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."At the height of his fame Cagliostro was arrested and thrown into the Bastille, charged withcomplicity in the diamond necklace affair.However, unlike the picture "Black Magic" the Count wasacquitted and his part in this celebrated intrigue has always been a mystery.He was banished from France by order of the King.He went direct to London.There he filed suitagainst the Governor of the Bastille, Marquis de Launay of criminal misappropriation of his effects,money, medicines, elixirs, alchemical powders etc.etc.which he valued at a high sum, "appealing, ofcourse, to the hearts of all Frenchmen as a lonely and hunted exile." When the French governmentgave him special permission to come to Paris to prosecute his suit, Cagliostro refused, hinting that itwas their way of getting him in the dungeon there once more:In London he became deeply involved in debt and had to pawn his effects.He was unable to impressthe common-sense, practical English with his pretensions to animal magnetism, occultism, mysticalpowers etc.One of his schemes was to light up the streets of London with sea water which heproposed to turn into oil with his magical powers.The newspapers ridiculed him, the freemasonsrepudiated him with scorn and would have nothing to do with his Egyptian Rite.In the Scottish Rite Library, at Washington, D.C.is an old print which depicts the unmasking of thefamous imposter at the Lodge of Antiquity, published November 21, 1786 at London.At a banquetone evening one of the brothers, Marsh, instead of singing gave a clever imitation of a quack doctorselling nostrums, and dilating bombastically upon the value of elixirs, balsams, (Balsamos), andcordials.He, Cagliostro, wasn't slow to recognize that he was the target for Marsh's ridicule and leftthe hall shortly to the jeers of the other members.By this time he was on the Continent again to escape the law; the police now fully aware of hisimpostures.He was forbidden to practice his peculiar system of medicine and masonry in Austria,Germany, Russia and Spain.So he went to Rome, where freemasonry was a capital offense Greewinsays: "There was one lodge.There is reason to suppose it was tolerated only because it enabled theHoly Church to spy out the movements of freemasons in general."Then just when his exchequer became depleted he and his wife were arrested and put into the fortressof San Angelo on the night of Dec.27, 1789.The Holy Inquisition tried him.Cagliostro's wifeappeared against him and lifted the veil of Isis that hid the Charlatan's career.The Egyptianmanuscript of George Coston, as Henry Ridgely Evans points out in his book "The Old And The NewMagic", the seals, the masonic regalia and paraphernalia were mute and damning evidences of hisguilt.He was indeed a freemason, even though he was not an alchemist, a soothsayer, the Grand Kophta ofthe Pyramids.Cagliostro's line of defense was that he "had labored throughout to lead backfreemasons, through the Egyptian ritual, to Catholic orthodoxy." He harangued the Holy Fathers forhours, since he found his appeal for mercy useless.But finally he was condemned to death as aheretic, sorcerer and freemason, but Pope Pius VI, on the 21st of March 1791, commuted his sentenceto life imprisonment.He was taken back to San Angelo, and put in a gloomy dungeon, where no one but the jailer camenear him.But still his spirit was unconquered.Expressing the greatest contrition for his crimes, hebegged the Governor of the prison to send him a confessor.The request was granted and a Capuchinmonk came.During the confession he leaped at the monk and tried to strangle him but the confessorproved to be a member of the church militant, and vigorously defended himself.His attempt proved futile, and soon after the Pontifical government ordered Cagliostro to be broughtat night to the fortress of San Leon, in the Duchy of Urbino.From there all traces of what happened tohim is lost.It is believed that he died in the month of August, 1795.The following item is the onlything preserved today of his fate: "News comes from Rome that the famous Cagliostro is dead in theFortress of San Leon." (Moniteur Universal, 6 Octobre, 1795).Everything surrounding Cagliostro'sdeath is shrouded in mystery.The man who lived so bombastically had died so unostentatiously; no friends, no ceremony, no mysticlights and regalia.His wife escaped severe punishment by immuring herself in the convent of St.Appolonia at Rome, where she died in 1794.She was more sinned against than a sinner, as Evanspoints out.In the book Cagliostro by W.R.H.Trowbridge originally published in 1910, and later republished byUniversity Books, there is the following paragraph which traces the family history of Cagliostro,pages 21 and 22: Such scant consideration as the family may have enjoyed was due entirely toGuiseppe's mother, who though of humble birth was of good, honest Sicilian stock.Through her he could at least claim to have had a great-grandfather, one Matteo Martello, whom it hasbeen supposed Cagliostro had in mind when in his fantastic account of himself at the time of theNecklace Affair he claimed to be descended from Charles Martel, the founder of the Carlovingiandynasty [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]