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!”
Aided by these adjuncts he was a great success in Paris whither he
returned in 1785. As an impostor he knew his business and played “the
game” well. When he was at work he brought to bear the influence of all
his “properties,” amongst them a tablecloth embroidered with cabalistic
signs in scarlet and the symbols of the Rosy Cross of high degree; the
same mysterious emblems marked the globe without which no wizard’s
atelier is complete.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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