Blague or conviction, at such a moment, it would be churlish to inquire. When one is fighting for life and liberty one readily avails oneself of any weapon that comes to hand. At least so thought Madame de Lamotte. Failing further abuse of which she had been deprived by a riposte as unexpected as it was subtle, she picked up a candlestick. Hurled at the head of her adversary, it “hit him in the stomach,” to the amusement of the court, the judges and Madame de Lamotte herself, who remarked to her counsel that “if he wished to render the scene still more amusing he had but to give her a broomstick.”
But neither abusive epithets nor candlesticks are arguments. Finding herself on the wrong road, the Countess made haste to leave it for another. It was no longer Cagliostro who had stolen the necklace, but the Cardinal.
At last, after more than nine months, the famous affair came to an end. On May 30, 1786, all the accused were summoned before the Parliament. When Cagliostro arrived, tricked out as usual like a mountebank in a coat of green silk embroidered with gold, and his hair falling in little tails on his shoulders, the whole assemblage burst into a laugh. But to him it was anything but an occasion for merriment; he was serious to the point of solemnity.
“Who are you?” asked the president.
“An illustrious traveller,” was the reply. Then with imperturbable gravity he began in his loud, metallic voice, which Madame d’Oberkirch compared to a “trumpet veiled in crape,” to repeat the story of his life.
At the mention of Trebizond the laughter redoubled. This made him nervous, and either unconsciously from old habit, or in the hope of exciting an interest favourable to his cause, he related his adventures in a jargon composed, says Beugnot, “of all known languages as well as those which never existed.” The gibberish he employed rendered him and his story still more fantastic. The laughter in the court was so loud that at times the voice of the speaker was drowned. Even the judges were convulsed. At the finish the president seemed to be on the point of complimenting “Nature’s unfortunate child.” It was evident that Cagliostro had won the sympathy of those on whom his fate depended. Of the verdict of the mob there was no doubt. He took the cheers with which he was greeted on being driven back to the Bastille as a premonition of his acquittal. One writer says he displayed the joy he felt “by throwing his hat into the air.”
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On the following day (May 31) the Parliament pronounced the verdict. The Cardinal and Cagliostro were unanimously acquitted—the innocence of the latter had been acknowledged by all implicated in the trial, even in the end by the Countess de Lamotte herself.[35]
The verdict was immensely popular. “I don’t know what would have befallen the Parliament,” said Mirabeau, “had they pronounced otherwise.” The fish-wives—the same who later were the Furies of the Revolution—forcibly embraced the judges and crowned them with flowers. In the street the name of the Cardinal was cheered to the echo. The ovation he received, however, was inspired less from any desire of the populace to acclaim him personally than to affront the Queen.
It was also to the violent hatred of the Court that Cagliostro owed the reception accorded him. His account of the scenes that took place on his deliverance from captivity would do credit to the lachrymose romances of the “age of sensibility.”