CHAPTER IV.
CAGLIOSTRO—VOLTAIRE—THE MARQUIS DE J——.
It was the hour of noon, and C. had kindly come to fetch me to the luncheon-room, where I found the guests all assembled, listening greedily to the conversation of the prince, who was that morning en verve, and relating with great good-nature the anecdotes which he had promised us on the preceding evening; the first claimant to be satisfied was, of course, by right, the youthful duchess, to whom he had held out hopes of the history of his famous visit to the great Cagliostro, and which I will give to the reader.
“It was just at the dawning of the new lights which had arisen on the political horizon,” began the prince, “or rather, I should say, perhaps, with more justice, at the first extinguishing of the old beacons which had served to guide our ancestors for ages, that so many new doctrinaires and charlatans of every kind came swarming in crowds to Paris. Those were, indeed, most troublous times. Every brain seemed reeling with political vertigo—every heart seemed to beat thick and fast, with an ardour hitherto unknown in the annals of any country on the face of the globe. With the warm and passionate temperaments, enthusiasm had reached to frenzy, while, with the cold and passionless, it smouldered, a hidden fire, ready to burst out into lurid flame upon the first occasion of excitement.
“Among the many quacks and impostors who abounded at the time, none was more conspicuous than the famous Cagliostro. He had arrived from Italy under extraordinary and mysterious circumstances; his coming had been preceded by rumours more strange, more surprising still, and his door was besieged at once by all the rich and idle, the marvel-loving portion of the population of Paris. Among the rest, I am ashamed to confess that I was one of the most ardent. I was very young at the time, and had not acquired that distrust of all pretension which years alone can give. Many months, however, had elapsed before I could obtain the audience I so much coveted. Thousands of persons had to pass by right before me, and it was said that, immediately on his arrival, his books were so filled with the names of the highest and mightiest, that, had he been just, and received them each in turn, the candidates at the bottom of the list would have known their future by experience long before he could by any possible means have foretold it.
“I myself knew an officer in the regiment de Flandre, who, being quartered at Metz, and not being able to obtain from his colonel leave of absence, threw up his commission, in order to keep his appointment with Cagliostro on a certain day in Paris, so fearful was he of losing the valuable information concerning the future, which the magician had to give him.
“I cannot even now repress a smile, when I remember the awe and terror with which I entered the presence of the conjuror. I had not dared to go alone; M. de Boufflers had kindly consented to accompany me; and yet my embarrassment was not wholly dissipated even with the prospect of his company; so fearful was I of missing the object of my visit, that I had wasted so much time in thinking of all the questions which I meant to propound to him, as to have even written many of them upon my calpin, with the intention of consulting it in case of need. It was already dusk when we were admitted into the awful presence of the conjuror; not quite dark without doors, yet sufficiently so within to require the aid of tapers. The antechamber was filled with impatient applicants, who railed at us as we passed through the door of the chamber where the wizard was holding his incantations. The whole scene was very like those introduced in the early Spanish dramas, and inspired one with the most awful forebodings as to what was about to follow.
“We found the magician in his study. He was just at the moment engaged in dismissing two poor patients, to whom he had given advice gratuitously. The one was a cripple figure, whose distorted and haggard countenance formed a most fitting accessory to the scene of devilry; the other was an old mendicant friar, afflicted with the shaking palsy, whose restless limbs and hesitating speech made him appear as if under the influence of some wizard spell.
“As soon as we entered, Cagliostro led his guests to a door at the farther end of the chamber, which was veiled by a thick tapestry, and, opening it without the slightest noise, ushered them through it into the passage beyond, and then, closing it again with the same attention to silence, returned to the spot where we were standing, and, placing his finger on his lips, pointed towards a still and motionless figure seated in one corner of the room, and which, from the obscurity that reigned around, we had not observed on our entrance. The figure was that of a female, covered from head to foot with a veil of black crape, so long and ample that it disguised even the form of the fauteuil in which she was seated.
“Cagliostro bade us take seats at a table covered with green velvet, upon which were placed divers mysterious-looking instruments of torture, sundry queer-shaped bottles and diabolical volumes, and then, standing up before us, in solemn and biblical language inquired wherefore we had sought him, and what it was that we desired to know. Such was the effect of the sudden questioning, the mystery of the interview, the silence and the darkness, that Boufflers, who was to have spoken first, and who had the reputation of being a raffiné de premier ordre, a roué de la Régence, was quite overawed by the whole scene, and could find no words to answer the summons, but sat stammering and hesitating, while I took the opportunity of examining slowly and at leisure the wondrous adept.
“Cagliostro was then a man in the very flower of his age, of exceedingly prepossessing appearance. His person, although small, was so well and firmly knit that its proportions seemed those of a much larger man. His countenance was remarkably keen and penetrating, being formed of a succession of sharp angular lines, which gave him a look of cunning that he would willingly have disguised, and with which the solemn tone and mysterious aspect were altogether at variance. His sharp piercing eyes I shall never forget; they absolutely seemed to light up the obscurity of the chamber, and, as they flashed from the one to the other of his visitors, they seemed to belong to some wild bird of prey hesitating between two victims which to devour first. His beard and eyebrows were black and bushy, with here and there a streak of grey amid their jetty blackness, telling more of the hand of woe than of the passage of time. When we entered, he had upon his head a velvet cap, which, with gentlemanlike courtesy, he doffed when he addressed us, and then I perceived that the summit of his crown was already bald, although his hair curled downward upon his neck and shoulders in a thick and silky mass. The hand which rested upon the table, and upon which he seemed to be leaning his whole weight as he stood in graceful and theatrical attitude, awaiting our communication, was small and delicate as that of a lady of the court, and shone out upon the dark green velvet as white as snow; and yet it needed not any very profound knowledge of anatomy to enable the beholder to discern at once that it was the hand of a man possessed of most herculean strength and power, so vigorous were the firm knit muscles, so well strung the tightened, cord-like nerves. I think he observed with some displeasure the curiosity with which I gazed towards it, for he withdrew it suddenly, and let it fall by his side.