“‘I am sorry, but they will prove true,’ quietly replied the performer, and the fact is undoubted that the scenes foreshadowed actually occurred at the outbreak of the French Revolution. “Cagliostro,” continues the account we are quoting, “produced a decided sensation in the room. Opinions were divided about him; some thought him a superior being gifted with a strange faculty of second sight; some were satisfied that he was a charlatan and an impostor. I was strongly inclined to this view,” says the Abbé Benedetti. He was supported in it by the action of the papal authorities. In the last days of the year, when the storm had broken in Paris, Cagliostro was arrested, together with his wife and the capuchin monk who had been present at the strange meeting above described. All three were first conducted to the castle of St. Angelo and then handed over to the Inquisition and examined by the Holy Office. Cagliostro repudiated all the charges brought against him, but his wife, fearing the rope and the stake, told the story of her husband’s life in its most minute particulars and threw the entire blame upon him. He was finally condemned to death, but Pius VI commuted the punishment into perpetual imprisonment in the fortress of San Leo, after he had publicly abjured his errors in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. His wife was obliged to enter the convent of St. Appollonia in Trastevere where she died, forgotten and in obscurity. Balsamo died in prison in 1795. CHAPTER IX THE PIOMBI OF VENICE Growth of Venetian Republic--The famous Council of Ten--Its methods of administration--The Pozzi or “Wells,” under the Grand Ducal Palace--The prison of the Piombi or “Leads” of the Ducal Palace--Casanova describes his life there--His arrest and imprisonment--Plans for making his escape--He is suddenly removed to another cell--Fresh plans for escape--Tool passed on to one Father Balbi by a most ingenious method--They gain the roof and effect an entry into the Ducal Palace--They escape and take a gondola to Mestri--Casanova goes to Munich and Paris--Becomes director of the national lottery--A life of intrigue and adventure ends in the castle of Dux in Bohemia.