This ended the correspondence, for the general public were beginning to meddle in it, and the editor of the Public Advertiser would only open his pages to the principals in this duel. This finished Cagliostro’s career in England. He had tried to sell his quack medicines, his Egyptian pills, but the charm was broken, and he quitted England for the Continent in May, 1787, leaving his wife behind, with sufficient means, under the guardianship of the De Loutherbourgs. She afterwards sold all up, and joined him in June.
By this time his good genius had forsaken him, and for teaching freemasonry, then even more repugnant to the Roman Catholic hierarchy than at present, he was arrested, and imprisoned in the Castle of St. Angelo, November 27, 1789. He never again enjoyed freedom, but was found dead in his cell at St. Leo. Even the date of his death is uncertain, most authorities giving 1795; but some say 1794 and 1797. His wife, too, shared his fate; she was convicted of sorcery and witchcraft, and was shut up in a convent, where she died in 1794.
His portraits represent him as by no means bad-looking, although the full eye, the puffed cheeks, and weak mouth betray a sensuality of feeling.
THE END.
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