******
That the trial of Cagliostro was really intended by the Papal government as a proof of its determination to show no quarter in its war against the Freemasons may be gathered from the Inquisition-biographer’s Vie de Joseph Balsamo, which is less a life of Balsamo or Cagliostro, as it purports to be, than a furious attack on Freemasonry, which is depicted in the blackest and most odious colours. Its publication exasperated the secret societies in Lombardy and they were emboldened by the progress of the Revolution to publish a reply. “This pamphlet,” says the Moniteur, “appeared under the auspices of the Swiss government and produced such a sensation throughout Italy, and particularly in Rome, that the Conclave, terrified at the revolutionary fury it had awakened, instructed its agents to buy up every copy they could find.”
The Conclave would have been better advised to suppress the work of the Inquisition-biographer. The account it contains of Cagliostro’s trial completely justifies the popular belief in the bigotry, cruelty, tyranny, and total lack of the Christian spirit that characterized the proceedings of the Holy Inquisition.
III
For some time after his trial the public continued to manifest great interest in Cagliostro. The recollection of his extraordinary career gave to his sentence a dramatic character, which made a deep impression on the imagination. Speculation was rife as to his fate, which the Papal government foolishly saw fit to shroud in mystery that only served to keep his memory alive.
All sorts of rumours were current about him. One day it would be said that he had attempted to commit suicide; the next that he was chained to his cell a raving maniac. Again it was rumoured that he had predicted the fall of the Papacy and was impatiently awaiting the Roman populace to march on St. Angelo and deliver him. The Moniteur’s correspondent relates that in a terrific storm “in which Rome was stricken with a great fear as if the end of the world was at hand, Cagliostro mistook the thunder for the cannon of the insurgents and was heard shouting in his dungeon, Me voici! à moi! me voici!”
Knowing, as he did from his Masonic connection, how widespread was the revolutionary movement, and what hopes were raised in Italy by the stirring march of events in France, it is not unlikely that he may have counted on some popular rising to set him free. That he despaired of such a deliverance, however, and contemplated recovering his liberty by his own efforts seems much more probable.
According to Prince Bernard of Saxe-Weimar who guaranteed the accuracy of the story, Cagliostro did, indeed, make a bold attempt to escape from St. Angelo. “Manifesting deep contrition,” says the Prince, “he demanded penance for his sins and a confessor. A Capucin was sent him. After his confession, Cagliostro entreated the priest to give him the ‘discipline’ with the cord he wore as a belt, to which the latter willingly consented. But scarcely had he received the first blow when he seized the cord, flung himself on the Capucin, and did his best to strangle him. His intention was to escape in the priest’s cloak, and had he been in his vigour and his opponent a weak man he might have succeeded. But Cagliostro was lean and wasted from long imprisonment and the Capucin was strong and muscular. In the struggle with his penitent he had time to call for help.”
What followed on the arrival of the jailers is not known, but it is not likely that the prisoner was handled with gloves.
As a sequel to that frantic struggle for life and liberty, Cagliostro was secretly sent “in the middle of the night” to the Castle of San Leo, near Montefeltro. The situation of this stronghold is one of the most singular in Europe. The enormous rock, whose summit it crowns, rising on three sides precipitously from an almost desert plain, is like a monument commemorative of some primeval convulsion of nature. In early times it had been the site of a temple of Jupiter, the ruins of which after its destruction by the barbarians became the abode of a Christian hermit, whose ascetic virtues were canonized, and who bequeathed his name to it. In the Middle Ages the holy ruins gave place to an almost impregnable fortress, which at a still later period was converted into a Papal prison, compared to which the Bastille was a paradise.[53]