by Sax Rohmer
“There was hardly a fine lady in Paris who would not sup with the shade of Lucretius in the apartments of Cagliostro; a military officer who would not discuss the arts of war with Cæsar, Hannibal, or Alexander; or an advocate or counsellor who would not argue legal points with the shade of Cicero.”
Cagliostro received in a vast and sumptuously appointed apartment on the first floor, whilst Lorenza lived a comparatively retired life, only being visible at certain hours before a select company, “and in a diaphanous and glamorous costume.”
Indeed, fortune smiled upon the thaumaturgist. The fast friendship existing between him and the Cardinal de Rohan was no doubt a powerful factor in his success, and it had been strengthened by a marvellous cure which Cagliostro effected. One of the brothers of the great Cardinal — the Prince de Soubise — being dangerously ill, certain doctors had pronounced that he was suffering from a wasting disease, others that he had contracted scarlet fever; but all were agreed that it was a desperate case.
The Cardinal, who had unbounded faith in the great empiric, prayed him earnestly to visit his brother, and one day took him in his coach and conducted him to the Hôtel de Soubise, where, without mentioning any name, he announced “a doctor.”
As the faculty had declared the patient incurable, the family had left the Prince to die; a few servants only were to be seen in the sick-room when the Cardinal and Cagliostro entered. The latter requested to be left alone for a time with the patient, and all withdrew. “What,” inquires Figuier, “did Cagliostro do closeted with the Prince? Did he hypnotize him, or did he himself fall into a state of somnambulism?” None can say, since none ever knew; but eventually this man of mystery summoned the Cardinal and said: “If my prescriptions are followed, in two days Monseigneur le Prince de Soubise will leave his bed, and will walk in this room; in eight days he will ride in a coach; in three weeks he will attend the Court at Versailles!”
“When one has consulted the Oracle one can do nothing but obey.” The Cardinal hastened to place himself at the disposal of Cagliostro, who, the same day, returned with him to the Hôtel de Soubise, this time provided with a little phial of liquid, of which he administered ten drops to the patient.
“To-morrow,” he said, “we shall give the Prince five drops less; the day after he will take only two drops of this elixir, and he will be up in the evening.” The event surpassed the prediction of the Oracle; for the same day, following this visit, the Prince found himself well enough to receive a few friends. In the evening he rose, walked around his room, talked with animation, and eventually seated himself in an armchair.
He even felt well enough to ask for a wing of chicken. But this was refused, as the prescription of the doctor — still unknown — did not allow of that diet.
From the fourth day he was convalescent, but it was not until the evening of the fifth that he was allowed to partake of his wing of chicken.
No one in the Hôtel de Soubise as yet was aware that Cagliostro was the anonymous physician who had given his attentions to the Prince. He was only named at the moment of the cure, and this name, already so famous, was from that time never again referred to as that of a charlatan. Ennobled by this miraculous cure, his fame was noised throughout the city and at the Court, amid unbounded enthusiasm.
Some little time afterwards, as many as two hundred coaches stationed themselves along the Rue Saint Claude. At Versailles, the King and Queen, having heard of the good news concerning this wonderful and unexpected recovery, openly gave evidence of their great joy, and sent messengers to compliment the Prince de Soubise upon his return to health, which amounted to an official consecration of the glory of Cagliostro.
His bust was executed in marble by Houdon and cast in bronze, and beneath his portrait, after the bust, was engraved the following poetic inscription:
De l’ami des humains reconnaissez les traits,
Tous ses jours sont marqués par de nouveaux bienfaits.
Il prolonge la vie, il secourt l’indigence;
Le plaisir d’être utile est seul sa récompense.
He was now referred to as the “divine” Cagliostro. His portraits could be seen everywhere on snuff-boxes, rings, and upon the fans of the women. Paris was set wondering at his enchantments and prodigies. At Versailles, and in the presence of several distinguished nobles, he is said to have caused the apparition in mirrors, vases, etc., not merely of the spectra of absent or deceased persons, but animated and moving beings of a phantasmal description, including many dead men and women selected by the astounded spectators.
But Cagliostro was no longer young, whereas Lorenza was in the flower of her beauty; and he is said “for the first time to have experienced the pangs of jealousy, on account of a certain Chevalier d’Oisement, with whom Madame had had several assignations.”
Nevertheless, he prosecuted his plans to reform Freemasonry according to the Egyptian rite, with unabated vigour. He had cases filled with statuettes of Isis, Osiris, Anubis, and other deities, covered with mystic hier oglyphics; and these he distributed among his disciples. The lodge of Isis, whereof Madame di Cagliostro was Grand Mistress, counted in 1784, among its Adepts, some of the most prominent women of title in France.
Among the many anecdotes bearing upon this phase of his career, the following is worthy of citation, if only because so many versions exist, and for the reason that an episode almost identical is related of the celebrated Comte de Saint-Germain.
One day, then, whilst passing along the picturegallery in the Louvre — so one account tells us — Cagliostro halted before the picture by Jouvenet, “The Descent from the Cross,” and began to weep. Several of his companions questioned him as to the cause of his emotion.
“Alas!” he replied, “I shed tears for the death of this great moralist, for this man so good with whom I have had intimate intercourse. Indeed, we dined together at the house of Pontius Pilate.”
“Of whom do you speak?” inquired the Duc de Richelieu, stupefied.
“Of Jesus Christ. I knew him well!”
Cagliostro is said, too, at this time (again in imitation of Saint-Germain) to have had in his service a valet who, by his mysterious silence, considerably added to the impression created by his master.
M. d’Hannibal, a German noble, one day seized this fellow by the ear, and in a tone half jesting and half angry cried:
“Rascal! You will tell me now the true age of your master!”
But the valet was not to be bullied; and after a few moments of earnest reflection he replied:
“Listen, monsieur — I cannot tell you the age of M. le Comte, as it is unknown to me. He has always been to me as he appears to you; young, gay, buvant sec. All I can tell you is that I have been in his service since the decline of the Roman Republic; for we agreed upon my salary on the very day that Cæsar perished at the hand of the assassin in the Senate!”
VIII. THE BANQUET OF SPIRITS AND INITIATION OF ISIS
I shall now invite you to attend one of Cagliostro’s magical banquets at No. I, Rue Saint-Claude.
According to the Mémoires authentiques pour servir à l’Histoire du Comte de Cagliostro, the great thaumaturgist announced that at a private supper, given to six guests, he would evoke the spirits of any dead persons whom they named to him, and that the phantoms, apparently substantial, should seat themselves at the banquet.
Mr. A. E. Waite says, “The repast took place with the knowledge, and, it may be supposed, with the connivance of Lorenza”; but Louis Figuier states that it took place unknown to Madame: “Le souper eut lieu rue Saint-Claude, où demeurait Cagliostro, et à l’insu de Lorenza.”
At midnight the guests were assembled: a round table, laid for twelve, was spread, with extraordinary luxury, in a dining-room where all the appointments were in harmony with the approaching Cabalistic operation. The six guests, with Cagliostro, took their seats, and thus thirteen were designed to be present at table.
The supper was served, the servants were dismissed with th
reats of instant death if they dared to open the doors before they were summoned. Each guest demanded the deceased person whom he desired to see. Cagliostro took the names, placed them in the pocket of his gold-embroidered vest, and announced that with no further preparation than a simple invocation on his part, the evoked spirits would appear in flesh and blood, for, according to the Egyptian dogma, there were in reality no dead.
These guests of the other world, asked for and expected with trembling anxiety, were the Duc de Choiseul, Voltaire, d’Alembert, Diderot, the Abbé de Voisenon, and Montesquieu. Their names were pronounced slowly in a loud voice, and with all the concentrated determination of the Adept’s will; and after a moment of intolerable doubt, the evoked guests appeared very unobtrusively, and took their seats with the quiet courtesy which had characterized them in life!
The first question put to them, when the awe of their presence had somewhat abated, was as to their situation in the world beyond.
“There is no world beyond,” replied d’Alembert. “Death is simply the cessation of the evils which have tortured us. No pleasure is experienced, but, on the other hand, there is no suffering. I have not met with Mademoiselle Lespinasse, but neither have I seen Lorignet. Some deceased persons who have recently joined us inform me that I am almost forgotten. I am, however, consoled. Men are unworthy of the trouble we take about them. I never loved them, now I despise them.”
“What has become of your learning?” asked M. de — of Diderot.
“I was not learned, as people commonly supposed. I merely adapted all that I read, and in writing I borrowed right and left. Hence the disconnected style of my books, which will be unheard of in half a century, The Encyclopœdia, with which I am credited, does not belong to me. The duty of an editor is simply to set in order his subjects. The man who showed most talent was the compiler of the index, yet no one has dreamed of recognizing his claims to honour!”
“I praised the enterprise,” said Voltaire, “for it accorded with my philosophical opinions. Talking of philosophy, I am none too certain that I was in the right. I have learned strange things since my death, and have conversed with a half-dozen Popes. They are good to listen to. Clement XIV and Benedict, above all, are men of infinite intelligence and good sense.”
“That which rather annoys me,” said the Duc de Choiseul, “is that there is no sex in our present habitation. Whatever may be said of this fleshly envelope, ’twas by no means so bad an invention.”
“That which has afforded me great pleasure,” said the Abbé Voisenon, “is that amongst us one is cured of the folly of intelligence. You cannot imagine how I have been jeered at about my absurd romances. I expiate almost daily the mistakes of my mortal existence.”
Throughout these days, however, Cagliostro proceeded with the dearest of all his projects, viz the spread of his Egyptian Masonic rite, into which women subsequently were admitted, a course of magical instruction being conducted for the purpose by Madame di Cagliostro.
The postulants admitted to this course were thirtysix in number, and all males were excluded. Lorenza was the Grand Mistress of Egyptian Masonry, as her husband was himself the grand and sublime Copt. The neophytes were required to contribute each of them the sum of one hundred louis, to abstain from all intimacy with mankind, and to submit to everything which might be imposed on them. A big mansion was hired in the Rue Verte, Faubourg Saint-Honoré, at that period a lonely part of the city, as lonely as was the Rue Saint-Claude. The building was surrounded by gardens and magnificent trees. The ceremony of initiation took place shortly before midnight on August 7, 1785.
On entering the first apartment, says Figuier, the ladies were obliged to disrobe and to endue a white garment, with a coloured girdle. They were divided into six groups, distinguished by the tint of their girdles. A large veil was also provided, and they were conducted to a temple lighted from the roof, and furnished with thirty-six arm-chairs upholstered in black satin. Lorenza, clothed in white, was seated on a kind of throne, supported by two tall figures, so habited that their sex might not be determined. The light was lowered by degrees until surrounding objects could scarcely be distinguished, when the Grand Mistress commanded the ladies to uncover their left legs as far as the thigh, and raising the right arm, to rest it upon an adjoining pillar.
Two young women then entered sword in hand, and with silken ropes bound all the ladies together by the arms and legs. Then, after a period of impressive silence, Lorenza pronounced an oration which I shall not quote at length, but which advocated fervidly the emancipation of womankind from the shameful bonds imposed on them by the lords of creation.
These bonds were symbolized by the silken ropes from which the fair initiates were released at the end of the harangue, when they were conducted into separate apartments, each opening on the garden. Here they met with most incredible experiences.
Some were pursued by men who unmercifully persecuted them with barbarous solicitations; others encountered less ferocious admirers, who sighed in languishing postures at their feet. More than one discovered the double of her own lover; but the oath they had all taken rendered them inexorable, and all faithfully fulfilled what was required of them. The new spirit infused into regenerate woman triumphed throughout the six-and-thirty initiates, who re-entered, palpitating but triumphant, the twilight of the vaulted temple, to receive the congratulations of the high priestess. —
When they had breathed a little after their trials, the vaulted roof opened suddenly, and, on a sphere of gold, there descended a man, naked as the unfallen Adam, holding a serpent in his hand, and having a flaming star upon his head.
The Grand Mistress announced that this was the genius of Truth, the immortal, the divine Cagliostro, issued without procreation from the bosom of our father Abraham, and the depositary of all that hath been, is, or shall be known in the universe. He was there to initiate them into the secrets of which they had been fraudulently deprived.
Thereupon the Grand Copt commanded them to dispense with the profanity of clothing, for if they would embrace truth they must be as naked as itself. The high priestess, setting the example, unbound her girdle and permitted her drapery to fall to the ground, and the fair initiates, following her example, exposed themselves, in all the nudity of their charms, to the glances of the Grand Copt, who then commenced his revelations.
He informed his beloved daughters that the muchabused Cabalistic art was the secret of doing good to humanity. It was initiation into the arcana of nature, and the power to make use of her occult forces. The visions which they beheld in the garden, where so many had seen and recognized those who were dearest to their hearts, proved the reality of hermetic operations. They had shown themselves worthy to know the truth; he undertook to instruct them by gradations. It was sufficient at the outset to inform them that the sublime objective of that Egyptian Freemasonry which he had brought from the secret heart of the Orient was the happiness of mankind. This happiness was illimitable in its nature, including material enjoyments as well as spiritual peace.
Cagliostro concluded his harangue by bidding his hearers renounce a deceiving sex, and let the kiss of friendship symbolize the purity of their hearts. The high priestess instructed them in the nature of this Platonic embrace.
Thereupon the Grand Copt seated himself again upon the sphere of gold, and was borne away through the roof. At the same time the floor opened, lights blazed into being, and a table, splendidly adorned and luxuriously spread, came up through the floor. The ladies (despite their abjuration of the deceiving sex) were joined by their lovers in propria persona, and the supper was followed by dancing and various diversions, which continued until the small hours of the morning.
IX. THE SECRET OF ST. ANGELO
It was at about this time that Madame de la Motte, the adventuress, one day surprised Lorenza, under compromising circumstances, with the Chevalier d’Oisement — a gentleman whom I have already mentioned. At any rate, so it is averred; and the price of Madame’s silence i
s measurable by the sudden intimacy which sprang up between the Cagliostros and the la Mottes. This intimacy later was to implicate the Count in the astounding affair of the diamond necklace; was to bring him, in company with Cardinal de Rohan, to the Bastille.
Beugnot, who met the thaumaturgist in the salon of Madame de la Motte, speaks of his “paying very tender compliments to the mistress of the house.” In addition, Beugnot says that he spoke “of heaven, the stars, the great arcanum, Memphis, hierophancy, transcendental chemistry, giants, immense animals, and a town in the interior of Africa ten times as great as Paris.” Madame de la Motte he called his fawn, his gazelle, his swan.
How different was his language a short time later, when, standing his trial for complicity in the necklace case, he said of the same lady that “she was mentiris impudentissime, which two words he begged her counsel to translate for her, as it was not polite to tell her so in French.”
After his acquittal, Cagliostro, in obedience to a lettre de cachet, lost little time in leaving Paris. He returned again to London, where he was well received and from whence he addressed his “Letter to the French People,” dated June 26, 1786. This letter created a profound sensation; it is impossible to deny that it struck a shrewd blow against the ancient fortress of the Bastille — a blow that shook those gloomy towers to their foundations — the sound of which penetrated, though it might be but as a whisper — to the very deepest and very darkest cell of the dreadful place — which echoed boomingly throughout France — which, I verily believe, was the first tocsin heralding the Terror. —
“Are all State prisons like the Bastille?... A barbarous silence is the least of the crimes there committed. For six months I was within fifteen feet of my wife without knowing it. Others have been buried there for thirty years, are reputed dead, are unhappy in not being dead, having, like Milton’s damned souls, only so much light in their abyss as to perceive the impenetrable darkness that enwraps them. I said it in captivity, and I repeat it a free man: there is no crime but is amply expiated by six months in the Bastille....
