famous imposter 10

famous imposter 10

Some things said of him may be accepted as being partially true, for

his was an age of mysticism, occultism, astrology, and all manner of

strange and weird beliefs. For instance it is alleged that he held that

life is an emanation from the stars; that the sun governed the heart,

the moon the brain, Jupiter the liver, Saturn the gall, Mercury the

lungs, Mars the bile, Venus the loins; that in each stomach is a demon,

that the belly is the grand laboratory where all the ingredients are

apportioned and mixed; and that gold could cure ossification of the

heart.

 

Is it any wonder that when in this age after centuries of progress such

absurd things are current Paracelsus is shewn in contemporary and later

portraits with a jewel in his hand transcribed Azoth--the name given to

his familiar dæmon.

 

Those who repeat _ad nauseam_ the absurd stories of his alchemy

generally omit to mention his genuine discoveries and to tell of the

wide scope of his teaching. That he used mercury and opium for healing

purposes at a time when they were condemned; that he did all he could

to stop the practice of administering the vile electuaries of the

mediæval pharmacopœia; that he was one of the first to use laudanum;

that he perpetually held--to his own detriment--that medical science

should not be secret; that he blamed strongly the fashion of his time

of accounting for natural phenomena by the intervention of spirits or

occult forces; that he deprecated astrology; that he insisted on the

proper investigation of the properties of drugs and that they should be

used more simply and in smaller doses. To these benefits and reforms

his enemies answered that he had made a pact with the devil. For reward

of his labours, his genius, his fearless struggle for human good he

had--with the exception of a few spells of prosperity--only penury,

want, malicious ill-fame and ceaseless attacks by the professors of

religion and science. He was an original investigator of open mind,

of great ability and application, and absolutely fearless. He was

centuries ahead of his time. We can all feel grateful to that French

writer who said:

 

“Tels sont les services eminents que Paracelse a rendu à

l’humanité souffrante, pour laquelle il montra toujours le

dévouement le plus désintéressé; s’il en fut mal recompensé

pendant sa vie que sa mémoire au moins soit honorée.”

 

 

 

 

CAGLIOSTRO

 

 

The individual known to history as Comte Cagliostro, or more familiarly

as Cagliostro, was of the family name of Balsamo and was received into

the Church under the saintly name of Joseph. The familiarity of history

is an appanage of greatness in some form. Greatness is in no sense a

quality of worth or morality. It simply points to publicity, and if

unsuccessful, to infamy. Joseph Balsamo was of poor parentage in the

town of Palermo, Sicily, and was born in 1743. In his youth he did

not exhibit any talent whatever, such volcanic forces as he had being

entirely used in wickedness--base, purposeless, sordid wickedness,

from which devolved no benefit to any one--even to the criminal

instigator. In order to achieve greatness, or publicity, in any form,

some remarkable quality is necessary; Joseph Balsamo’s claim was based

not on isolated qualities but on a union of many. In fact he appears to

have had every necessary ingredient for this kind of success--except

one, courage. In his case however, the lacking ingredient in the

preparation of his hell-broth was supplied by luck; though such luck

had to be paid for at the devil’s usual price--failure at the last.

His biographers put his leading characteristics in rather a negative

than a positive way--“indolent and unruly”; but as time went on the

evil became more marked--even _ferae naturae_, poisonous growths,

and miasmatic conditions have to manifest themselves or to cease to

prevail. In the interval between young boyhood and coming manhood,

Balsamo’s nature--such as it was--began to develop, unscrupulousness

working on an imaginative basis being always a leading characteristic.

The unruly boy shewed powers of becoming an unruly man, fear being the

only restraining force; and indolence giving way to wickedness. When

he was about fifteen he was sent to a monastery to learn chemistry and

pharmacy. The boy who had manifested a tendency to “grow downwards”

found the beginning of a kind of success in these studies in which,

to the surprise of all, he exhibited a form of aptitude. Chemistry

has certain charms to a mind like his, for in its working are many

strange surprises and lurid effects not unattended with entrancing

fears. These he used before long to his own pleasure in the concern

of others. When he was expelled from the religious house he led a

dissolute and criminal life in Palermo. Amongst other wickednesses he

robbed his uncle and forged his will. Here too, he committed a crime,

not devoid of a certain humorous aspect, but which had a reflex action

on his own life. Under promise of revealing a hidden treasure, he

persuaded a goldworker, one Morano, to give him custody of a quantity

of his wares. It was what, in criminal slang is called “a put-up job,”

and was worked by a gang of young thieves with Balsamo at their head.

Having filled the soft head of the foolish goldsmith with ideas to

suit his purpose, Joseph brought him on a treasure hunt into a cave

where he was shortly surrounded by the gang dressed as fiends, who,

in the victim’s paralysis of fear, robbed him at their ease of some

sixty ounces of gold. Morano, as might have been expected, was not

satisfied with the proceedings and vowed vengeance which he tried to

effect later. Balsamo’s pusillanimity worked hand in hand with Morano’s

vindictiveness, to the effect that the culprit incontinently absconded

from his native town. He conferred the benefit of his presence on

Messina where he was naturally attracted to a noted alchemist called

Althotas, to whom he became a sort of disciple. Althotas was a man

of great learning, according to the measure of that time and his own

occupation. He was skilled in Eastern tongues and an adept occultist.

It was said that he had actually visited Mecca and Medina in the

disguise of an Oriental prince. Having attached himself to Althotas,

Cagliostro went with him to Malta where he persuaded the Grand Master

of the Knights to supply them with a laboratory for the manufacture of

gold, and also with letters of introduction which he afterwards used

with much benefit to himself.

 

[Illustration: CAGLIOSTRO]

 

From Malta he went to Rome where he employed himself in forging

engravings. Like other criminals, great and small, Comte Alessandro

Cagliostro--as he had now become by his own creation of nobility--had

a faculty of working hard and intelligently so long as the end he

aimed at was to be accomplished by crooked means. Work in the ordinary

ways of honesty he loathed and shunned; but work as a help to his

nefarious schemes seemed to be a joy to him. Then he set himself up as

a wonder-worker, improving as he went on all the customs and tricks

of that calling. He sold an elixir which he said had all the potency

usually attributed to such compounds but with an added efficacy all its

own. He pretended to be able to transmute metals and to make himself

invisible; indeed to perform all the wonders of the alchemist, the

“cheap jack,” and the charlatan. At Rome he became acquainted with

and married a very beautiful woman, Lorenza de Feliciani, daughter of

a lacemaker, round whom later biographers weave romances. According

to contemporary accounts she seems to have been dowered with just

such qualities as were useful in such a life as she had entered on.

In addition to great and unusual beauty she was graceful, passionate,

seductive, clever, plausible, soothing, and attractive in all ways dear

and convincing to men. She must have had some winning charm which

has lasted beyond her time, for a hundred years afterwards we find

so level-headed a writer as Dr. Charles Mackay crediting her, quite

unwarrantably with, amongst other good qualities, being a faithful

wife. Her life certainly after her marriage was such that faithfulness

in any form was one of the last things to expect in her. Her husband

was nothing less than a swindler of a protean kind. He had had a great

number of aliases before he finally fixed on Comte de Cagliostro as

a _nomme de guerre_. He called himself successively Chevalier de

Fischio, Marquis de Melina (or Melissa), Marquis de Pellegrini, Comte

de Saint-German, Baron de Belmonte; together with such names as Fenix,

Anna, Harat. He wrote a work somewhat of the nature of a novel called

_Le Grand Cophte_--which he found useful later when he was pushing his

scheme of a sort of new Freemasonry. After his marriage he visited

several countries, Egypt, Arabia, Persia, Poland, Russia, Greece,

Germany; as well as such towns as Naples, Palermo, Rhodes, Strasbourg,

Paris, London, Lisbon, Vienna, Venice, Madrid, Brussels--in fact any

place where many fools were crowded into a small space. In many of

these he found use for the introductory letters of the Grand Master

of the Knights of Malta, as well as those of other dupes from whom it

was his habit to secure such letters before the inevitable crash came.

Wherever he travelled he was accustomed to learn all he could of the

manners, customs and facts of each place he was in, thus accumulating

a vast stock of a certain form of knowledge which he found most useful

in his chosen occupation--deceit. With regard to the last he utilised

every form of human credulity which came under his notice. The latter

half of the eighteenth century was the very chosen time of strange

beliefs. Occultism became a fashion, especially amongst the richer

classes, with the result that every form of swindle came to the fore.

At this time Cagliostro, then nearing his fortieth year, began to have

a widespread reputation for marvellous cures. As mysticism in all sorts

of forms had a vogue, he used all the tricks of the cult, gathering

them from various countries, especially France and Germany, where the

fashion was pronounced. For this trickery he used all his knowledge of

the East and all the picturesque aids to credulity which he had picked

up during his years of wandering; and for his “patter,” such medical

terminology as he had learned--he either became a doctor or invented

a title for himself. This he interlarded with scraps of various forms

of fraudulent occultism and all sorts of suggestive images of eastern

quasi-religious profligacy. He took much of the imagery which he used

in his rituals of fraud from records of ancient Egypt. This was a

pretty safe ground for his purpose, for in his time the Egypt of the

past was a sealed book. It was only in 1799 that the Rosetta stone

was discovered, and more than ten years from then before Dr. Young was

able to translate its three inscriptions--Hieroglyphic Demotic and

Greek--whence Hieroglyphic knowledge had its source. _Omne ignotum

pro magnifico_ might well serve as a motto for all occultism, true

or false. Cagliostro, whose business it was to deceive and mislead,

understood this and took care that in his cabalistic forms Egyptian

signs were largely mixed with the pentagon, the signs of the Zodiac,

and other mysterious symbols in common use. His object was primarily

to catch the eye and so arrest the intelligence of any whom he wished

to impress. For this purpose he went about gorgeously dressed and with

impressive appointments. In Germany for instance he always drove in

a carriage with four horses with courier and equerries in striking

liveries. Happily there is extant a pen picture of him by Comte de

Beugnot who met him in Paris at the house of the Comtesse de la Motte:

 

“of medium height and fairly fat, of olive colour, with short

neck and round face, big protruberant eyes, a snub nose with open

nostrils.”

 

This gives of him anything but an attractive picture; but yet M. de

Beugnot says: “he made an impression on women whenever he came into a

room.” Perhaps his clothing helped, for it was not of a commonplace

kind. De Beugnot who was manifestly a careful and intelligent observer

again comes to our aid with his pen:

 

“He wore a coiffure new in France; his hair parted in several

little cadenottes (queues or tresses) uniting at the back of the

head in the form known as a ‘catogan’ (hair clubbed or bunched).

A dress, French fashion, of iron grey, laced with gold, scarlet

waistcoat broidered with bold _point de spain_, red breeches, a

basket-hilted sword and a hat with white plumes!”