On taking the oath, which included a vow of secrecy, Cagliostro is presumed to have received a large sum, destined to defray the expenses of propaganda, and to have proceeded immediately, in accordance with instructions, to Strasburg, where he arrived on September 19, 1780.
II
From the nature of his entry into the capital of Alsace, it is certain that great pains had been taken in advance to excite public interest in him. The fabulous Palladium could not have been welcomed with greater demonstrations of joy. From early morning crowds of people waited on the Pont de Kœhl and on both banks of the Rhine for the arrival of a mysterious personage who was reported to go from city to city healing the sick, working miracles, and distributing alms. In the crowd speculations were rife as to his mysterious origin, his mysterious travels in strange and remote countries, and of the mysterious source of his immense wealth. Some regarded him as one inspired, a saint or a prophet possessed of the gift of miracles. To others, the cures attributed to him were the natural result of his great learning and occult powers. Yet another group saw in him an evil genius, a devil sent into the world on some diabolic mission. Among these, however—and they were not the least numerous—there were some more favourable to Cagliostro, and who, considering that after all he only did good, inferred logically that, if supernatural, he must be a good, rather than an evil, genius.
Suddenly, speculation was silenced by the approach of the being who had excited it. The rumbling of wheels, the clatter of hoofs, the cracking of whips was heard, and out of a cloud of dust appeared a carriage drawn by six horses, and accompanied by lacqueys and outriders in magnificent liveries. Within rode the Grand Cophta, the High Priest of Mystery, with his “hair in a net,” and wearing a blue coat covered with gold braid and precious stones. Bizarre though he was with his circus-rider’s splendour, the manner in which he acknowledged the vivats of the crowd[19] through which he passed was not without dignity. His wife, who sat beside him, sparkling with youth, beauty, and diamonds, shared the curiosity he excited. It was a veritable triumphal progress.
The advantage to which such an ovation could be turned was not to be neglected. Fond of luxury and aristocratic society though he was, Cagliostro was not the man to despise popularity in any form that it presented itself. Having lost the influence of the great, by means of whom he had counted to establish Egyptian Masonry, he was anxious to secure that of the masses. So great was the importance he attached to the interest he had aroused, he even took up his abode among them, “living first over a retail tobacconist’s named Quère, whose shop was in one of the most squalid quarters of the town, and later lodging with the caretaker of the canon of St. Pierre-le-Vieux.”
According to all reports, from the very day of his arrival in Strasburg he seemed to busy himself solely in doing good, regardless of cost or personal inconvenience. No one, providing he was poor and unfortunate, appealed to him in vain. Hearing that an Italian was in prison for a debt of two hundred livres, Cagliostro obtained his release by paying the money for him, and clothed him into the bargain. Baron von Gleichen, who knew him well, states that he saw him, on being summoned to the bed-side of a sick person, “run through a downpour in a very fine coat without stopping to take an umbrella.”
Every day he sought out the poor and infirm, whose distress he endeavoured to relieve not only with money and medicine, but “with manifestations of sympathy that went to the hearts of the sufferers, and doubled the value of the action.” Though his enemies did not hesitate to charge him with the most mercenary motives in administering his charities, they were obliged to admit the fact of them. Meiners, who thoroughly disliked him and considered him both a quack and a charlatan, was honest enough to acknowledge that he gave his services gratis, and even refused to make a profit on the sale of his remedies.
“For some time,” says this hostile witness, “it was believed that he shared with his apothecary the profits on the remedies he prescribed to his patients. But as soon as Cagliostro learnt that such suspicions were entertained, he not only changed his apothecary, but obliged the one he chose in his place, as I have been informed by several people, to sell his remedies at so low a price that the fellow made scarcely anything by the sale of them.
“He would take, moreover, neither payment nor present for his labour. If a present was offered him of a sort impossible to refuse without offence, he immediately made a counter present of equal or even of higher value. Indeed, he not only took nothing from his patients, but if they were very poor he supported them for months; at times even lodging them in his own house and feeding them from his own table.”
III