CHAPTER VII
CAGLIOSTRO RETURNS TO LONDON
I
If ever a man had cause to be embittered and to nurse a grievance it was Cagliostro. He had been cast suddenly headlong, through no fault of his own, from the pinnacle of good fortune into the Bastille; accused of another’s crime; arrested with the utmost brutality and treated with outrageous severity; kept in uncertainty of the fate of his wife, who for six months, unknown to him, was confined within fifteen feet of him; he had been an object of ridicule and mockery within, of calumny and detraction without his prison, of which the name alone was sufficient to reduce him to despair; then—crowning injustice—after being acquitted on every count in a manner that could leave no doubt of his innocence, he had been arbitrarily banished within twenty-four hours of the recovery of his liberty.
Under such circumstances resentment is perfectly natural and justifiable. To “take it lying down,” as the saying is, at all times a doubtful virtue, becomes frequently a downright folly.
Had Cagliostro been silent in the present instance with the protecting arm of the sea between him and a corrupt and blundering despotism he would have been utterly undeserving of pity. In “getting even,” however, to his credit be it said, he did not adopt the methods of the Rohanists, as all the enemies of the Government were called, and launch, like Calonne, Madame de Lamotte and so many others, libel after libel at the honour of the defenceless and unpopular Queen—the low and contemptible revenge of low and contemptible natures. On the contrary, he held the Baron de Breteuil, as the head of the Government, directly responsible for his sufferings and attacked him once and once only, in his famous Letter to the French People.[36]
This letter, written the day after his arrival in England, to a friend in Paris, was immediately published in pamphlet form, and even translated into several languages. Scattered broadcast over Paris and all France it created an immense sensation. Directed against Breteuil, whose unpopularity, already great, it increased, it assailed more or less openly the monarchical principle itself. Of all the pamphlets which from the Necklace Affair to the fall of the Bastille attacked the royal authority none are so dignified or so eloquent. The longing for freedom, which was latent in the bosom of every man and which the philosophers and the secret societies had been doing their best to fan into a flame, was revealed in every line. It was not unreasonably regarded as the confession of faith of an Illuminé. The Inquisition-biographer declares that it was conceived in a spirit so calculated to excite a revolt that “it was with difficulty a printer could be found in England to print it.” Cagliostro himself admits that it was written with “a freedom rather republican.”[37]
This letter gave great offence to the French Government and particularly to the Baron de Breteuil who dominated it, and whose conduct in the Necklace Affair sufficiently proves his unfitness for the post he filled. Under ordinary circumstances he would no doubt have ignored the attack upon himself. His pride, the pride of an aristocrat—he was the personification of reaction—would have scorned to notice the insult of one so far beneath him as Cagliostro. But the prestige of the Government and the majesty of the throne damaged by the unspeakable calumnies of the Necklace Affair had to be considered. Might not the sensation caused by the inflammatory Letter to the French People encourage the author to follow it up by other and still more seditious pamphlets? There was but one way to prevent this contingency—to kidnap him. For not only would it be impossible to persuade the English Government to give him up, but futile to attempt to purchase silence from one who had a grievance and made it his boast that he never took payment for the favours he conferred.
Before the days of extradition, kidnapping was a practice more or less common to all governments. Eighteenth century history, particularly that of France, is full of such instances.[38] Breteuil was, therefore, merely following precedent when he ordered Barthélemy, the French Ambassador in London, to inform Cagliostro that “His Most Christian Majesty gave him permission to return to his dominions.”
This permission, was, accordingly, duly conveyed to Cagliostro, with the request that he would call at a certain hour on the following day at the Embassy when the ambassador would give him any further information on the subject he desired. It is exceedingly unlikely that Barthélemy intended to forcibly detain him when he called, but rather to gull him by false pretences—a not difficult proceeding in the case of one so notoriously vain as Cagliostro—into returning to France. Be this as it may, on calling on the ambassador at the appointed hour he prudently invited Lord George Gordon and one Bergeret de Frouville, an admirer who had followed him from France, to accompany him. This they not only did, but insisted in being present throughout the interview.