The wonder-worker smiled with satisfaction, for it was evident that he was proud of having worked on Gilbert such an impression as the latter’s visage revealed.
“And now,” continued Gilbert, “as I love you as much as you do me, dear master, and my desire to learn what you have been doing is equal to yours and how I have fared, will you kindly tell me, if I am not intruding too far, in what part of the globe you have exhibited your genius and practiced your power?”
“Oh, I?” said Cagliostro, smiling, “like yourself I have been rubbing shoulders with kings, but with another aim. You go up to them to uphold them; I to knock them over. You try to manufacture a constitutional monarch and will not succeed; I, to make emperors, kings and princes democratic, and I am coming on.”
“Are you really?” queried Gilbert with an air of doubt.
“Decidedly. It must be allowed that they were prepared for me by Voltaire, Alembert and Diderot, admirable Mecaenases, sublime contemners of the gods, and also by the example of Frederick the Great, whom we have the misfortune to lose. But you know we are all mortal, except the Count of St. Germain and myself.
“So long as the Queen is fair, my dear Gilbert, and she can recruit soldiers to fight among themselves, kings who fret to push over thrones have never thought of hurling over the altar. But we have her brother, Kaiser Joseph II. who suppresses three-fourths of the monasteries, seizes ecclesiastical property, drives even the Camelite nuns out of their cells, and sends his sister prince of nuns trying on the latest fashions in hats and monks having their hair curled. We have the King of Denmark, who began by killing his doctor Struensee, and who, at seventeen, the precocious philosopher, said: ‘Voltaire made a man of me for he taught me to think.’ We have the Empress Catherine, who made such giant strides in philosophy that—while she dismembered Poland, Voltaire wrote to her: ‘Diderot, Alembert and myself are raising altars to you. We have the Queen of Sweden and many princes in the Empire and throughout Germany.'”
“You have nothing left you but to convert the Pope, my dear master, and I hope you will, as nothing is beyond you.”
“That will be a hard task. I have just slipped out of his claws. I was locked up in Castle Sanangelo as you were in the Bastile.”
“You don’t say so? did the Romans upset the castle as the people of St. Antoine Ward overthrew the Bastile?”
“No, my dear doctor, the Romans are a century behind that point. But, be easy: it will come in its day: the Papacy will have its revolutionary days, and Versailles and the Vatican can shake hands in equality at that era.”