As it happened, this prince of adventurers—who in obedience to a time-honoured convention is never mentioned in print, by English writers bien entendu, without condemnation, though in private conversation people wax eloquent enough over him—was himself wandering about the South of France at the time. Arriving in Aix-en-Provence in 1770, he actually stopped in the same inn as the Balsamos, who excited his curiosity by their lavish distribution of alms to the poor of the town. Being a man who never missed a single opportunity of improving any acquaintance that chance might throw in his way, he called upon the couple, and recorded his impression in those fascinating Memoirs of his, of which the authenticity is now fully established and, what is more to the point, of which all the details have been verified.[6]
“I found the female pilgrim,” he says, “seated in a chair looking like a person exhausted with fatigue, and interesting by reason of her youth and beauty, singularly heightened by a touch of melancholy and by a crucifix of yellow metal six inches long which she held in her hand. Her companion, who was arranging shells on his coat of black baize, made no movement—he appeared to intimate by the looks he cast at his wife I was to attend to her alone.”
From the manner in which Lorenza conducted herself on this occasion she appears to have had remarkable aptitude for acting the rôle her husband had given her.
“We are going on foot,” she said in answer to Casanova’s questions, “living on charity the better to obtain the mercy of God, whom I have so often offended. Though I ask only a sou in charity, people always give me pieces of silver and gold”—a hint Casanova did not take—“so that arriving at a town we have to distribute to the poor all that remains to us, in order not to commit the sin of losing confidence in the Eternal Providence.”
Whatever doubts Casanova may have had as to her veracity, the Inquisition-biographer most certainly had none. He declares that the “silver and gold” of which she and her husband were so lavish at Aix was a shameful quid pro quo obtained from some officers at Antibes whom she had fascinated.
Unfortunately there is no Casanova at Antibes to verify him or to follow them to London via Barcelona, Madrid, and Lisbon. Lorenza is very explicit as to where they went on leaving Aix, and as to the time they remained in the various places they visited. The Inquisition-biographer, faute de mieux, is obliged to confirm her itinerary, but he has his revenge by either denying everything else she says, or by putting the worst construction upon it. At all events, between them one gets the impression that the pilgrims, for some reason or other, abandoned their pilgrimage before reaching the shrine of St. James of Compostella; that Lorenza was probably more truthful than she meant to be when she says they left Lisbon “because the climate was too hot for her”; and that however great the quantity of “silver and gold” she was possessed of at Aix, she and her husband had divested themselves of most of it by the time they reached London.
As to the character of their adventures by the way, it bears too close a resemblance to those already related to be worth describing.
III
The Editor of the Courier de l’Europe—which journal, as previously stated, was published in London—is the authority for the information concerning the Balsamos in England. He ferreted out or concocted this information fourteen years later; and, as quite apart from his motives, no one of the people he refers to as having known the Balsamos in 1772 came forward to corroborate what he said or to identify them with the Cagliostros, it is impossible to verify his evidence. From the fact, however, that it was commonly accepted at the time, and is still regarded as substantially trustworthy, entirely because Cagliostro absolutely denied any knowledge of the Balsamos, the reader may judge at once of the bitterness of the prejudice against Cagliostro as well as of the value to be attached to such “proof.”
According to the Courier de l’Europe, Balsamo and his wife arrived in London from Lisbon in 1771, and after living for a while in Leadenhall Street moved to New Compton Street, Soho. They were, we are told, in extreme poverty, which Lorenza—to whom vice had long ceased to be repugnant—endeavoured to alleviate by the most despicable expedients. As she had but indifferent success, Balsamo, having quarrelled with a painter and decorator by name of Pergolezzi, by whom he had for a few days been employed, assisted her in the infamous rôle of blackmailer.