(click image to enlarge)
“I was even persuaded,” he said afterwards, “to give him the receipt of certain medicaments, among others that of an elixir, which he has since sold in London as my balsam, though there is not the least resemblance between them.”
A week later a man, whose wife and daughter had been cured of a dangerous illness by Cagliostro, called to inform him that Sacchi was a spy of his enemies the doctors, and that he was seeking to damage him by extorting fees from his patients. Horrified at the ingratitude and treachery of which he was the victim, Cagliostro forthwith turned “the reptile he had harboured” out of doors. Destitute of honour, rage now deprived Sacchi of common sense. Having been rash enough to threaten the life of the person who had exposed him, he was expelled from the city by the Marquis de Lasalle, the Commandant of Strasburg, who had been cured of a dangerous illness by Cagliostro.
But this action only served to increase the exasperation of the doctors, whose agent Sacchi was. Instigated by them he wrote to Cagliostro an insolent letter in which he demanded one hundred and fifty louis for the week he had passed in his service, threatening, if it were not instantly paid, to libel him. Cagliostro treated the threat with contemptuous silence, whereupon Sacchi proceeded to publish his libel, which he composed with the aid of a French lawyer who had escaped from the galleys. In it he declared the mysterious Count to be the son of a Neapolitan coachman, formerly known as Don Tiscio, a name under which he, Sacchi, had seen him exposed in the pillory at Alicante in Spain.[22]
As sensitive to abuse as he was susceptible to flattery, Cagliostro was unable to endure such treatment, and convinced from his previous experience in Russia that there would be no limit to the vindictive malevolence of the doctors, he determined, he says, to leave Strasburg, where, in spite of the Cardinal’s protection and his ministerial letters, he could find neither tranquillity nor security. A letter received about this time informing him that the Chevalier d’Aquino, of Naples, a friend of his mysterious past, was dangerously ill, and desired to see him, confirmed him in his resolution. Accordingly, in spite of the entreaties of the Cardinal, he shook the dust of Strasburg from his feet, and departed in all haste for Naples, where, however, he states, he arrived too late to save his friend.
II
On leaving Strasburg, as previously on leaving London and Warsaw, Cagliostro once more plunged into the obscurity in which so much of his career was passed that it might almost be described as his native element, to emerge again three months later as before on the crest of the wave of fortune in Bordeaux. As rumour, however, followed him it is possible to surmise with some degree of probability what became of him.
The imaginative Inquisition-biographer, though unable to give any account of Cagliostro’s journey from Strasburg to Naples, his residence in that city, or subsequent journey to Bordeaux—a singular tour!—nevertheless unconsciously throws something like light on the subject. He declares that the Countess Cagliostro, who accompanied her husband, “confessed” at her trial before the Apostolic Court in Rome that “he left Naples owing to his failure to establish a lodge of Egyptian Masonry.” Questionable as the source is from which this statement emanates, it is nevertheless a clue.
Whatever difference of opinion there may be as to the honesty of Cagliostro’s motives in propagating Egyptian Masonry, there is none as to his pertinacity. Within three weeks of his arrival in Strasburg he had founded a lodge for the observance of the Egyptian Rite. The mysterious and hurried visits he paid from time to time to Bâle, Geneva, and other places in Switzerland during his three years’ residence in Alsace were apparently of a Masonic nature. It is, moreover, curious to note that his hurried departure for Naples occurred immediately after the Neapolitan government removed its ban against Freemasonry. As the Neapolitan government would not have taken this step had there been the least likelihood of Freemasonry obtaining a hold over the masses, it is highly probable that Cagliostro left Naples for the reason given by the Inquisition-biographer.
This probability is still further strengthened by his subsequent movements, which, erratic though they may appear, had a well-defined purpose. From the time he left London, be it said, till his last fatal journey to Rome, Cagliostro never went anywhere without having a definite and preconceived purpose.