was too hot for her”; and that however great the quantity of “silver and gold” she was possessed of at Aix, she and her husband had divested themselves of most of it by the time they reached London.
As to the character of their adventures by the way, it bears too close a resemblance to those already related to be worth describing.
III
The Editor of the Courier de l’Europe—which journal, as previously stated, was published in London—is the authority for the information concerning the Balsamos in England. He ferreted out or concocted this information fourteen years later; and, as quite apart from his motives, no one of the people he refers to as having known the Balsamos in 1772 came forward to corroborate what he said or to identify them with the Cagliostros, it is impossible to verify his evidence. From the fact, however, that it was commonly accepted at the time, and is still regarded as substantially trustworthy, entirely because Cagliostro absolutely denied any knowledge of the Balsamos, the reader may judge at once of the bitterness of the prejudice against Cagliostro as well as of the value to be attached to such “proof.”
According to the Courier de l’Europe, Balsamo and his wife arrived in London from Lisbon in 1771, and after living for a while in Leadenhall Street moved to New Compton Street, Soho. They were, we are told, in extreme poverty, which Lorenza—to whom vice had long ceased to be repugnant—endeavoured to alleviate by the most despicable expedients. As she had but indifferent success, Balsamo, having quarrelled with a painter and decorator by name of Pergolezzi, by whom he had for a few days been employed, assisted her in the infamous rôle of blackmailer.
Their most profitable victim appears to have been “a Quaker,” who, in spite of the rigorous standard of morality prescribed by the sect to which he belonged, occasionally deigned to make some secret concession to the weakness of human nature. Decoyed by Lorenza, this individual was discovered by her husband in so compromising a situation that nothing short of the payment of one hundred pounds could mollify Balsamo’s feigned indignation and avert the disgrace with which he threatened the erring and terrified disciple of William Penn.
Their ill-gotten gains, however, did not last long; and while Lorenza promenaded the streets in the vain quest for other victims, Balsamo was once more obliged to have recourse to his artistic talents. But Fortune remained hostile, and even went out of her way to vent her spite on the couple. For a certain Dr. Moses Benamore, described as “the envoy of the King of Barbary,” was induced to purchase some of Balsamo’s drawings, payment of which the artist was obliged to seek in the courts. The case, however, was decided against him, and since, after paying the costs to which he was condemned, he was unable to pay his rent, his landlord promptly had him arrested for debt.
To extricate him from this predicament, Lorenza adopted tactics which, according to the Inquisition-biographer, had proved effective under similar circumstances in Barcelona. Instead of endeavouring to excite admiration in the streets, she now sought to stir the compassion of the devout. Every day she was to be seen on her knees in some church or other, with a weather-eye open for some gullible dupe whilst she piously mumbled her prayers. In this way she managed to attract the attention of the charitable Sir Edward Hales, or as she calls him “Sir Dehels,” who not only procured Balsamo’s release from jail, but on the strength of his pen-and-ink sketches employed him to decorate the ceilings of some rooms at his country-seat near Canterbury—a task for which he had not the least qualification. Four months later, after ruining his ceilings, “Sir Dehels” caught his rascally protégé making love to his daughter, whereupon the Balsamos deemed it advisable to seek another country to exploit.
IV
Fortune, like Nature, is non-moral. If proof of so palpable a fact where required no more suitable example could be cited than the good luck that came to the Balsamos at the very moment they least deserved it.
Leaving England as poor as when they entered it, they found whilst crossing the Channel between Dover and Calais, if not exactly a fortune, what was to prove no mean equivalent in the person of a certain M. Duplessis de la Radotte. This gentleman, formerly an official in India, had on its evacuation by the French found an equally lucrative post in his native country as agent of the Marquis de Prie. Very susceptible to beauty, as Lorenza was quick to detect, he no sooner beheld her on the deck of the Dover packet than he sought her acquaintance. Lorenza, one imagines, must have been not only particularly attractive and skilled by considerable practice in the art of attraction, but a very good sailor; for in the short space of the Channel crossing she so far succeeded in captivating Duplessis that on reaching Calais he offered her a seat in his carriage to Paris. Needless to say, it was not the sort of offer she was likely to refuse; and while her husband trotted behind on horseback she turned her opportunity to such account that Duplessis was induced to invite both the husband and wife to be his guests in Paris.
But to cut a long story short: as the result of the acceptance of this invitation Duplessis after a time quarrelled with Balsamo and persuaded Lorenza to leave her husband and live under his “protection.” This was not at all to Balsamo’s taste, and he appealed to the courts for redress. He won his case, and Lorenza, according to the law in such matters, was arrested and imprisoned in Sainte Pélagie, the most famous—or infamous—penitentiary for women in France during the eighteenth century.
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This event occurred in 1773, if the dossier discovered in the French Archives in 1783, which contains the statement Lorenza made at the time, is to be regarded as authentic. That none of the numerous people referred to in the dossier with whom the Balsamos were very closely connected should have come forward during the Necklace Affair and identified Cagliostro, lays the genuineness of this celebrated document open to doubt. Is it likely that all these people had died in the fourteen years that elapsed? If not, why did not those who still lived attempt to satisfy the boundless curiosity that the mysterious Cagliostro excited? He could not have changed out of all recognition during this period, for according to Goethe, in Palermo those who remembered Balsamo discovered, or thought they discovered, a likeness to him in the published portraits of Cagliostro. In any case, however much Cagliostro’s appearance may have changed, his wife’s most certainly had not. At thirty the Countess Cagliostro possessed the freshness of a girl of twenty. Had she been Lorenza Balsamo, she would have been very quickly recognized.
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But from these doubts which shake one’s faith, not only in the dossier to which so much importance has been attached, but in the Balsamo legend itself, let us return to the still more unauthenticated doings of our adventurers.
It was not long before Balsamo repented of his vengeance. On his intercession his wife was released, and shortly afterwards, to avoid arrest on his own score, the couple disappeared. The Inquisition-biographer states vaguely that they went to “Brussels and Germany.” But it is not a matter of any importance. A few months later, however, Giuseppe Balsamo most unquestionably reappeared in his native city, where he astonished all his kindred, to whom alone he made himself known, by the splendour in which he returned.
Somewhere in the interval between his flight from Paris and his arrival in Palermo he had metamorphosed himself into a Marchese Pellegrini, and by the aid of Lorenza picked up a prince. Never before had they been so flush. The Marchese Pellegrini had his carriage and valet, one “Laroca,” a Neapolitan barber, who afterwards started business on his own account as an adventurer. The “Marchesa” had her prince and his purse, and what was to prove of even greater value, his influence to draw upon. For a while, indeed, so great was his luck, Balsamo even had thoughts of settling down and living on the fortune Lorenza had plucked from her prince. He actually hired a house on the outskirts of Palermo with this intention. But he counted without Marano, that “ninny of a goldsmith,” from whose vengeance he had fled years before. For Marano was still living, and no sooner did he become aware that the boy who had made such a fool of him in the old treasure-digging business was once more in Palermo than he had him seized and clapt into prison.
The matter, no doubt, must have had very serious consequences for the Marchese Pellegrini had it not been for the powerful interest of Lorenza’s prince. As this episode in Balsamo’s career is one of the very few concerning which the information is authentic, it is worth while describing.
“The manner of his escape,” says Goethe, who was told what he relates by eye-witnesses, “deserves to be described. The son of one of the first Sicilian princes and great landed proprietors, who had, moreover, filled important posts at the Neapolitan Court, was a person that united with a strong body and ungovernable temper all the tyrannical caprice which the rich and great, without cultivation, think themselves entitled to exhibit.
“Donna Lorenza had contrived to gain this man, and on him the fictitious Marchese Pellegrini founded his security. The prince had testified openly that he was the protector of this strange pair, and his fury may be imagined when Giuseppe Balsamo, at the instance of the man he had cheated, was cast into prison. He tried various means to deliver him, and as these would not prosper, he publicly, in the President’s ante-chamber, threatened Marano’s lawyer with the frightfullest misusage if the suit were not dropped and Balsamo forthwith set at liberty. As the lawyer declined such a proposal he clutched him, beat him, threw him on the floor, trampled him with his feet, and could hardly be restrained from still further outrages, when the President himself came running out at the tumult and commanded peace.
“This latter, a weak, dependent man, made no attempt to punish the injurer; Marano and his lawyer grew fainthearted, and Balsamo was let go. There was not so much as a registration in the court books specifying his dismissal, who occasioned it, or how it took place.
“The Marchese Pellegrini,” Goethe adds, “quickly thereafter left Palermo, and performed various travels, whereof I could obtain no clear information.”
Nor apparently could anybody else, for on leaving Palermo this time the Balsamos vanished as completely as if they had ceased to exist. The Courier de l’Europe and the Inquisition-biographer, however, were not to be dismayed by any such trifling gap in the chain of evidence they set themselves to string together. Unable to discover the least trace of Balsamo, they seized upon two or three other swindlers, who may or may not have been the creations of their distracted imagination, and boldly labelled them Balsamo.
Lorenza’s honest copper-smelting father and brother are dragged from Rome to join in the swindling operations of herself and husband. The brother is whisked off with them to Malta and Spain, where he is abandoned as an incubus, apparently because he objected to exploit his good looks after the manner of his sister. Then, as it is necessary in some way to account for Cagliostro’s occult powers, Balsamo suddenly takes up the study of alchemy, and in the moments he snatches from the preparation of “beauty salves” and “longevity pills,” picks an occasional pocket.
But the most bare-faced of all these problematic Balsamos is the Don Tiscio one, for whose existence “Dr.” Sacchi is responsible. Of Sacchi, be it said, nothing is known to his credit. Having some knowledge of surgery, and being in very low water, he appealed for assistance to Cagliostro, who found some work for him in his private hospital at Strasburg. But within a week he was dismissed for misconduct. Hereupon Sacchi published a book, or was said to have done so—for no one apparently but the Countess de Lamotte’s counsel in the Necklace Trial ever saw it—in which he denounced Cagliostro as a swindler by name of Don Tiscio who had adorned the pillory in Spain, and suffered other punishments of a kind Sacchi preferred not to mention. Notwithstanding, though no credence was attached to this statement when cited by the Countess de Lamotte, it was raked up again by the Courier de l’Europe with the addition that Balsamo now becomes Sacchi’s Don Tiscio.
Thus, after having been forger, swindler, blackmailer, souteneur, quack, pickpocket—all of the commonest type—Balsamo, on the word of a disreputable Sacchi, supported by a few singular coincidences, is saved without rhyme or reason from the gallows in Cadiz, on which he very probably perished, in order to be brought back to London as Count Cagliostro, a highly accomplished charlatan and past-master in wonder-working. An improbability that even the Inquisition-biographer is unable to pass over in silence.
“How,” he exclaims in amazement, “could such a man without either physical or intellectual qualities, devoid of education, connections, or even the appearance of respectability, whose very language was a barbarous dialect—how could he have succeeded as he did?”
How, indeed! The transformation is obviously so improbable that the puzzled reader will very likely come to the conclusion that, whoever Cagliostro may have been, he could certainly never have been Giuseppe Balsamo.
But enough of speculation; let us now turn our belated attention to the man whose career under the impenetrable incognito of Count Cagliostro is the subject of this book.
PART II