Cagliostro

by W. R. H. Trowbridge

CHAPTER VIII

“NATURE’S UNFORTUNATE CHILD”

I

On leaving England in 1786 Cagliostro was doomed to resume the vagabond existence of his earlier years; with the difference, however, that whereas previously his star, though often obscured by clouds, was constantly rising, it was now steadily on the decline.

At first its descent was so imperceptible as to appear to have been checked. After the manner in which he had been harried in London the tranquillity and admiration he found in Bâle must have been balm to his tortured spirit. At Bâle he had followers who were still loyal, particularly the rich banker Sarazin, on whom he had “conferred the blessing of a belated paternity,” and whose devotion to him, as Cagliostro declared in his extravagant way at his trial in Paris, was so great that “he would give him the whole of his fortune were he to ask for it.”

It was at Bâle, moreover, that the dying flame of Egyptian Masonry flickered up for the last before expiring altogether. Under the auspices of Sarazin a lodge was founded on which the Grand Cophta conferred the high-sounding dignity of the “Mother Lodge of the Helvetic States.” The funds, however, did not run to a “temple” as at Lyons, but the room in which the faithful met was arranged to resemble as closely as possible the interior of that edifice. Both sexes were admitted to this lodge, and Cagliostro again transmitted his powers to certain of the members who, having been selected for the favour apparently with more care on this occasion than in London, performed with the greatest success.

It was, however, in the little town of Bienne that Cagliostro seems to have resided chiefly while in Switzerland. According to rumours that reached London and Paris “he lived there for several months on a pension allowed him by Sarazin.” Why he left this quiet retreat, or when, is unknown. He is next heard of vaguely at Aix-les-Bains, where the Countess is said to have taken the cure. Rumour follows him thence to Turin, “but,” says the Inquisition-biographer, “he had no sooner set foot in the town than he was ordered to leave it instantly.”

Henceforth fortune definitely deserted him. Against the poison in which Morande had dipped his barbed pen there was no antidote. It destroyed him by slow degrees, drying up the springs of his fabulous fortune, exhausting the resources of his fertile brain, withering his confidence, his ambition, and his heart. But though the game was played, he still struggled desperately to recover all he had lost, till he went to Rome, into which he crawled like a beast wounded to the death that has just enough strength to reach its lair.

The luxury and flattery so dear to him were gone for ever. His journeys from place to place were no longer triumphal processions but flights. Dishonoured, discredited, disillusioned, the once superb High Priest of the Egyptian Mysteries, the “divine Cagliostro,” accustomed to be courted by the greatest personages, acclaimed by the crowd, and worshipped by his adherents, was now shadowed by the police, shunned wherever he was recognized, hunted from pillar to post. All towns in which he was likely to be known were carefully avoided; into such as seemed to offer a chance of concealment he crept stealthily. He dared not show his face anywhere, it was as if the whole world, so to speak, had been turned by some accident of his magic into the Trebizond that the black slave of the Arabian days had warned him to beware of.

If this existence was terrible to him, it was equally so to his delicate wife. The poverty and hardship through which Lorenza Balsamo passed so carelessly, left their mark on the Countess Seraphina. Under the pinch of want her charms and her jewels began alike to vanish. At Vicenza necessity “obliged her to pawn a diamond of some value.”

Rumour, following in their track, mumbles vaguely of petty impostures, small sums gulled from the credulous, and of shady devices to make two ends meet, but gives no details, makes no definite charge. If the rumour be true, it is not surprising that one so bankrupt in reputation, in purse, and in friends as Cagliostro had now become, should have lost his self-respect. In the pursuit of his ideal, having formed the habit of regarding the means as justifying the end, what wonder when the end had changed to hunger that any means of satisfying it should have appeared to him justifiable?

At Rovoredo, an obscure little town in the Austrian Tyrol, where he found a temporary refuge, he did not scruple to make capital out of his knowledge of both magic and medicine. Here he managed to interest several persons in the mysteries of Egyptian Masonry to the extent of being invited to give an exhibition of his powers. He even succeeded in founding a lodge at Rovoredo, which he affiliated with the lodge at Lyons, the members of which still believed in him. At the same time, followers being few and subscriptions small, he resumed the practice of medicine, making a moderate charge for his attendance and his medicaments.

But in spite of all his precautions to avoid exciting ill-will or curiosity, it was not long before his identity was discovered. Some one, perhaps the author of a stinging satire[46] which from its biblical style was known as the “Gospel according to St. Cagliostro,” notified the authorities. The “quack” was obliged to discontinue the exercise of his medical knowledge in any shape or form; and the matter coming to the ears of the Emperor Joseph II, that sovereign signed an order expelling him from the town altogether.

Cagliostro then went to Trent, where there reigned a prince-bishop as devoted to alchemy and magic as Rohan himself. This little potentate was no sooner informed of the arrival of the pariah than instead of following the example of his Imperial suzerain, he invited him to the episcopal palace. It was an invitation, needless to say, that was gladly accepted; for a moment, protected by his new friend, it seemed as if he might succeed in mending his broken fortunes. But while the prince-bishop was willing enough to turn his guest’s occult knowledge to account he was not inclined to countenance Egyptian or any other form of Freemasonry. Accordingly to allay suspicion Cagliostro foreswore his faith in Masonic observances, sought a confessor to whom he declared that he repented of his connection with Freemasonry, and manifested a desire to be received back into the bosom of the Church.

The prince-bishop, in his turn, pretended to believe in this feigned repentance, boasted of the convert he had made, and, assisted by the reformed wonder-worker, resumed his quest of the philosopher’s stone and any other secret his crucible might be induced to divulge. The little world of Trent, however, which had palpitated like the rest of Europe over the revelations of the Diamond Necklace Affair and Morande, was profoundly scandalized. Certain persons felt it their duty to inform the Emperor how the prince-bishop was behaving. The free-thinking, liberty-affecting Joseph II could be arbitrary enough when he chose. Severely reprimanding his episcopal vassal for harbouring so infamous an impostor, he commanded him to banish the wretch instantly from his estates.

Judging from the itinerary of his wanderings in northern Italy and the Tyrol, Cagliostro seems to have intended to go to Germany, hoping, no doubt, to find an asylum, like Saint-Germain, Weishaupt, Knigge and many other, at the Court of some Protestant prince, most of whom were Rosicrucians, alchemists, Freemasons, and revolutionary enthusiasts. But whatever hopes he may have had in this direction were effectually dashed by the hostility of the Emperor. Expelled from Trent in such a fashion he dared not enter Germany.

To turn back was equally perilous. In Italy, where the Church, brutalized out of all semblance to Christianity by centuries of undisputed authority, regarded the least attempt to investigate the secrets of nature as a reflection on its own ignorance, a certain and terrible doom awaited any one who excited its suspicions. But to Cagliostro, with fate’s blood-hounds on his track, an Imperial dungeon seemed a more present danger than an Inquisition torture-chamber. It was no “Count Front of Brass,” as Carlyle jeeringly stigmatized him, that was brought to bay at Trent. His courage was completely broken. Spent in this struggle against destiny, he was no longer able to devise new schemes and contrivances as of old. Retracing his steps with a sort of defiant despair, as if driven by some irresistible force to his doom, he took the road to Rome, where he and his wife arrived at the end of May 1789.

According to the Inquisition-biographer it was to please his wife, who desired to be reconciled to her parents, that Cagliostro went to Rome. If, indeed, the parents of the Countess Seraphina, or Lorenza Balsamo, as you will, were still living or even resident in Rome, they were apparently unwilling or afraid to recognize the relationship, for nothing further is heard of them. It is much more likely that Cagliostro chose Rome on account of its size, as being the one place in Italy which offered him the most likely chance of escaping observation. In so large a city his poverty was itself a safe-guard.

Cagliostro’s first efforts to drive the wolf from the door were confined to the surreptitious practice of medicine. On such patients as he managed to procure he enjoined the strictest silence. But in losing his confidence in himself he had lost the art of healing. The Inquisition-biographer cites several instances of his failure to effect the cures he attempted to perform. After “undertaking to cure a foreign lady of an ulcer in her leg by applying a plaster that very nearly brought on gangrene,” he had the prudence to abandon altogether a practice that exposed him to so much danger.

The risk he ran in exploiting his psychic gifts in Rome was even greater than the peril connected with the illicit practice of medicine. On leaving Trent he seems to have resolved to renounce Egyptian Masonry altogether, and he wrote to such of his followers as he still corresponded with, imploring them to avoid all reference to it in their letters to him. But the occult was now his only resource, and whether he wished it or not, he was obliged to turn to it for a living.

In spite of all the efforts of the Church to stamp out Freemasonry in Italy it still beat a feeble wing. For two years the Lodge of the Vrais Amis had existed in secret in the heart of Rome itself. This lodge, which had received its patent from the Grand Orient in Paris and was in correspondence with all the principal lodges in France, was really a revolutionary club of foreign origin. It had been founded by “five Frenchmen, one Pole, and one American,” who, to judge from the character of the ceremonies they observed at the initiation of a member, were Illuminés. As a Freemason and an Illuminé himself Cagliostro must have known of the existence of this lodge before coming to Rome.

His fear of the Inquisition was so great that before making himself known to the Vrais Amis he contemplated leaving Rome altogether. The fall of the Bastille, which occurred about this time, having inaugurated the Revolution in France, he petitioned the States General for permission to return there, as “one who had taken so great an interest in liberty.” At the same time not being in the position to take advantage of the privilege were it granted, he wrote urgent appeals for money to former friends in Paris. But in the rapidity with which the Revolution marched, Cagliostro had ceased to have the least importance, even as a missile to hurl at the hated Queen. Whether the petition or the letters ever reached their destination is unknown; in neither case, however, did he obtain a reply.[47]

With all hope of retreat cut off and starvation staring him in the face, the wretched man timorously proceeded to seek the acquaintance of the Vrais Amis. The difficulties and dangers they encountered in obtaining recruits won for the discredited Grand Cophta a cordial welcome. Notwithstanding, he refused to seek admission to their lodge, and contented himself with begging a meal or a small loan of the members with whom he fraternized.

Even Morande, who had himself experienced the horrors of abject poverty in his early struggle for existence in London, must have pitied the victim of his remorseless persecution had he seen him now. In his miserable lodging near the Piazza Farnese everything—save such furniture as was the property of the landlord—on which he could raise the least money had been pawned. Not a stone of the diamonds that had so dazzled, or scandalized, as Madame de Lamotte maliciously declared, the high-born ladies of Paris and Strasburg, was left his once lovely, and stilled loved, Countess. Faded, pinched with hunger, she still clung to this man, himself now broken and aged by so many calumnies, persecutions and misfortunes, whose enemies had falsely accused him of treating her brutally, as she had clung to him for fifteen years—the first and the last of his countless admirers and followers.

To one of his vain and grandiose temperament the abasement of his soul must have been terrible as he who had been as good as master of the splendid palace of Saverne cowered day after day in that bare attic with hunger and terror, like sullen lacqueys in constant attendance, and thought of all the past—of the fascinating Cardinal whose friendship had brought him to this pass and who had now forsaken him; of Sarazin, the rich banker “who would give me the whole of his fortune were I to ask for it,” dead now, or as good as dead; of de Loutherbourg, the Good Samaritan; of the reverent disciples to whom he had been the père adoré, the “master”; of the Croesus’ fortune which he had lavished so ostentatiously and generously; of the gaudeamus with which the sympathetic crowds had greeted him on his release from the Bastille; of the miracles of which he had lost the trick; and last but not least of his fantastic scheme for the regeneration of mankind which he had promulgated with such enthusiasm and success.

One day at a dinner to which some of his Masonic acquaintances invited him when the memory of the past was perhaps more vivid, more insistent than usual, influenced by the festal atmosphere of the occasion, Cagliostro was persuaded to discourse on Egyptian Masonry. But alas! instead of exciting interest as in former times his eloquence was without effect. The ice, however, was broken, and necessity becoming stronger than his fears he endeavoured to procure recruits in the hope of maintaining himself and his wife on their subscriptions.

According to the Inquisition-biographer two men whom he approached resolved to have a practical joke at his expense. They manifested a lively desire to be instructed in the Egyptian Rite, and Cagliostro, deceived into the belief that he had to do with men of means, “by a false diamond, which he took to be real, on the hand of one,” decided to gratify them. After having explained to them the aims and character of Egyptian Masonry he proceeded to initiate them in conformity with the usual ridiculous rites, passing them, as Grand Master, by the wave of a sword through the three Masonic grades of apprentice, companion and master at once. But to his mingled terror and mortification when it came to the payment of the fifty crowns that he demanded as their subscription fees, they excused themselves in a manner which showed him only too plainly he was their dupe.

Alarmed lest they intended to inform against him, he thought to avoid the consequences of detection by confessing to a priest as he had done at Trent. It was the last effort of a beast at bay. In accordance with the monstrous principle that the means justify the end confessors have been known on occasion to betray the secrets confided to them in the confessional. In this instance, however, there is no proof that the Church profaned the sanctity of the sacrament to which it attaches so much importance. It is much more likely that the Inquisition had discovered Cagliostro’s presence in Rome, and that the men by whom he had been duped were spies of the Holy Office. On the evening of December 27, 1789, he and his wife were arrested by the Papal police and imprisoned in the Castle of St. Angelo.

Cagliostro, it is said, had been warned of his danger anonymously by some unknown well-wisher. But where could he flee without money? The consolations of the confessional, moreover, seemed to have allayed his fears to such an extent that he did not even take the precaution to destroy any letters or documents that might compromise him.

On the same day that Cagliostro was seized the sbirri of the Inquisition made a raid on the Lodge of the Vrais Amis. But the members, who had also received warning, better advised or better supplied with funds than the ex-Grand Cophta, had taken time by the forelock and fled.

II

The manner in which the Papal government tried those accused of heresy and sedition is too notorious to require explanation. In all countries, in all languages, the very name of the Inquisition has become a by-word for religious tyranny of the cruelest and most despicable description. If ever this terrible stigma was justified it was in the eighteenth century, particularly in the Church’s struggle with the Revolution for which clerical intolerance was more directly responsible than any other factor of inhumanity and stupidity that led to the overthrow of the ancien régime.

In the case of Cagliostro, who was one of the last to be tried by the Apostolic Court, the Inquisition lived up to its reputation. Threatened and execrated everywhere by the invincible spirit of freedom which the fall of the Bastille had released, the Jesuits, who controlled the machinery of the Papal government,[48] strove without scruple to crush the enemies which their arrogant intrigues had created for the Church. To them Freemasonry was a comprehensive name for everything and everybody opposed to them and their pretensions. In a certain sense they were right, and in France at any rate where the lodges and secret societies no longer took the trouble to conceal their aims there was no mistaking the revolutionary character of the Freemasons. So great, therefore, was the fear and hatred that Freemasonry inspired in the Church that in seizing Cagliostro the Inquisition never dreamt of charging him with any other crime. Beside it his occult practices or the crimes of which, on the assumption that he was Giuseppe Balsamo he might have been condemned, paled into insignificance.

The fact that the Inquisition-biographer seeks to excuse the Apostolic Court for its failure to charge him with these offences, on the ground that “all who could testify against him were dead” proves how slight was the importance his judges attached to them. Had they desired to bring him to the gallows for the forgeries of Balsamo, the judges of the Inquisition would have found the necessary witnesses. As a matter of fact they never so much as attempted to identify him with Balsamo, as they could easily have done by bringing some of the relations of the latter from Palermo.[49]

The news that Cagliostro had been arrested as a revolutionary agent caused great excitement. As the Papal government took care to foster the belief that he was connected with all the events that were occurring in France, the unfortunate Grand Cophta of Egyptian Masonry suddenly acquired a political importance he had never possessed. “Arrested,” says the Moniteur, “he evoked as much interest in Rome as he had formerly done in Paris.” In all classes of society he became once more the chief topic of conversation.

It was reported that before his arrest he had written a circular letter to his followers, of whom he was popularly supposed to have many in Rome itself, calling upon them to succour him in case he should fall into the hands of the Inquisition, and if necessary to set fire to the Castle of St. Angelo or any other prison in which he might be confined. Even from his dungeon, “which was the same as the one that the alchemist Borri had died in a century earlier,” he was said to have found the means to communicate with his accomplices without. According to the Moniteur “a letter from him to a priest had been intercepted which had led to the detection of a conspiracy to overthrow the Papal monarchy.”

Whether the report was true or not, the Papal government, which had probably circulated it, made it the excuse to arrest numerous persons it suspected. These mysterious arrests caused a general feeling of uneasiness, which was increased by rumours of more to follow. Fearing, or affecting to fear, a rising the Papal government doubled the guards at the Vatican, closed the Arsenal, which was usually open to the public, and surrounded St. Angelo with troops. There was even talk of exiling all the French in Rome.

It required no gift of prophecy to foretell the fate of the unhappy creature who was the cause of all this excitement. From the first it was recognized that he had not the ghost of a chance. Two papal bulls decreed that Freemasonry was a crime punishable by death. To convict him, moreover, the Inquisition had no lack of proof. Laubardemont, Cardinal Richelieu’s famous police-spy, deemed a single compromising line sufficient to hang a man. In Cagliostro’s case, thanks to his singular lack of prudence in not destroying his papers, the documents seized on his arrest were a formidable dossier. Nevertheless, before dispatching their luckless victim the “Holy” Inquisition played with him, like a cat with a mouse, for over a year.

As usual at all Inquisition trials the forms of justice were observed. Permission was granted Cagliostro to choose two lawyers to defend him. This privilege, however, was a mockery, for his choice was in reality limited to certain officials especially appointed by the Apostolic Court to take charge of such cases as his. They were not free to acquit; at most their defence could only be a plea for mercy. In the present instance, if not actually prejudiced against their client, they certainly took no interest whatever in him. Aware that he was utterly incapable of paying them for their services, they grudged the time they were obliged to devote to him. Their defence consisted in advising him to acknowledge his guilt and throw himself on the mercy of his judges.

Nor were the witnesses he was likewise permitted to summon in his defence to be depended on. At Inquisition trials all witnesses, fearing lest they should themselves be transformed into prisoners, turned accusers. Before the terrible judges of the Holy Office, whose court resembled a torture-chamber rather than a court of justice, even his wife testified against him.[50] But though surrounded with indifference, contempt or hate, and threatened with death, Cagliostro did not abandon hope. His spirit was not yet wholly broken. The terror in which he had lived so long gave place to rage. Caught in the gin of the Inquisition he defended himself with the fury born of despair, and something of his old cunning.

According to the Inquisition-biographer, when he was examined for the first time four months after his arrest “he burst into invectives against the Court of France to which he attributed all the misfortunes he had experienced since the Bastille.” He accused the witnesses of being his enemies, and on being told that his wife had “confessed” he denounced her as a traitress. But the next moment, as if realizing what she must have been made to suffer, “he burst into tears, testified the liveliest tenderness for her, and implored the favour of having her as a companion in his cell.”

“One may well imagine,” reports the Inquisition-biographer, “that this request was not granted.” One may indeed! According to the Moniteur he also asked to be bled, placed in a larger cell, allowed fresh linen,[51] a fire and a blanket. The first and the last alone were granted him, for the Inquisition had no desire to have him die before they had finished trying him. As, however, his judges professed to be deeply concerned for the health of his soul, when to the above request, he added one for “some good book,” no objection was made to satisfy him. He was, therefore, given three folio volumes on “the defence of the Roman Pontificate and the Catholic Church.”[52]

Cagliostro took the cynical hint, and after reading the book manifested the deepest contrition, admitted that Freemasonry was a veritable crime, and the Egyptian Rite contrary to the Catholic religion. “No one, however,” says the Inquisition-biographer, “believed him, and if he flattered himself on recovering his liberty by this means he was mistaken.” Perceiving that this act of repentance, far from being of any avail, only served to furnish his enemies with fresh weapons, he declared that “everything he had done in his life had been done with the consent of the Almighty, and that he had always been faithful to the Pope and the Church.”

Unhappily for him, however, he had to deal with men of a very different type to those who composed the Parliament of Paris. Nothing he could say would satisfy them. “I will confess whatever you wish me to,” he said. Told that the Inquisition only desired the “truth,” he declared that all he had said was true. He demanded to be brought before the Pope himself. “If his Holiness would but hear me,” he said, “I prophesy I should be set at liberty this very night!”

And who shall gainsay him? With Cardinals and Prince-Bishops steeped in alchemy and the occult, perhaps even the Pope might have been tempted to exploit the extraordinary knowledge and faculties of his famous, mysterious prisoner. It would not have been the first time that the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life had been sought by a Papal sovereign. At any rate Cagliostro’s request to be brought before Pius VI was not granted. The judges of the Inquisition were taking no risks calculated to cheat them of their prey.

But to give all the details of this trial as related by the Inquisition-biographer, who was evidently himself one of the judges, would be tedious. Suffice it to say, Cagliostro “confessed,” retracted, and “confessed” again, “drowning the truth in a flood of words.” One day he would acknowledge that Egyptian Masonry was a huge system of imposture which had as its object the destruction of throne and altar. The next he declared that it was a means of spreading the Catholic religion, and as such had been recognized and encouraged by Cardinal de Rohan, the head of the Church in France.

As regards his own religious convictions, which, by catechizing him on the cardinal virtues and the difference between venial and mortal sins, the Inquisition-biographer asserts to be the chief object of the trial, they were those of the enlightened men of his century. “Questioned,” he declared he believed all religions to be equal, and that “providing one believed in the existence of a Creator and the immortality of the soul, it mattered not whether one was Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, or Jew.” As to his political opinions, he confessed to a “hatred of tyranny, especially of all forms of religious intolerance.”

At length, on March 21, 1791, the Inquisition judges brought their gloomy farce to an end. As an instance of the hatred of the Papal government for secret societies and especially for Freemasonry, Cagliostro’s sentence is worth quoting in full—

“Giuseppe Balsamo, attainted and convicted of many crimes, and of having incurred the censures and penalties pronounced against heretics, dogmatics, heresiarchs, and propagators of magic and superstition, has been found guilty and condemned to the said censures and penalties as decreed by the Apostolic laws of Clement XII and Benedict XIV, against all persons who in any manner whatever favour or form societies and conventicles of Freemasonry, as well as by the edict of the Council of State against all persons convicted of this crime in Rome or in any other place in the dominions of the Pope.

“Notwithstanding, by special grace and favour, the sentence of death by which this crime is expiated is hereby commuted into perpetual imprisonment in a fortress, where the culprit is to be strictly guarded without any hope of pardon whatever. Furthermore, after he shall have abjured his offences as a heretic in the place of his imprisonment he shall receive absolution, and certain salutary penances will then be prescribed for him to which he is hereby ordered to submit.

“Likewise, the manuscript book which has for its title Egyptian Masonry is solemnly condemned as containing rites, propositions, doctrines, and a system which being superstitious, impious, heretical, and altogether blasphemous, open a road to sedition and the destruction of the Christian religion. This book, therefore, shall be burnt by the executioner, together with all the other documents relating to this sect.

“By a new Apostolic law we shall confirm and renew not only the laws of the preceding pontiffs which prohibit the societies and conventicles of Freemasonry, making particular mention of the Egyptian sect and of another vulgarly known as the Illuminés, and we shall decree that the most grievous corporal punishments reserved for heretics shall be inflicted on all who shall associate, hold communion with, or protect these societies.”

Throughout Europe, which was everywhere impregnated with the doctrines of the Revolution, such a sentence for such a crime at such a time created a revulsion of feeling in Cagliostro’s favour. His fate, however, evoked less sympathy for him than indignation against Rome. An article in the Feuille Villageoise best expresses the general opinion.

“The Pope,” says the writer, “ought to have abandoned Cagliostro to the effects of his bad reputation. Instead he has had him shut up and tried by charlatans far more dangerous to society than himself. His sentence is cruel and ridiculous. If all who make dupes of the crowd were punished in this fashion, precedence on the scaffold should certainly be granted to the Roman Inquisitors.”

******

That the trial of Cagliostro was really intended by the Papal government as a proof of its determination to show no quarter in its war against the Freemasons may be gathered from the Inquisition-biographer’s Vie de Joseph Balsamo, which is less a life of Balsamo or Cagliostro, as it purports to be, than a furious attack on Freemasonry, which is depicted in the blackest and most odious colours. Its publication exasperated the secret societies in Lombardy and they were emboldened by the progress of the Revolution to publish a reply. “This pamphlet,” says the Moniteur, “appeared under the auspices of the Swiss government and produced such a sensation throughout Italy, and particularly in Rome, that the Conclave, terrified at the revolutionary fury it had awakened, instructed its agents to buy up every copy they could find.”

The Conclave would have been better advised to suppress the work of the Inquisition-biographer. The account it contains of Cagliostro’s trial completely justifies the popular belief in the bigotry, cruelty, tyranny, and total lack of the Christian spirit that characterized the proceedings of the Holy Inquisition.

III

For some time after his trial the public continued to manifest great interest in Cagliostro. The recollection of his extraordinary career gave to his sentence a dramatic character, which made a deep impression on the imagination. Speculation was rife as to his fate, which the Papal government foolishly saw fit to shroud in mystery that only served to keep his memory alive.

All sorts of rumours were current about him. One day it would be said that he had attempted to commit suicide; the next that he was chained to his cell a raving maniac. Again it was rumoured that he had predicted the fall of the Papacy and was impatiently awaiting the Roman populace to march on St. Angelo and deliver him. The Moniteur’s correspondent relates that in a terrific storm “in which Rome was stricken with a great fear as if the end of the world was at hand, Cagliostro mistook the thunder for the cannon of the insurgents and was heard shouting in his dungeon, Me voici! à moi! me voici!”

Knowing, as he did from his Masonic connection, how widespread was the revolutionary movement, and what hopes were raised in Italy by the stirring march of events in France, it is not unlikely that he may have counted on some popular rising to set him free. That he despaired of such a deliverance, however, and contemplated recovering his liberty by his own efforts seems much more probable.

According to Prince Bernard of Saxe-Weimar who guaranteed the accuracy of the story, Cagliostro did, indeed, make a bold attempt to escape from St. Angelo. “Manifesting deep contrition,” says the Prince, “he demanded penance for his sins and a confessor. A Capucin was sent him. After his confession, Cagliostro entreated the priest to give him the ‘discipline’ with the cord he wore as a belt, to which the latter willingly consented. But scarcely had he received the first blow when he seized the cord, flung himself on the Capucin, and did his best to strangle him. His intention was to escape in the priest’s cloak, and had he been in his vigour and his opponent a weak man he might have succeeded. But Cagliostro was lean and wasted from long imprisonment and the Capucin was strong and muscular. In the struggle with his penitent he had time to call for help.”

What followed on the arrival of the jailers is not known, but it is not likely that the prisoner was handled with gloves.

As a sequel to that frantic struggle for life and liberty, Cagliostro was secretly sent “in the middle of the night” to the Castle of San Leo, near Montefeltro. The situation of this stronghold is one of the most singular in Europe. The enormous rock, whose summit it crowns, rising on three sides precipitously from an almost desert plain, is like a monument commemorative of some primeval convulsion of nature. In early times it had been the site of a temple of Jupiter, the ruins of which after its destruction by the barbarians became the abode of a Christian hermit, whose ascetic virtues were canonized, and who bequeathed his name to it. In the Middle Ages the holy ruins gave place to an almost impregnable fortress, which at a still later period was converted into a Papal prison, compared to which the Bastille was a paradise.[53]

SAN LEO

In the eighteenth century the condition of the surroundings rendered it well-nigh inaccessible. The roads leading to San Leo were only practicable for horses in fine weather; in winter it was only approached on foot. To accentuate still further this isolation, the Papal government had taken care that those convicted of sedition or heretical doctrines, should find there an everlasting seclusion. An official, commissioned by Napoleon to visit and examine the Italian prisons, gives an account of the cells, which were partly in the old castle of San Leo itself and partly excavated out of the rock on which it stands.

“The galleries,” he reports, “which have been cut out of the solid rock, were divided into cells, and old dried-up cisterns had been converted into dungeons for the worst criminals, and further surrounded by high walls, so that the only possible egress, if escape was attempted, would be by a staircase cut in the rock and guarded night and day by sentinels.

“It was in one of these cisterns that the celebrated Cagliostro was interred in 1791. In recommending the Pope to commute the sentence of death, which the Inquisition had passed upon him, into perpetual imprisonment, the Holy Tribunal took care that the commutation should be equivalent to the death penalty. His only communication with mankind was when his jailers raised the trap to let food down to him. Here he languished for three years without air, movement, or intercourse with his fellow-creatures. During the last months of his life his condition excited the pity of the governor, who had him removed from this dungeon to a cell on the level with the ground, where the curious, who obtain permission to visit the prison, may read on the walls various inscriptions and sentences traced there by the unhappy alchemist. The last bears the date of the 6th of March, 1795.”[54]

This is the last definite trace of Cagliostro.

On the 6th October, 1795, the Moniteur states “it is reported in Rome that the famous Cagliostro is dead.” But when he died, or how, is absolutely unknown. “That his end was tragic,” says d’Alméras, “one can well suppose, and his jailers, to make sure that he should not escape, may have put him out of his misery.” The Moniteur speaks of the probability of such an end as being a topic of conversation in Rome. In any case, it seems impossible to believe that he could long have survived so terrible a doom, which, whatever his offence, was utterly disgraceful to the government that pronounced it.

This mysterious end, so in keeping with Cagliostro’s mysterious origin and personality, appeals to the imagination. Nothing excites curiosity like a mystery. Since his death there have been as many attempts to lift the veil in which his end is shrouded as were made in his lifetime to discover the secret of his birth. Of these specimens of sheer futility, Madame Blavatsky’s is the most interesting, the most unlikely, and the most popular among the believers in the supernatural who have allowed their imaginations to run riot on Cagliostro generally.

According to the equally extraordinary High Priestess of the Theosophists, Cagliostro escaped from San Leo, and long after his supposed death in 1795 was met by various people in Russia, even residing for some time in the house of Madame Blavatsky’s father, where “in the midst of winter he produced by magical power a plate full of fresh strawberries for a sick person who was craving it.”

Had Cagliostro survived his terrible sufferings in San Leo till 1797, when the French invaded the Papal States, he certainly would have been set at liberty. San Leo, to which the Pope’s troops had retired, was taken by the famous Polish legion under General Dombrowski. The first thing the officers did on entering the fortress was to inquire anxiously if Cagliostro, whom they regarded as a martyr in the cause of freedom, was living.

“They thought to rescue him,” says Figuier, “and perhaps even to give him an ovation similar to that which he had received in Paris after his acquittal by the Parliament. But they arrived too late. Cagliostro, they were told, had just died.”

According to another version, they demanded to be shown his grave, and having opened it, filled the skull with wine, which they drank to the honour of the Revolution!

******

The fate of the inoffensive and colourless Countess Cagliostro was quite as mysterious, though less cruel, perhaps, than her husband’s. The Inquisition sentenced her, too, to imprisonment for life. She was confined in the convent of St. Appolonia, a penitentiary for women in Rome, where it was rumoured she had died in 1794.