Cagliostro

Count Cagliostro is the name assumed by Joseph Balsamo (1743-1795), of whom Carlyle says, "The quack of quacks, the most perfect scoundrel that in these latter ages has marked the world's history."

This famous impostor was the son of Pietro Balsamo, a poor shopkeeper of Palermo. He started out very early in life to practice the deceptions by which alone his name has been immortalized. His first authentic appearance was in Rome, selling pen-drawings, or rather prints touched up with India ink, and passed off as pen-drawings. In Venice he met Lorenza Feliciana, the beautiful daughter of a girdle maker, who became his wife. Leaving Rome, the pair made their appearance at Venice, Marseilles, Madrid, Cadiz, Lisbon, Brussels and other places, sometimes under one grand title, and sometimes under another, until finally they assumed those of the Count Alessandro and the Countess Seraphina Cagliostro. In a coach-and-four, then as grand as a railroad President's private car now-a-days, they rolled through Europe and found access to the highest circles of society.

London initiated them both into the mysteries of Free-masonry, by which they were enabled to achieve their highest triumphs. The Count professed to have purchased certain manuscripts in which he discovered the original system of Egyptian Masonry instituted by Enoch and Elijah, and as masonry had, in the process of time, wofully declined from its pristine purity and splendor, the Count proclaimed it to be his mission to restore the sacred brotherhood to its ancient glory. From city to city, from Russia to France, traveled the count, as the Grand Cophta, and the countess as the Grand Priestess of the revived masonic faith. Their reputed success seems almost incredible. Settling at last in Strasburg, they lived magnificently, the Count taking up the practice of medicine; miraculous cures attended his skill, and wonder grew on wonder. The Prince Cardinal de Rohan was the most celebrated victim of his arts. The Cardinal expressed a wish to see him, to which the Count replied: "If Monsieur the Cardinal is sick, let him come, and I will cure him; if he is well, he has no need of me, I none of him." This rebuff only increased the Cardinal's desire to make his acquaintance; an interview was granted, and from that time Rohan yielded himself unreservedly into Cagliostro's power. The Count and Countess accompanied the Cardinal to Paris, where they plied their arts with more distinguished success than ever. But in the midst of their prosperity the hour of retribution came. De Rohan became the dupe of the famous diamond necklace case, and with him his friends, the Cagliostros, were thrown into the Bastile. After an imprisonment of nine months they were released, but were ordered to leave France. They went to London for a time, but in May, 1787, they left England under suspicion, wandered again over the continent, driven now from country to country by suspicious governments, until by some mischance they ventured to Rome, and began to organize an Egyptian lodge. The Holy Inquisition had long been watching them suspiciously, and now, having them within its power, it caused them to be seized (at the end of 1789) and confined in the castle of St. Angelo. After a tedious trial his Holiness gave judgment that "The manuscript of the Egyptian Masonry be burned by the common hangman; that all that intermeddled with such masonry be accursed." Joseph Balsamo (Count Cagliostro) was imprisoned for life in the fortress of San Leon, where he died in 1795, aged 52. His wife, who was imprisoned in a convent, survived him several years.