The news that Cagliostro had been arrested as a revolutionary agent caused great excitement. As the Papal government took care to foster the belief that he was connected with all the events that were occurring in France, the unfortunate Grand Cophta of Egyptian Masonry suddenly acquired a political importance he had never possessed. “Arrested,” says the Moniteur, “he evoked as much interest in Rome as he had formerly done in Paris.” In all classes of society he became once more the chief topic of conversation.
It was reported that before his arrest he had written a circular letter to his followers, of whom he was popularly supposed to have many in Rome itself, calling upon them to succour him in case he should fall into the hands of the Inquisition, and if necessary to set fire to the Castle of St. Angelo or any other prison in which he might be confined. Even from his dungeon, “which was the same as the one that the alchemist Borri had died in a century earlier,” he was said to have found the means to communicate with his accomplices without. According to the Moniteur “a letter from him to a priest had been intercepted which had led to the detection of a conspiracy to overthrow the Papal monarchy.”
Whether the report was true or not, the Papal government, which had probably circulated it, made it the excuse to arrest numerous persons it suspected. These mysterious arrests caused a general feeling of uneasiness, which was increased by rumours of more to follow. Fearing, or affecting to fear, a rising the Papal government doubled the guards at the Vatican, closed the Arsenal, which was usually open to the public, and surrounded St. Angelo with troops. There was even talk of exiling all the French in Rome.
It required no gift of prophecy to foretell the fate of the unhappy creature who was the cause of all this excitement. From the first it was recognized that he had not the ghost of a chance. Two papal bulls decreed that Freemasonry was a crime punishable by death. To convict him, moreover, the Inquisition had no lack of proof. Laubardemont, Cardinal Richelieu’s famous police-spy, deemed a single compromising line sufficient to hang a man. In Cagliostro’s case, thanks to his singular lack of prudence in not destroying his papers, the documents seized on his arrest were a formidable dossier. Nevertheless, before dispatching their luckless victim the “Holy” Inquisition played with him, like a cat with a mouse, for over a year.
As usual at all Inquisition trials the forms of justice were observed. Permission was granted Cagliostro to choose two lawyers to defend him. This privilege, however, was a mockery, for his choice was in reality limited to certain officials especially appointed by the Apostolic Court to take charge of such cases as his. They were not free to acquit; at most their defence could only be a plea for mercy. In the present instance, if not actually prejudiced against their client, they certainly took no interest whatever in him. Aware that he was utterly incapable of paying them for their services, they grudged the time they were obliged to devote to him. Their defence consisted in advising him to acknowledge his guilt and throw himself on the mercy of his judges.
Nor were the witnesses he was likewise permitted to summon in his defence to be depended on. At Inquisition trials all witnesses, fearing lest they should themselves be transformed into prisoners, turned accusers. Before the terrible judges of the Holy Office, whose court resembled a torture-chamber rather than a court of justice, even his wife testified against him.[50] But though surrounded with indifference, contempt or hate, and threatened with death, Cagliostro did not abandon hope. His spirit was not yet wholly broken. The terror in which he had lived so long gave place to rage. Caught in the gin of the Inquisition he defended himself with the fury born of despair, and something of his old cunning.
According to the Inquisition-biographer, when he was examined for the first time four months after his arrest “he burst into invectives against the Court of France to which he attributed all the misfortunes he had experienced since the Bastille.” He accused the witnesses of being his enemies, and on being told that his wife had “confessed” he denounced her as a traitress. But the next moment, as if realizing what she must have been made to suffer, “he burst into tears, testified the liveliest tenderness for her, and implored the favour of having her as a companion in his cell.”
“One may well imagine,” reports the Inquisition-biographer, “that this request was not granted.” One may indeed! According to the Moniteur he also asked to be bled, placed in a larger cell, allowed fresh linen,[51] a fire and a blanket. The first and the last alone were granted him, for the Inquisition had no desire to have him die before they had finished trying him. As, however, his judges professed to be deeply concerned for the health of his soul, when to the above request, he added one for “some good book,” no objection was made to satisfy him. He was, therefore, given three folio volumes on “the defence of the Roman Pontificate and the Catholic Church.”[52]
Cagliostro took the cynical hint, and after reading the book manifested the deepest contrition, admitted that Freemasonry was a veritable crime, and the Egyptian Rite contrary to the Catholic religion. “No one, however,” says the Inquisition-biographer, “believed him, and if he flattered himself on recovering his liberty by this means he was mistaken.” Perceiving that this act of repentance, far from being of any avail, only served to furnish his enemies with fresh weapons, he declared that “everything he had done in his life had been done with the consent of the Almighty, and that he had always been faithful to the Pope and the Church.”
Unhappily for him, however, he had to deal with men of a very different type to those who composed the Parliament of Paris. Nothing he could say would satisfy them. “I will confess whatever you wish me to,” he said. Told that the Inquisition only desired the “truth,” he declared that all he had said was true. He demanded to be brought before the Pope himself. “If his Holiness would but hear me,” he said, “I prophesy I should be set at liberty this very night!”