“What hardihood! Yet suppose he is the devil.”
These notions here reproduced with fidelity, and which were adorned by the most extravagant commentaries, were actually at that period in general circulation among the crowd. Some regarded the mysterious Count Cagliostro as an inspired saint, a performer of miracles, a phenomenal personage outside the order of Nature. The cures attributed to him were equally innumerable and unexplainable. Others regarded him merely as an adroit charlatan. Cagliostro himself boldly asserted that all his prodigies were performed under the special favour and help of heaven. He added that the Supreme Being had deigned to accord him the beatific vision, that it was his mission to convert unbelievers and reinstate catholicism, but in spite of this exalted vocation he told fortunes, taught the art of winning at lotteries, interpreted dreams, and held séances of transcendental phantasmagoria.
“But,” contended the rope-maker with much animation, “a man who converses with angels is never the devil.”
“Is he in communication with angels?” cried Marano, struck by the circumstances. “In that case I must see him at all costs. How old is he?”
“Bah!” said the druggist, “as if such a being could have an age! He looks about thirty-six.”
“Oh!” muttered the goldsmith. “What if he were my rascal? My rascal should now be thirty-seven.”
As the hoary Sicilian ruminated over his lamentable past, he was roused by a tumult of voices. The supernal being had arrived, and he passed presently in the road, surrounded by a numerous cortege of couriers, lacqueys, valets, &c., all in magnificent liveries. By his side, in the open carriage, sat Lorenza or Seraphina Feliciani, his wife, who seconded with all her ability the intrigues of her husband, whom reasonable people regarded as a wandering member and emissary of the masonic templars, his opulence insured by contributions from the different lodges of the order.
A great shout rose up when Count Cagliostro passed before the inn. Marano had recognised his man, and flying out had contrived to stop the carriage, shouting as he did so—“Joseph Balsamo! It is Joseph! Coquin, where are my sixty ounces of gold?”
Cagliostro scarcely deigned to glance at the furious goldsmith; but in the middle of the profound silence which the incident occasioned among the crowd, a voice, apparently in the clouds, uttered with great distinctness the following words: “Remove this lunatic, who is possessed by infernal spirits!”
Some of the spectators fell on their knees, others seized the unfortunate goldsmith, and the brilliant cortege passed on.