One night in “April 1785”—Cagliostro then at the height of his fame—at a dinner-party at Madame Böhmer’s, the conversation turned on mesmerism. The Countess de Lamotte, who was present, declared she believed in it—an opinion that her hostess did not share.
“Such people,” said Madame Böhmer, “only wish to attract attention, like Cagliostro, who has been driven out of every country in which he has tried to make gold. The last was Poland. A person who has just come from there told me that he was admitted to Court on the strength of his knowledge of the occult, particularly of the philosopher’s stone. There were some, however, who were not to be convinced without actual proof. Accordingly, a day was set for the operation, and one of the incredulous courtiers, knowing that he had as an assistant a young girl, bribed her. I do not say this was the Countess Cagliostro, because I am informed that he had several [mediums] who travelled with him. ‘Keep your eye,’ said the girl to the courtier, ‘on his thumb, which he holds in the hollow of his hand to conceal the piece of gold he will slip into the crucible.’ All attention, the courtier heard the gold and, immediately seizing Cagliostro’s hand, exclaimed to the King, ‘Sire, didn’t you hear?’ The crucible was searched, and a small lump of gold was found, whereupon Cagliostro was instantly and very roughly, as I was told, flung out of the palace.”
The anonymous writer’s “eye-witness, Count M.,” described in detail the particulars of Cagliostro’s quest for the philosopher’s stone. According to this authority, he made his début at Prince Poninski’s with some magical séances similar to those at Mittau, adding sleight-of-hand tricks to his predictions and “divinations by colombes.”
Unfortunately, the occultists of Warsaw were principally interested in the supernatural properties of the crucible. They were crazy on the subject of alchemy, and the pursuit of the secret of the transmutation of base metals into gold. Having bent the knee to magic, in which at least, by virtue of his own occult gifts, he could appear to advantage, Cagliostro rashly—compelled by necessity, perhaps, rather than vanity in this instance—assumed a knowledge of which he was ignorant, relying on making gold by sleight-of-hand.
Alas! “Count M.” had devoted his life to the subject, of which it did not take him long to discover Cagliostro knew next to nothing. Indignant that one who had not even learnt the alphabet of alchemy should undertake to instruct him of all people, he laid the trap described by Madame Böhmer. It was not, however, at the Royal Palace that the exposure took place that caused Cagliostro to leave Poland, but at a country seat near Warsaw. Moreover, if we are to believe “Count M.,” Cagliostro did not wait to be exposed, but suspecting what was a-foot, “decamped during the night.”
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Now, on the strength of Madame Böhmer’s evidence—not given by her in person, by the way, but quoted by the Countess de Lamotte in her defence at the Necklace trial—while there seems to be little doubt that the statement of the anonymous “Count M.” is substantially correct, there is, nevertheless, another—and a favourable—account of Cagliostro in Poland. It has the advantage of being neither anonymous nor dated, like the Countess von der Recke’s book, years after the events it relates. It is from a letter written by Laborde, the Farmer-General, who happened to be in Warsaw when Cagliostro was there. The letter bears the date of 1781, which was that of the year after the following episodes occurred.
“Cagliostro,” writes Laborde, “was some time at Warsaw, and several times had had the honour of meeting Stanislas Augustus. One day, as this monarch was expressing his great admiration for his powers, which appeared to him supernatural, a young lady of the Court who had listened attentively to him began to laugh, declaring that Cagliostro was nothing but an impostor. She said she was so certain of it that she would defy him to tell her certain things that had happened to her.
“The next day the King informed the Count of this challenge, who replied coldly that if the lady would meet him in the presence of His Majesty, he would cause her the greatest surprise she had ever known in her life. The proposal was accepted, and the Count told the lady all that she thought it impossible for him to know. The surprise this occasioned her caused her to pass so rapidly from incredulity to admiration that she had a burning desire to know what was to happen to her in the future.
“At first he refused to tell her, but yielding to her entreaty, and perhaps to gratify the curiosity of the King, he said—