“His dismissal of us was as abrupt as possible, scarcely, indeed, consistent with politeness. ‘You have told your ailments and your griefs—you bear with you the never-failing cure—now begone.’
“With these words he opened the same low door through which he had let out the two visitors whom we had succeeded; and Boufflers and I passed out, obeying, without a word, the gesture of the magician, which pointed towards the passage beyond.
“Such is the history of my first interview with the great Cagliostro. To you, who behold daily the strange and varied examples of magnetism, my story will perhaps appear pale and puerile; but you must remember that, at the time, the thing was new, and, notwithstanding all that has been discovered since, none has surpassed him; even to this very hour, the secret of Cagliostro has not been discovered. It is supposed that ventriloquism was much employed by him in his various tours de force. Perhaps it was made the agent of deception in my own case, and the figure veiled with black crape may have been a mere puppet set up to delude the credulous. The circumstance which would seem to favour greatly the suspicion of imposture is, that, as Cagliostro never employed twice the same agency, the consultant could never come prepared to watch and detect the machinery of his experiments, and in fact, being always taken by surprise, had no leisure to think of anything else than the consultation he had come to hold. Again, how could the adept have known, by natural means, that the Marquise de Br**, whom he had not suffered me to name, was young and beauteous—that she possessed eardrops of emerald and topaz, which mixture of jewels was peculiar, and that she would wear them on that very night? All these reflections completely bewildered me, as I hastened on to the Opera, certain that the marquise would be there, full of curiosity to see if her dress and appearance would correspond with Cagliostro’s description. Boufflers could not help me, nor suggest a single idea to solve the mystery, so absorbed was he in the memory of the strange scene he had been witnessing—so completely wonder-struck by the silence and mystery of the whole proceeding.
“We arrived at the Opera just as the curtain was about to rise. I shall never forget the performance, so linked is it in memory with that night’s adventure. It was Gluck’s opera of ‘Alceste.’ Boufflers and myself took our places in the parterre, immediately below the loge of the marquise, which was empty, and remained so for some time; and I can assure you that, when, in the midst of one of the most pathetic scenes of the opera, I heard the door of the box open, and a valet-de-chambre announce, as was the usage among the fashionables of the day, ‘Madame la Marquise de Br**,’ we both turned sharply round. She entered, muffled up to the chin, and evidently suffering greatly from her old enemy the migraine, for she held a screen before her eyes to shield them from the glare of light, and bent her head upon her hand as soon as she had taken her seat.
“‘Look! she has roses in her hair,’ exclaimed Boufflers, all aghast.
“It was true enough the roses were there; and I could see even more, for the eardrops of emerald and topaz caught the light of the girandole in front of her box, and played before my eyes in a most tantalizing manner.
Presently the marquise, overcome by the heat, withdrew her cloak and muffles, and stood revealed to us in the full light, exactly as she had been described to us so short a time before. The dress of sea-green Padua silk, looped with roses, seemed completely to choke poor Boufflers, as he stood gazing on her in mute amazement. So far, the wizard had told us truth. Since his day, the same experiment has been repeated, and in thousands of instances has succeeded. You have all, I doubt not, some little story of the kind to tell, much more striking and interesting than mine, but the sequel of my anecdote, I think, may be unique, so completely did the adventure jump from the sublime to the ridiculous at a single bound.
“At the conclusion of the piece we both repaired to the box of the Marquise de Br**. She was suffering greatly from her migraine, and greeted me ironically, observing that I was ‘bien aimable et bien galant—that she had waited for me to escort her to the Opera, and had been compelled to depart from home alone. After the performance, we all adjourned to her hotel. I had completely reinstated myself in her good graces, by the promise of a complete cure for her migraine. The gentlemen of the company, however, all voted that a glass or two of champagne should be tried first, before the dear marquise was put to pain and torture by any of the diabolical remedies of the sorcerer Cagliostro. The vote was carried, and the marquise compelled to submit to their prescription first, which she did with the greatest grace and good-humour, using every effort to appear gay, although evidently suffering much pain at the very moment.
I will not attempt to record all the good things which were uttered at the petit souper, nor all the idées folles to which the champagne gave birth. Boufflers was quite himself again, and had recovered all his wonted vivacity, all his mad gaiety, and kept us in a roar of laughter by his wicked sallies and pointed jokes concerning our visit to Cagliostro. He counterfeited with such excessive humour the whole scene as it had passed before his eyes, that no one could have imagined him to be the same individual who had sat quaking in fear and awe before the very man whose power he was now deriding in such exquisite glee.
“Of course, the phial and the contents became soon the objects of attack, and I was petitioned on all sides for a view of them. By the permission of the marquise herself, I yielded to the clamour, and it was handed round amid the commentaries of the laughing guests, until Boufflers proposed that the remedy should at once be tried in the presence of us all, so that, if it failed, we might at once go and give Cagliostro the charivari which he would so richly deserve; and, if it succeeded, we might publish its virtues and the compounder’s skill throughout the world.