To the reader who, knowing little or nothing of Cagliostro, takes up this book with an unbiassed mind, the above objections to the Balsamo legend may seem proof conclusive of its falsity. This would, however, be to go further than I, who attach much greater importance to these doubts than historians are inclined to do, care to admit. They merely show that it is neither right nor excusable to treat as a conviction what is purely a conjecture.
If this conclusion, wrapping as it does the origin and early life of Cagliostro once more in a veil of mystery, be accepted, it will go far to remove the prejudice which has hitherto made the answer to that other and more important question “What was Cagliostro?” so unsatisfactory.
CHAPTER II
GIUSEPPE BALSAMO
I
There could be no better illustration of the perplexities that confront the biographer of Cagliostro at every stage of his mysterious career than the uncertainty that prevails regarding the career of Giuseppe Balsamo himself. For rightly or wrongly, their identity has so long been taken for granted that the history of one has become indissolubly linked to that of the other.
Now, not only is it extremely difficult, when not altogether impossible, to verify the information we have concerning Balsamo, but the very integrity of those from whom the information is derived, is questionable. These tainted sources, so to speak, from which there meanders a confused and maze-like stream of contradictory details and unverifiable episodes, are (1) Balsamo’s wife, Lorenza, (2) the Editor of the Courier de l’Europe, and (3) the Inquisition-biographer of Cagliostro.
Lorenza’s statement is mainly the itinerary of the wanderings of herself and husband about Europe from their marriage to her imprisonment in Paris in 1773. Such facts as it purports to give as to the character of their wanderings are very meagre, and coloured so as to depict her in a favourable light. The dossier containing the particulars of her arrest is in the Archives of Paris, where it was discovered by the French Government in 1786, and where it is still to be seen. Query: considering the suspicious circumstances that led to its discovery, is the dossier a forgery?
Opposed to the evidence of the Courier de l’Europe are the character, secret motives, and avowed enmity of the Editor.
As to the life of Balsamo,[4] published anonymously in Rome in 1791, under the auspices of the Inquisition, into whose power Cagliostro had fallen, the tone of hostility in which it is written, excessive even from an ultra-Catholic point of view, its lack of precision, and the absence of dates which makes it impossible to verify its statements, have caused critics of every shade of opinion, to consider it partially, if not wholly, unauthenticated.