Though aware that the Countess at the moment was ill in bed, he declared that, if a messenger were sent to her house at a certain hour, he would find her seated at her writing-table in perfect health. This prediction was verified in every particular.
Such was the state of affairs when Cagliostro accompanied the von Medems to Wilzen to prove the existence of the buried treasure he had so craftily located. In spite of his great confidence in himself, he must have realized that the task he had so rashly undertaken at Wilzen was one that would require exceptional cunning to shirk. For the chance of finding a treasure said to have been buried hundreds of years before was even smaller than that on which he counted of evoking the spirit of the Countess’s brother. But in this case, strange to say, it was not his failure to produce the treasure, but the “magic” he successfully employed to conceal his failure that was to cause him the most concern.
IV
Conscious that the Countess’s faith in him was shaken by his failure to give her the consolation she so greatly desired, Cagliostro requested they should travel in the same carriage in order that he might have the opportunity to clear himself of her suspicions as to his sincerity. The very boldness of such a request was sufficient to disarm her. She herself has confessed, in the book from which these details have been drawn, that “his conversation was such as to create in her a great reverence for his moral character, whilst his subtle observations on mankind in general astonished her as greatly as his magical operations.”
From the manner, however, in which he faced the difficulty, he does not appear to have been in the least apprehensive of the consequences of failing to surmount it. The Countess was once more his ardent disciple; the von Medems’ belief in magic was proof against unsuccessful experiments; and Hanachiel—invaluable Hanachiel—was always on hand to explain his failures as well as his successes.
On arriving at Alt-Auz, as the von Medem estate at Wilzen was named, Cagliostro produced from his pocket “a little red book, and read aloud in an unknown tongue.” The Countess, who believed him to be praying, ventured to interrupt him as they drove through the haunted forest in which the treasure was said to be buried. Hereupon he cried out in wild zeal, “Oh, Great Architect of the Universe, help me to accomplish this work.” A bit of theatricality that much impressed his companion, and which was all the more effective for being natural to him.
The von Medems were eager to begin digging for the treasure as soon as they alighted. Cagliostro, however, “after withdrawing to commune in solitude with Hanachiel,” declared that the treasure was guarded by very powerful demons whom it was dangerous to oppose without taking due precautions. “To prevent them from spiriting it away without his knowledge” he performed a little incantation which was supposed to bind Hanachiel to keep an eye on them. The next day, to break the fall, so to speak, of the high hopes the von Medems had built on the buried treasure, he held a séance in which the infant medium was again the chief actor. The child—“holding a large iron nail,” and with only a screen between it and the other members of the party, having presumably been hypnotized[15] by Cagliostro—described the site of the buried treasure, the demon that guarded it, the treasure itself, and “seven angels in long white robes who helped Hanachiel keep an eye on the guardian of the treasure.” At the command of Cagliostro the child kissed, and was kissed by, these angels. And to the amazement of those in the room, with only the screen between them and the child, the sound of the kisses, says the Countess von der Recke, could be distinctly heard.
Similar séances took place every day during the eight days the von Medem party stayed at Alt-Auz. At one the Countess herself was induced to enter the “magic circle holding a magic watch in her hand,” while the little medium, assisted by the representative of the Grand Cophta, in his turn assisted by Hanachiel, read her thoughts.
But, unlike her father and uncle, while the impression these phenomena made upon her mind was profound, it was also unfavourable. Though curiosity caused her to witness these séances, the Countess von der Recke strongly disapproved of them on “religious grounds.” Like many another, what she could not explain, she regarded as evil. The phenomena she witnessed appeared so uncanny that she believed them to be directly inspired by the powers of darkness. At first, in her admiration of Cagliostro, she prayed that he might escape temptation and be preserved from the demons with which it was but too evident to her he was surrounded. When at last he declared that he was informed by the ever-attendant Hanachiel that the demon who guarded the buried treasure was not to be propitiated without much difficulty and delay, it did not occur to her to doubt him. The wonders he had been performing daily had convinced her, as well as the others, of his occult powers. But from regarding him with reverence, she now regarded him with dread.
Cagliostro, who never lost sight of the aims of Egyptian Masonry in the deceptions to which the desire to proselytize led him, was in the habit, “before each of his séances, of delivering lectures that were a strange mixture of sublimity and frivolity.” It was by these lectures that he unconsciously lost the respect of the Countess he strove so hard to preserve. One day, while expatiating on the times when the sons of God loved the daughters of men, as described in the Bible—which, he predicted, would return when mankind was morally regenerate—carried away by his subject he declared that, “not only the demi-Gods of Greece, and Christ of Nazareth, but he himself were the fruit of such unions.”