But from these doubts which shake one’s faith, not only in the dossier to which so much importance has been attached, but in the Balsamo legend itself, let us return to the still more unauthenticated doings of our adventurers.
It was not long before Balsamo repented of his vengeance. On his intercession his wife was released, and shortly afterwards, to avoid arrest on his own score, the couple disappeared. The Inquisition-biographer states vaguely that they went to “Brussels and Germany.” But it is not a matter of any importance. A few months later, however, Giuseppe Balsamo most unquestionably reappeared in his native city, where he astonished all his kindred, to whom alone he made himself known, by the splendour in which he returned.
Somewhere in the interval between his flight from Paris and his arrival in Palermo he had metamorphosed himself into a Marchese Pellegrini, and by the aid of Lorenza picked up a prince. Never before had they been so flush. The Marchese Pellegrini had his carriage and valet, one “Laroca,” a Neapolitan barber, who afterwards started business on his own account as an adventurer. The “Marchesa” had her prince and his purse, and what was to prove of even greater value, his influence to draw upon. For a while, indeed, so great was his luck, Balsamo even had thoughts of settling down and living on the fortune Lorenza had plucked from her prince. He actually hired a house on the outskirts of Palermo with this intention. But he counted without Marano, that “ninny of a goldsmith,” from whose vengeance he had fled years before. For Marano was still living, and no sooner did he become aware that the boy who had made such a fool of him in the old treasure-digging business was once more in Palermo than he had him seized and clapt into prison.
The matter, no doubt, must have had very serious consequences for the Marchese Pellegrini had it not been for the powerful interest of Lorenza’s prince. As this episode in Balsamo’s career is one of the very few concerning which the information is authentic, it is worth while describing.
“The manner of his escape,” says Goethe, who was told what he relates by eye-witnesses, “deserves to be described. The son of one of the first Sicilian princes and great landed proprietors, who had, moreover, filled important posts at the Neapolitan Court, was a person that united with a strong body and ungovernable temper all the tyrannical caprice which the rich and great, without cultivation, think themselves entitled to exhibit.
“Donna Lorenza had contrived to gain this man, and on him the fictitious Marchese Pellegrini founded his security. The prince had testified openly that he was the protector of this strange pair, and his fury may be imagined when Giuseppe Balsamo, at the instance of the man he had cheated, was cast into prison. He tried various means to deliver him, and as these would not prosper, he publicly, in the President’s ante-chamber, threatened Marano’s lawyer with the frightfullest misusage if the suit were not dropped and Balsamo forthwith set at liberty. As the lawyer declined such a proposal he clutched him, beat him, threw him on the floor, trampled him with his feet, and could hardly be restrained from still further outrages, when the President himself came running out at the tumult and commanded peace.
“This latter, a weak, dependent man, made no attempt to punish the injurer; Marano and his lawyer grew fainthearted, and Balsamo was let go. There was not so much as a registration in the court books specifying his dismissal, who occasioned it, or how it took place.
“The Marchese Pellegrini,” Goethe adds, “quickly thereafter left Palermo, and performed various travels, whereof I could obtain no clear information.”
Nor apparently could anybody else, for on leaving Palermo this time the Balsamos vanished as completely as if they had ceased to exist. The Courier de l’Europe and the Inquisition-biographer, however, were not to be dismayed by any such trifling gap in the chain of evidence they set themselves to string together. Unable to discover the least trace of Balsamo, they seized upon two or three other swindlers, who may or may not have been the creations of their distracted imagination, and boldly labelled them Balsamo.
Lorenza’s honest copper-smelting father and brother are dragged from Rome to join in the swindling operations of herself and husband. The brother is whisked off with them to Malta and Spain, where he is abandoned as an incubus, apparently because he objected to exploit his good looks after the manner of his sister. Then, as it is necessary in some way to account for Cagliostro’s occult powers, Balsamo suddenly takes up the study of alchemy, and in the moments he snatches from the preparation of “beauty salves” and “longevity pills,” picks an occasional pocket.