Now Warsaw society, like that of Mittau, was on the most intimate terms with the great world of St. Petersburg. Had Cagliostro masqueraded in Russia as a bogus Prince de Santa Cruce or a swindling Prussian colonel, or had his wife excited the jealousy of the Empress Catherine, the fact would have been known in Warsaw—if not before he arrived there, certainly before he left. Of one thing we may be absolutely sure, the anonymous author of Cagliostro démasqué à Varsovie would not have failed to mention a scandal so much to the point. As a matter of fact, while denouncing Cagliostro as an impostor, this hostile witness even speaks of the “marvels he performed in Russia.”
Nothing could have been more flattering to Cagliostro than the welcome he received on his arrival in Warsaw in May 1780. Poland, like Courland, was one of the strongholds of Freemasonry and occultism. Prince Poninski, who was as great a devotee to magic and alchemy as the von Medems, insisted on the wonder-worker and his wife staying at his house. Finding the soil so admirably adapted to the seed he had to sow, Cagliostro began at once to preach the gospel he had so much at heart. The conversion of Poninski to Egyptian Masonry was followed by that of the greater part of Polish society. Within a month of his arrival he had established at Warsaw a Masonic lodge in which the Egyptian Rite was observed.
It was not, however, by Cagliostro’s ideals that Poninski and his friends were attracted, but by his power to gratify their craving for sensation. No speculations in pure mysticism à la Saint-Martin for them: they were occult materialists, and demanded of the supernatural practical, tangible manifestations.
As under similar circumstances at Mittau, Cagliostro had found it convenient to encourage the abuses he had professed to denounce, he had no compunction about following the same course at Warsaw. But it evidently did not come easy to him to prostitute his ideal, judging from the awkwardness with which he adapted himself to the conditions it entailed.
At first, apart from certain remarkable faculties he possessed and a sort of dilettante knowledge of magic and alchemy, he lacked both skill and experience. In Mittau, where his career as a wonder-worker may first fairly be said to begin, he failed as often as he succeeded. That the phenomena he faked were not detected at the time was due to luck, which, to judge from rumour, appears almost entirely to have deserted him in St. Petersburg.
In Warsaw, too, he was still far from expert. Here, in spite of the precautions he took, he found himself called upon to pass an examination in alchemy, a subject for which he was unprepared, and failed miserably.
In the opinion of the indignant Pole who caught him “cribbing,” so to speak, “if he knew a little more of optics, acoustics, mechanics, and physics generally; if he had studied a little the tricks of Comus and Philadelphus, what success might he not have with his reputed skill in counterfeiting writing! It is only necessary for him to go into partnership with a ventriloquist in order to play a much more important part than he has hitherto done. He should add to the trifling secrets he possesses by reading some good book on chemistry.”
But it is by failure that one gains experience. As Cagliostro was quick and intelligent, and had a “forehead of brass that nothing could abash,” by the time he had reached Strasburg he was a past-master of the occult, having brought his powers to a high state of perfection, as well as being able, on occasion, to fake a phenomenon with consummate skill.
There are two accounts of his adventures in Warsaw—one favourable, the other unfavourable. The latter, it is scarcely necessary to say, is the one by which he has been judged. It dates, as usual, from the period of the Necklace Affair—that is, six years after the events it describes. It is by an anonymous writer, who obtained his information second-hand from an “eye-witness, one Count M.” Even Carlyle refuses to damn his “Arch-Quack” on such evidence. This vial of vitriol, flung by an unknown and hostile hand at the Grand Cophta of Egyptian Masonry in his hour of adversity, is called Cagliostro démasqué à Varsovie.
Nevertheless, contemptible and questionable though it is, the impression it conveys, if not the actual account, is confirmed by Madame Böhmer, wife of the jeweller in the Necklace Affair. Madame Böhmer’s testimony is the more valuable in that it was given before the anonymous writer flung his vitriol.