“The likeness is excellent,” he remarked to one of his votaries, “but I cannot understand how the artist, who certainly never saw Christ, could have secured such a perfect portrait.”
“You knew Christ, then?” inquired the neophyte, breathlessly.
“We were on the most intimate terms.”
“My dear Count!—”
“I mean what I say. How often we strolled together on the sandy shore of the Lake of Tiberias. How infinitely sweet his voice. But, alas, he would not heed my advice. He loved to walk on the seashore, where he picked up a band of lazzaroni—of fishermen and beggars. This and his preaching brought him to a bitter end.”
Turning to his servant, Cagliostro added: “Do you remember that evening at Jerusalem when they crucified Christ?”
“No, Monsieur le Comte,” replied the well-tutored lackey, bowing low, “you forget that I have only been in your employ for the last fifteen hundred years.”
Baron Munchausen is not to be compared to Cagliostro. {64}
[14] Beugnot, Comte de. Mémoires. Paris, 1866.