“Her husband at any rate could. At the time of his petition against his wife Balsamo signed two documents which are still to be seen in the Archives. By comparing—as Fontaine had done—these two signatures with a letter written whilst in the Bastille by Cagliostro the experts declared the writing of Balsamo and that of Cagliostro to be identically the same.
“Furthermore, according to the statement of Antonio Braconieri, Balsamo had frequently written him under the name of Count Cagliostro. Nor had he invented the name, for Giuseppe Cagliostro of Messina, steward of the Prince of Villafranca, was Braconieri’s uncle, and consequently Giuseppe Balsamo’s great-uncle.
“If to these probabilities one adds certain minor resemblances—such as Cagliostro’s declaration that Cardinal Orsini and the Duke of Alba could vouch for the truth of the account he gave of himself, who were personages by whom Balsamo was known to have been employed; the fact that Cagliostro spoke the Sicilian dialect, and that Balsamo had employed magic in his swindling operations—it is scarcely credible that lives and characters so identical could belong to two different beings.”
The arguments in favour of this hypothesis are very plausible and apparently as convincing as such circumstantial evidence usually is. It is possible, however, as stated above, to question the accuracy of the conclusion thus reached for the following reasons.
(1) The basis of the supposition that the Countess Cagliostro and Madame Balsamo were the same rests entirely on coincidence.
Granted that both happened to be Romans, that the maiden name of both was Feliciani, that both were married extremely young, and that neither could write. The fact that both were Romans is no argument at all. Though their maiden name was Feliciani, it was a comparatively common one—there were several families of Feliciani in Rome, and for that matter all over Italy. Madame Balsamo’s father came from Calabria. Her Christian name was Lorenza. The statement that the Countess Cagliostro was likewise called Lorenza and changed her name to Seraphina, by which she was known, is based entirely on supposition. That both were married very young and that neither knew how to write, scarcely calls for comment. Italian women usually married in early girlhood, and very few, if any, of the class to which Seraphina Cagliostro and Lorenza Balsamo belonged could write.
SERAPHINIA FELICHIANI.
COMTESSE DE CAGLIOSTRO.
(From a very rare French print)