Sometimes the sufferer they treated would be in another room or even in another house. On one occasion, if “A Lover of the Lamb of God” is to be believed, they cured “a boy suffering from scrofula who had been discharged from St. Bart’s as incurable in five days without seeing him.”
Naturally their fame soon spread, and as they professed to be able to cure all diseases, people suffering from all sorts of infirmities flocked to consult them. Horace Walpole declares that de Loutherbourg had as many as three thousand patients. Certain days in each week were appointed for their treatment, which were regularly advertised. On one occasion all the three thousand, apparently owing to some error in the announcement, are said to have surrounded the house at once, so that it was with the greatest difficulty one could either enter or leave it.
“A Lover of the Lamb of God” was so impressed by the miracles the de Loutherbourgs performed as to call upon the Archbishop of Canterbury “to compile a form of prayer to be used in all churches and chapels that nothing may impede their inestimable gift having free course.” Their practice, however, was brought to an abrupt close by some indignant patients whom they had failed to cure, and who, accompanied by a mob, attacked the house and very nearly lynched the faith-healers.
De Loutherbourg’s mystical tendencies, however, do not appear to have injured him in the least in the opinion of the general public. On resuming his career as painter he found the same encouragement as before, and was highly respected by all who knew him. As contrasted with the enmity of so notorious a blackguard as Morande, the friendship of so estimable a man as de Loutherbourg speaks volumes for Cagliostro’s own probity.
The charity of the de Loutherbourgs, on which Morande, Swinton and Company declared that the Countess Cagliostro lived after her husband’s escape from their clutches, consisted entirely in defeating their attempts to take advantage of her defenceless state. Receiving information that a writ was to be issued by which Cagliostro’s furniture was to be seized, de Loutherbourg advised the Countess to sell it and take up her abode in his house until her husband sent for her, when to ensure her travelling without molestation he and Mrs. de Loutherbourg accompanied her to Switzerland.
The first thing that she did on arriving at Bienne was to go before a magistrate and make an affidavit to the effect that her reported corroboration of the charges made against her husband in the Courier de l’Europe was a lie. The fact that the Countess Cagliostro did this with the knowledge of the de Loutherbourgs is sufficient to prove the truth of her words.
CHAPTER VIII
“NATURE’S UNFORTUNATE CHILD”
I
On leaving England in 1786 Cagliostro was doomed to resume the vagabond existence of his earlier years; with the difference, however, that whereas previously his star, though often obscured by clouds, was constantly rising, it was now steadily on the decline.