On the first shot fired by the Courier de l’Europe, as if it were the signal for a preconcerted attack, a swarm of blackmailers, decoys, and spurious creditors descended upon the unfortunate Grand Cophta. Warned by the noise that the daring, but unsuccessful, attempts of the secret agents of the French police to kidnap the Count de Lamotte had created, Morande adopted methods less likely to scandalize the British public in his efforts to trepan Cagliostro. While apparently confining himself to the congenial task of “unmasking” his victim daily in the columns of his widely-read journal, he was a party to, if he did not actually organize, the series of persecutions that embittered the existence of the now broken and discredited wonder-worker.
If, as he declared, in his efforts to convince the public that Cagliostro was Giuseppe Balsamo, the perjured Aylett and the restaurant-keeper Pergolezzi were prepared to corroborate his statement, then given his notorious character, unconcealed motive, and the money with which he was supplied by the French Government, the presumption that these questionable witnesses were bought is at least well founded. In the Letter to the English People in which Cagliostro, with the aid of Thilorier, sought to defend himself from the charges of the Courier de l’Europe, he states, as “a fact well known in London,” that Morande went about purse in hand, purchasing the information, witnesses, and accomplices he required.
He offered one hundred guineas to O’Reilly, to whose good offices Cagliostro owed his release from the King’s Bench jail in 1777, to swear that he had left England without paying his debts. But though O’Reilly refused to be bought, Swinton, Morande’s intimate friend and the proprietor of the Courier de l’Europe, proceeding on different lines, succeeded in making mischief between O’Reilly and Cagliostro, by which the latter was deprived of a valuable friend when he had most need of him.
According to Brissot, who knew him thoroughly, and whose testimony is above dispute, Swinton was every bit as unprincipled as his editor. A Scotchman by birth, he had lived the greater part of his life, married, and made his fortune in France. On settling in London he had drifted naturally into the French colony, in which, by reason of his sympathies, connections and interests he had acquired great influence, which he turned to account on every possible occasion. One of his many profitable enterprises was a “home” for young Frenchmen employed in London. “He also ran a druggist’s shop,” says Brissot, “in the name of one of his clerks, and a restaurant in the name of another.”[43] And when Cagliostro arrived in London with a letter of introduction to him, Swinton, who was as full of schemes as he was devoid of principle, thought to run him, too, for his own profit. The wonder-worker with his elixirs, his balsams, and his magical phenomena was, if properly handled, a mine of gold.
Taking advantage of Cagliostro’s ignorance of the language and customs of the country in which he had sought refuge, Swinton, who was assiduous in his attentions, rented him a house in Sloane Street, for which he desired a tenant, induced him to pay the cost of repairing it, and provided him with the furniture he needed at double its value. To prevent any one else from interfering with the agreeable task of plucking so fat a bird, and at the same time the better to conceal his duplicity, Swinton endeavoured to preclude all approach to his prey. It was to this end that he made trouble between Cagliostro and O’Reilly. Having succeeded thus far in his design he redoubled his attentions, and urged Cagliostro to give a public exhibition of his healing powers, as he had done at Strasburg. But warned by previous experience of the danger of exciting afresh the hostility of the doctors, Cagliostro firmly refused. Swinton then proposed to become his apothecary, and to push the sale of the Grand Cophta’s various medicaments, of which his druggist’s shop should have the monopoly, in the Courier de l’Europe.
To this, however, Cagliostro also objected, preferring, apparently, not to disclose the secret of their preparation—if not to share with the apothecary, as Morande afterwards declared, the exorbitant profit to be derived from their sale. Perceiving that he was not to be persuaded by fair means, Swinton injudiciously tried to put on the screw. But his threats, far from accomplishing their purpose, only served to betray his designs, and so disgusted Cagliostro that he ceased to have any further communication with him. Swinton, however, was not to be got rid of in any such fashion. Living next door to his enemy, his house became the rendezvous of the various bailiffs and decoys hired by Morande to seize or waylay his unfortunate adversary.
Among numerous schemes of Swinton and Morande to capture Cagliostro were two attempts to obtain his arrest by inducing persons to take out writs against him for imaginary debts—a proceeding which the custom of merely swearing to a debt to procure a writ rendered easy. In this way Priddle, who had behaved so scurvily in Cagliostro’s arbitration suit with Miss Fry in 1777, was induced to take out a writ for sixty pounds, due, as he pretended, for legal business transacted nine years before. Warned, however, that the bailiffs were hiding in Swinton’s house to serve the writ the moment he should appear, Cagliostro was able to defeat their intention by procuring bail before they could accomplish their purpose. In the end it was Priddle who went to Newgate. But instead of the former demand for sixty pounds, Cagliostro, by means of one of the various legal subterfuges in the practice of which the eighteenth century lawyer excelled, was obliged to pay one hundred and eighty pounds and costs.
Immediately after this dearly-bought victory, the baited victim of ministerial tyranny and corruption was similarly attacked from another quarter in a manner which proves how great was the exasperation of his enemies. Sacchi, the blackmailer, who had published a libellous pamphlet against Cagliostro—quoted by Madame de Lamotte at her trial, when it was generally regarded as worthless, and its suppression ordered by the Parliament of Paris—appeared in London and obtained a writ for one hundred and fifty pounds, which, he claimed, Cagliostro owed him for the week passed in his service in Strasburg in 1781. The impudence of this claim on examination was, of course, sufficient to disprove it; but Morande, who had brought Sacchi to England and assisted him to procure the writ, all but succeeded in having Cagliostro ignominiously dragged to Newgate on the strength of it. The proximity, however, of Swinton’s house—in which the bailiffs had secreted themselves pending an opportunity of seizing their prey, as on the former occasion—helped to betray their presence, and once again Cagliostro managed to forestall them by giving the necessary bail in due time.
Such an existence was enough to give the most fearless nature cause for alarm, and the Bastille had effectually damped the courage of the Grand Cophta. “Startling at shadows” the pertinacity of his enemies left him not a moment’s peace. The fate of Lord George Gordon was ever in his thoughts. If the French Government was powerful enough to effect the imprisonment of an Englishman who had offended it in his own country, what chance had he of escaping?
