It is reported of him on one occasion that “under pretext of curing his sister, who he said was possessed of a devil, he obtained from a priest in the country a little cotton dipped in holy oil,” to which, doubtless, he attached great importance as the means of successfully performing some wonder he had no confidence in his own powers to effect. Such cryptic attributes as he had been endowed with must have been very slight, or undeveloped, for there is no reference whatever to the marvellous in the swindles of his subsequent history in which one would expect him to have employed it. Very probably whatever magnetic, hypnotic, or telepathic faculty he possessed was first discovered by the apothecary under whom he was placed in the laboratory at Cartegirone, who, like all of his kind, no doubt, experimented in alchemy and kindred sciences. If so, he certainly did not stay long enough with the Benfratelli to turn his mysterious talent to account or to obtain more than the merest glimpse of the “sorcery,” of which, though banned by the Church, the monasteries were the secret nursery.
Be this as it may, needless to say those who had witnessed Giuseppe’s strange phenomenon required no further proof of his marvellous power, which rapidly noised abroad and exaggerated by rumour gave the young “sorcerer” a reputation he only wanted an opportunity of exploiting for all it was worth. How long he waited for this opportunity is not stated, but he was still in his teens when it eventually turned up in the person of a “certain ninny of a goldsmith named Marano,” whose superstition, avarice, and gullibility made him an easy dupe.
One day in conversation with this man, who had been previously nursed to the proper pitch of cupidity, as one nurses a constituency before an election, Giuseppe informed him under pledge of the strictest secrecy that he knew of a certain cave not far from Palermo, in which a great treasure was buried. According to a superstition prevalent in Sicily, where belief in such treasure was common, it was supposed to be guarded by demons, and as it would be necessary to hire a priest to exorcize them, Giuseppe offered to take Marano to the spot and assist him in lifting the hidden wealth for the consideration of “sixty ounces of gold.”[5]
Whatever objection Marano might have had to part with such a sum was overcome by the thought of gaining probably a hundred times as much. He accordingly paid the money and set out one night with Giuseppe, the priest, and another man who was in the secret. On arriving at the cave, preparatory to the ceremony of exorcism, the priest proceeded to evoke the demons, which was done with due solemnity by means of magic circles and symbols drawn upon the ground, incantations in Latin, et cetera. Suddenly hideous noises were heard, there was a flash and splutter of blue fire, and the air was filled with sulphur. Marano, who was waiting in the greatest terror for the materialization of the powers of darkness, in which he firmly believed, and who, he had been told, on such occasions sometimes got beyond the control of the exorcist, was commanded to dig where he stood. But scarcely had his spade struck the ground when the demons themselves appeared with shrieks and yells—some goat-herds hired for the occasion, as horrible as paint, burnt cork, and Marano’s terrified imagination could paint them—and fell upon the wretched man. Whereupon Giuseppe and his confederates took to their heels, leaving their dupe in a fit on the ground.
Fool that he was, it did not take the goldsmith on recovering his senses long to discover that he had been victimized. Indifferent to the ridicule to which he exposed himself he lost no time in bringing an action against Giuseppe for the recovery of the money of which he had been defrauded, swearing at the same time to have the life of the swindler as well. Under such circumstances Palermo was no longer a safe place for the sorcerer, and taking time by the forelock he fled.
II
At this stage in Balsamo’s career even the Inquisition-biographer ceases to vouch for the accuracy of what he relates.
“Henceforth,” he confesses, “we are obliged to accept Cagliostro’s own assertions”—wrung from him in the torture chamber of the Castle of St. Angelo, be it remembered—“without the means of verifying them, as no further trace of his doings is to be found elsewhere.”
Considering that accuracy, to which no importance has been attached in all previous books on Cagliostro, is the main object of this, after such a statement the continuation of Balsamo’s history would appear to be superfluous. Apart, however, from their romantic interest, Balsamo’s subsequent adventures are really an aid to accuracy. For the character of the man as revealed by them will be found to be so dissimilar to Cagliostro’s as to serve more forcibly than any argument to prove how slight are the grounds for identifying the two.
By relating what befell Balsamo on fleeing from Palermo one may judge, from the very start, of the sort of faith to be placed in his Inquisition-biographer. In Cagliostro’s own account of his life—which will be duly reported in its proper place—his statements in regard to the “noble Althotas,” that remarkable magician by whom he avowed he was brought up, were regarded as absolutely ridiculous. Nevertheless for the sole purpose apparently of proving Cagliostro’s identity with Balsamo the Inquisition-biographer drags this individual whose very existence is open to doubt into the life of the latter, and unblushingly plunges the two into those fabulous and ludicrous adventures, of which the description caused so much mirth at the time of the Necklace Affair.