The prince-bishop, in his turn, pretended to believe in this feigned repentance, boasted of the convert he had made, and, assisted by the reformed wonder-worker, resumed his quest of the philosopher’s stone and any other secret his crucible might be induced to divulge. The little world of Trent, however, which had palpitated like the rest of Europe over the revelations of the Diamond Necklace Affair and Morande, was profoundly scandalized. Certain persons felt it their duty to inform the Emperor how the prince-bishop was behaving. The free-thinking, liberty-affecting Joseph II could be arbitrary enough when he chose. Severely reprimanding his episcopal vassal for harbouring so infamous an impostor, he commanded him to banish the wretch instantly from his estates.
Judging from the itinerary of his wanderings in northern Italy and the Tyrol, Cagliostro seems to have intended to go to Germany, hoping, no doubt, to find an asylum, like Saint-Germain, Weishaupt, Knigge and many other, at the Court of some Protestant prince, most of whom were Rosicrucians, alchemists, Freemasons, and revolutionary enthusiasts. But whatever hopes he may have had in this direction were effectually dashed by the hostility of the Emperor. Expelled from Trent in such a fashion he dared not enter Germany.
To turn back was equally perilous. In Italy, where the Church, brutalized out of all semblance to Christianity by centuries of undisputed authority, regarded the least attempt to investigate the secrets of nature as a reflection on its own ignorance, a certain and terrible doom awaited any one who excited its suspicions. But to Cagliostro, with fate’s blood-hounds on his track, an Imperial dungeon seemed a more present danger than an Inquisition torture-chamber. It was no “Count Front of Brass,” as Carlyle jeeringly stigmatized him, that was brought to bay at Trent. His courage was completely broken. Spent in this struggle against destiny, he was no longer able to devise new schemes and contrivances as of old. Retracing his steps with a sort of defiant despair, as if driven by some irresistible force to his doom, he took the road to Rome, where he and his wife arrived at the end of May 1789.
According to the Inquisition-biographer it was to please his wife, who desired to be reconciled to her parents, that Cagliostro went to Rome. If, indeed, the parents of the Countess Seraphina, or Lorenza Balsamo, as you will, were still living or even resident in Rome, they were apparently unwilling or afraid to recognize the relationship, for nothing further is heard of them. It is much more likely that Cagliostro chose Rome on account of its size, as being the one place in Italy which offered him the most likely chance of escaping observation. In so large a city his poverty was itself a safe-guard.
Cagliostro’s first efforts to drive the wolf from the door were confined to the surreptitious practice of medicine. On such patients as he managed to procure he enjoined the strictest silence. But in losing his confidence in himself he had lost the art of healing. The Inquisition-biographer cites several instances of his failure to effect the cures he attempted to perform. After “undertaking to cure a foreign lady of an ulcer in her leg by applying a plaster that very nearly brought on gangrene,” he had the prudence to abandon altogether a practice that exposed him to so much danger.
The risk he ran in exploiting his psychic gifts in Rome was even greater than the peril connected with the illicit practice of medicine. On leaving Trent he seems to have resolved to renounce Egyptian Masonry altogether, and he wrote to such of his followers as he still corresponded with, imploring them to avoid all reference to it in their letters to him. But the occult was now his only resource, and whether he wished it or not, he was obliged to turn to it for a living.
In spite of all the efforts of the Church to stamp out Freemasonry in Italy it still beat a feeble wing. For two years the Lodge of the Vrais Amis had existed in secret in the heart of Rome itself. This lodge, which had received its patent from the Grand Orient in Paris and was in correspondence with all the principal lodges in France, was really a revolutionary club of foreign origin. It had been founded by “five Frenchmen, one Pole, and one American,” who, to judge from the character of the ceremonies they observed at the initiation of a member, were Illuminés. As a Freemason and an Illuminé himself Cagliostro must have known of the existence of this lodge before coming to Rome.
His fear of the Inquisition was so great that before making himself known to the Vrais Amis he contemplated leaving Rome altogether. The fall of the Bastille, which occurred about this time, having inaugurated the Revolution in France, he petitioned the States General for permission to return there, as “one who had taken so great an interest in liberty.” At the same time not being in the position to take advantage of the privilege were it granted, he wrote urgent appeals for money to former friends in Paris. But in the rapidity with which the Revolution marched, Cagliostro had ceased to have the least importance, even as a missile to hurl at the hated Queen. Whether the petition or the letters ever reached their destination is unknown; in neither case, however, did he obtain a reply.[47]
With all hope of retreat cut off and starvation staring him in the face, the wretched man timorously proceeded to seek the acquaintance of the Vrais Amis. The difficulties and dangers they encountered in obtaining recruits won for the discredited Grand Cophta a cordial welcome. Notwithstanding, he refused to seek admission to their lodge, and contented himself with begging a meal or a small loan of the members with whom he fraternized.
Even Morande, who had himself experienced the horrors of abject poverty in his early struggle for existence in London, must have pitied the victim of his remorseless persecution had he seen him now. In his miserable lodging near the Piazza Farnese everything—save such furniture as was the property of the landlord—on which he could raise the least money had been pawned. Not a stone of the diamonds that had so dazzled, or scandalized, as Madame de Lamotte maliciously declared, the high-born ladies of Paris and Strasburg, was left his once lovely, and stilled loved, Countess. Faded, pinched with hunger, she still clung to this man, himself now broken and aged by so many calumnies, persecutions and misfortunes, whose enemies had falsely accused him of treating her brutally, as she had clung to him for fifteen years—the first and the last of his countless admirers and followers.