Be this as it may, it is the manner in which the statement made by the Courier de l’Europe appears to be confirmed that gives the whole theory its weight.
On December 2, 1876—dates are important factors in the evidence—Fontaine, the chief of the Paris police, received a very curious anonymous letter from Palermo. The writer began by saying that he had read in the Gazette de Leyde of September 25 an article taken from the Courier de l’Europe stating that the “famous Cagliostro was called Balsamo,” from which he gathered that the Balsamo referred to was the same who in 1773 had caused his wife to be shut up in Sainte Pélagie at Paris for having deserted him, and who had afterwards applied to the courts for her release. To confirm Fontaine in this opinion, he gave him in detail the history of this Balsamo’s career, which had been imparted to him on June 2 by the said Balsamo’s uncle, Antonio Braconieri, who was firmly convinced that his nephew, of whom he had heard nothing for some years, was none other than Cagliostro. As he learnt this the day after Cagliostro’s acquittal and release from the Bastille, the news of which could not have reached Palermo in less than a week, it proves that Braconieri’s conviction was formed long before the Press began to maintain it.
In fact the anonymous writer stated that this conviction was prevalent in Palermo as far back as the previous year, when the news arrived there of the arrest of Cagliostro in connection with the Diamond Necklace Affair.
He went on to say that he had personally ridiculed the report at the time, but having reflected on the grounds that Braconieri had given him for believing it “he had come to the conclusion that Count Cagliostro was Giuseppe Balsamo of Palermo or that Antonio Braconieri, his uncle, was a scoundrel worthy of being the uncle of M. le Comte de Cagliostro.” As it was not till November 2 that this somewhat ingenuous person sent anonymously to Fontaine the information he had received on June 2 from Braconieri, his reflections on the veracity of the latter, one suspects, were scarcely complimentary. However, such doubts as he might still have cherished were finally set at rest on October 31, when Antonio Braconieri met him in one of the chief thoroughfares of Palermo and showed him a Gazette de Florence which confirmed everything Braconieri had told him more than four months before. Hereupon, the anonymous individual, convinced at last beyond the shadow of a doubt that the “soi-disant Count Cagliostro was really Giuseppe Balsamo of Palermo,” decided to inform the chief of the Paris police of his discovery.
Such is the history of the proofs in favour of the Balsamo legend. Now to examine the proofs.
As the late M. Émile Campardon was the first to unearth this anonymous letter together with the official report upon it in the National Archives, and as his opinion is the one commonly accepted, it will be sufficient to quote what he has to say on the subject.
“The adventures,” he asks, “of Giuseppe Balsamo and those of Alessandro Cagliostro—do they belong to the history of the same career? Was the individual who had his wife shut up in Sainte Pélagie in 1773 the same who in 1786 protested so vehemently against the imprisonment of his wife?[3]
“Everything goes to prove it. The Countess Cagliostro was born in Rome; Balsamo’s wife was likewise a Roman. The maiden name of both was Feliciani.
“Madame Balsamo was married at fourteen; the Countess Cagliostro at the time of her marriage was still a child.
“Cagliostro stated at his trial that his wife did not know how to write; Madame Balsamo at her trial also declared she could not write.