At first its descent was so imperceptible as to appear to have been checked. After the manner in which he had been harried in London the tranquillity and admiration he found in Bâle must have been balm to his tortured spirit. At Bâle he had followers who were still loyal, particularly the rich banker Sarazin, on whom he had “conferred the blessing of a belated paternity,” and whose devotion to him, as Cagliostro declared in his extravagant way at his trial in Paris, was so great that “he would give him the whole of his fortune were he to ask for it.”
It was at Bâle, moreover, that the dying flame of Egyptian Masonry flickered up for the last before expiring altogether. Under the auspices of Sarazin a lodge was founded on which the Grand Cophta conferred the high-sounding dignity of the “Mother Lodge of the Helvetic States.” The funds, however, did not run to a “temple” as at Lyons, but the room in which the faithful met was arranged to resemble as closely as possible the interior of that edifice. Both sexes were admitted to this lodge, and Cagliostro again transmitted his powers to certain of the members who, having been selected for the favour apparently with more care on this occasion than in London, performed with the greatest success.
It was, however, in the little town of Bienne that Cagliostro seems to have resided chiefly while in Switzerland. According to rumours that reached London and Paris “he lived there for several months on a pension allowed him by Sarazin.” Why he left this quiet retreat, or when, is unknown. He is next heard of vaguely at Aix-les-Bains, where the Countess is said to have taken the cure. Rumour follows him thence to Turin, “but,” says the Inquisition-biographer, “he had no sooner set foot in the town than he was ordered to leave it instantly.”
Henceforth fortune definitely deserted him. Against the poison in which Morande had dipped his barbed pen there was no antidote. It destroyed him by slow degrees, drying up the springs of his fabulous fortune, exhausting the resources of his fertile brain, withering his confidence, his ambition, and his heart. But though the game was played, he still struggled desperately to recover all he had lost, till he went to Rome, into which he crawled like a beast wounded to the death that has just enough strength to reach its lair.
The luxury and flattery so dear to him were gone for ever. His journeys from place to place were no longer triumphal processions but flights. Dishonoured, discredited, disillusioned, the once superb High Priest of the Egyptian Mysteries, the “divine Cagliostro,” accustomed to be courted by the greatest personages, acclaimed by the crowd, and worshipped by his adherents, was now shadowed by the police, shunned wherever he was recognized, hunted from pillar to post. All towns in which he was likely to be known were carefully avoided; into such as seemed to offer a chance of concealment he crept stealthily. He dared not show his face anywhere, it was as if the whole world, so to speak, had been turned by some accident of his magic into the Trebizond that the black slave of the Arabian days had warned him to beware of.
If this existence was terrible to him, it was equally so to his delicate wife. The poverty and hardship through which Lorenza Balsamo passed so carelessly, left their mark on the Countess Seraphina. Under the pinch of want her charms and her jewels began alike to vanish. At Vicenza necessity “obliged her to pawn a diamond of some value.”
Rumour, following in their track, mumbles vaguely of petty impostures, small sums gulled from the credulous, and of shady devices to make two ends meet, but gives no details, makes no definite charge. If the rumour be true, it is not surprising that one so bankrupt in reputation, in purse, and in friends as Cagliostro had now become, should have lost his self-respect. In the pursuit of his ideal, having formed the habit of regarding the means as justifying the end, what wonder when the end had changed to hunger that any means of satisfying it should have appeared to him justifiable?
At Rovoredo, an obscure little town in the Austrian Tyrol, where he found a temporary refuge, he did not scruple to make capital out of his knowledge of both magic and medicine. Here he managed to interest several persons in the mysteries of Egyptian Masonry to the extent of being invited to give an exhibition of his powers. He even succeeded in founding a lodge at Rovoredo, which he affiliated with the lodge at Lyons, the members of which still believed in him. At the same time, followers being few and subscriptions small, he resumed the practice of medicine, making a moderate charge for his attendance and his medicaments.
But in spite of all his precautions to avoid exciting ill-will or curiosity, it was not long before his identity was discovered. Some one, perhaps the author of a stinging satire[46] which from its biblical style was known as the “Gospel according to St. Cagliostro,” notified the authorities. The “quack” was obliged to discontinue the exercise of his medical knowledge in any shape or form; and the matter coming to the ears of the Emperor Joseph II, that sovereign signed an order expelling him from the town altogether.
Cagliostro then went to Trent, where there reigned a prince-bishop as devoted to alchemy and magic as Rohan himself. This little potentate was no sooner informed of the arrival of the pariah than instead of following the example of his Imperial suzerain, he invited him to the episcopal palace. It was an invitation, needless to say, that was gladly accepted; for a moment, protected by his new friend, it seemed as if he might succeed in mending his broken fortunes. But while the prince-bishop was willing enough to turn his guest’s occult knowledge to account he was not inclined to countenance Egyptian or any other form of Freemasonry. Accordingly to allay suspicion Cagliostro foreswore his faith in Masonic observances, sought a confessor to whom he declared that he repented of his connection with Freemasonry, and manifested a desire to be received back into the bosom of the Church.