Thus, after his expulsion from Cartegirone the Inquisition-biographer tells us that he took lessons in drawing for which, no doubt, he must have given some proof of talent and inclination. Far, however, from showing any disposition to conform to the wishes of his uncles, who for his mother’s sake, if not for his own, continued to take an interest in him, the boy rapidly went from bad to worse. As neither reproof nor restraint produced any effect on his headstrong and rebellious nature he appears to have been permitted to run wild, perhaps because he had reached an age when it was no longer possible to control his actions. Nor were the acquaintances he formed of the sort to counteract a natural tendency to viciousness. He was soon hand in glove with all the worst characters of the town.
“There was no fight or street brawl,” says the indignant Inquisition-biographer, “in which he was not involved, no theft of which he was not suspected. The band of young desperadoes to which he belonged frequently came into collision with the night-watch, whose prisoners, if any, they would attempt to set free. Even the murder of a canon was attributed to him by the gossips of the town.”
In a word Giuseppe Balsamo became a veritable “Apache” destined seemingly sooner or later for the galleys or the gallows. Such a character, it goes without saying, could not fail to attract the notice of the police. He more than once saw the inside of the Palermo jail; but from lack of sufficient proof, or from the nature of the charge against him, or owing to the intercession of his estimable uncles, as often as he was arrested he was let off again.
Even his drawing-lessons, while they lasted, were perverted to the most ignoble ends. To obtain the money he needed he began, like all thieves, with petty thefts from his relations. One of his uncles was his first victim. In a similar way he derived profit from a love-affair between his sister and a cousin. As their parents put obstacles in the way of their meeting Giuseppe offered to act as go-between. In a rash moment they accepted his aid, and he profited by the occasion to substitute forged letters in the place of those he undertook to deliver, by means of which he got possession of the presents the unsuspecting lovers were induced to exchange. Encouraged by the skill he displayed in imitating hand-writing and copying signatures—which seems to have been the extent of his talent for drawing—he turned it to account in other and more profitable ways. Somehow—perhaps by hints dropped by himself in the right quarter—his proficiency in this respect, and his readiness to give others the benefit of it for a consideration, got known. From forging tickets to the theatre for his companions, he was employed to forge leave-of-absence passes for monks, and even to forge a will in favour of a certain Marquis Maurigi, by which a religious institution was defrauded of a large legacy.
There is another version of this affair which the Inquisition-writer has naturally ignored, and from which it would appear that it was the marquis who was defrauded of the legacy by the religious institution. But be this trifling detail as it may, the fact remains that the forgery was so successfully effected that it was not discovered till several years later, when some attempt was made to bring Balsamo to justice, which the impossibility of ascertaining whether he was alive or dead, rendered abortive.
Such sums of money, however, as he obtained in this way must of necessity have been small. It could only have been in copper that his “Apache” friends and the monks paid him for the theatre-tickets and convent-passes he forged for them. Nor was the notary by whom he was employed to forge the will, and who, we are told, was a relation, likely to be much more liberal. In Palermo then, as to-day, scores of just such youths as Giuseppe Balsamo were to be found ready to perform any villainy for a fifty centime piece. He accordingly sought other means of procuring the money he needed and as none, thanks to his compatriots’ notorious credulity, was likely to prove so remunerative as an appeal to their love of the marvellous, he had recourse to what was known as “sorcery.”
It is to the questionable significance attached to this word that the prejudice against Cagliostro, whose wonders were attributed to magic, has been very largely due. For it is only of comparatively recent date that “sorcery” so-called has ceased to be anathema, owing to the belated investigations of science, which is always, and perhaps with reason, suspicious of occult phenomena, by which the indubitable existence of certain powers—as yet only partially explained—active in some, passive in others, and perhaps latent in all human beings, has been revealed. And even still, so great is the force of tradition, many judging from the frauds frequently perpetrated by persons claiming to possess these secret powers, regard with suspicion, if not with downright contempt, all that is popularly designated as sorcery, magic, or witchcraft.
But this is not the place to discuss the methods by which those who work miracles obtain their results. Suffice it to say, there has been from time immemorial a belief in the ability of certain persons to control the forces of nature. Nowhere is this belief stronger than in Sicily. There the “sorcerer” is as common as the priest; not a village but boasts some sibyl, seer, or wonder-worker. That all are not equally efficient, goes without saying. Some possess remarkable powers, which they themselves would probably be unable to explain. Others, like Giuseppe Balsamo, are only able to deceive very simple or foolish people easy to deceive.
From the single instance cited of Giuseppe’s skill in this direction one infers his magical gifts were of the crystal-gazing, sand-divination kind—the ordinary kind with which everybody is more or less familiar, if only by name. According to the Inquisition-biographer, “one day whilst he and his companions were idling away the time together the conversation having turned upon a certain girl whom they all knew, one of the number wondered what she was doing at that moment, whereupon Giuseppe immediately offered to gratify him. Marking a square on the ground he made some passes with his hands above it, after which the figure of the girl was seen in the square playing at tressette with three of her friends.” So great was the effect of this exhibition of clairvoyance, thought-transference, hypnotic suggestion, what you will, upon the amazed Apaches that they went at once to look for the girl and “found her in the same attitude playing the very game and with the very persons that Balsamo had shown them.”
The fact that such phenomena are of quite common occurrence and to be witnessed any day in large cities and summer-resorts on payment of fees, varying according to the renown of the performer, has robbed them if not of their attraction at least of their wonder. One has come to take them for granted. Whatever may be the scientific explanation of such occult—the word must serve for want of a better—power as Giuseppe possessed, he himself, we may be sure, would only have been able to account for it as “sorcery.” He was not likely to be a whit less superstitious than the people with whom he associated. Indeed, his faith in the efficacy of the magic properties attributed by vulgar superstition to sacred things would appear to have been greater than his faith in his own supernatural powers.