The charge is a very just one. The bitterness with which Cagliostro has been regarded for a hundred years is due less to the calumnies with which he was assailed in his life—and which till the present no one has dreamt of investigating—than to the belief that he debased his ideals. As his “psychic” powers developed it cannot be denied that he attached a significance to them that, in the opinion of thoughtful people, was calculated to render his motives suspect. His real imposture was not in cheating people of their money or faking miracles, but in encouraging the belief that he was a supernatural being—“I am that I am,” as he is said to have described himself profanely on one occasion. Intoxicated by his amazing success, he lost all sense of proportion. The means which he had begun to employ in Mittau to justify his end all but effaced the end itself in Paris.
To attract followers he was no longer content to gratify the passion for the marvellous, but sought to stimulate it. To enhance the effect of his phenomena he had recourse to artifices worthy of a mountebank.
The room in which his séances were held contained statuettes of Isis, Anubis, and the ox Apis. The walls were covered with hieroglyphics, and two lacqueys, “clothed like Egyptian slaves as they are represented on the monuments at Thebes,” were in attendance to arrange the screen behind which the pupilles or colombes sat, the carafe or mirror into which they gazed, or to perform any other service that was required.
To complete the mise en scène, Cagliostro wore a robe of black silk on which hieroglyphics were embroidered in red. His head was covered with an Arab turban of cloth of gold ornamented with jewels. A chain of emeralds hung en sautoir upon his breast, to which scarabs and cabalistic symbols of all colours in metal were attached. A sword with a handle shaped like a cross was suspended from a belt of red silk.
“In this costume,” says Figuier, “the Grand Cophta looked so imposing that the whole assembly felt a sort of terror when he appeared.”
The manner in which Cagliostro dressed and conducted himself in public was equally designed to attract attention, though it was scarcely of the sort he desired. A writer who saw him walking one day followed by an admiring band of street-arabs says “he was wearing a coat of blue silk braided along the seams; his hair in powdered knots was gathered up in a net; his shoes à la d’Artois were fastened with jewelled buckles, his stockings studded with gold buttons; rubies and diamonds sparkled on his fingers, and on the frill of his shirt; from his watch-chain hung a diamond drop, a gold key adorned with diamonds, and an agate seal—all of which, in conjunction with his flowered waistcoat and musketeer hat with a white plume, produced an instantaneous effect.”
The Marquise de Créquy, Beugnot, and nearly all his contemporaries allude to the fantastic manner in which he dressed as well as to his colossal vanity, which, inflated by success, rendered him not only ridiculous to those whom he failed to fascinate, but even insufferable. Pompous in Mittau, he became arrogant, domineering, and choleric in Paris. Flattery, to which he had always been peculiarly susceptible, at last became to him like some drug by which he was enslaved. He could not tolerate criticism or contradiction. “The Chevalier de Montbruel,” says Beugnot, “a veteran of the green-room, and ready to affirm anything, was always at hand to bear witness to Cagliostro’s cures, offering himself as an example cured of I do not know how many maladies with names enough to frighten one.”
However, Cagliostro was never so spoilt by success, never so compromised by the tricks and devices to which he stooped to perform his wonders, as to lose sight of his ideal. Had he been the vulgar cheat, the sordid impostor it is customary to depict him, he would have contented himself with the subscriptions paid by the members of the lodges he founded and have ceased to insist on the ethical character of Egyptian Masonry. In 1785 a religious element was calculated to repel rather than to attract. It was the wonder-man, and not the idealist, in whom Paris was interested. But instead of taking the line of least resistance, so to speak, Cagliostro deliberately adopted a course that could not fail to make enemies rather than friends.
Far from dropping the religious and moral character of the Egyptian Rite, he laid greater stress on it than ever, and claimed for his sect a superiority over all the others of Freemasonry, on the ground that it was based on the mysteries of Isis and Anubis which he had brought from the East. As no one ever ventured to regard him as a fool as well as a knave, it is impossible to question his sincerity in the matter. At once the seventy-two Masonic lodges of Paris rose in arms against him. He managed, however, to triumph over all opposition. At a meeting held for the purpose of expounding the dogmas of Egyptian Masonry “his eloquence was so persuasive,” says Figuier, “that he completely converted to his views the large and distinguished audience he addressed.”
From the respect that Cagliostro thus exacted and obtained, Egyptian Masonry acquired an importance in France not unlike that of the Illuminés in Germany. Nothing proves this so well as the Congress of Philalètes, or the Seekers of Truth.