Lives of alchemystical philosophers: To which is added a bibliography of alchemy and hermetic philosophyWaite, Arthur Edward
Philosophy
Lives of alchemystical philosophers: To which is added a bibliography of alchemy and hermetic philosophy
Waite, Arthur Edward
Alchemists -- Biography; Alchemy -- Bibliography; Alchemy -- History
Many of the miraculous cures which Cagliostro performed in Germany
spread widely, and in Russia he was soon surrounded by the curious.
Lorenza played her own part admirably; she answered discreetly and
naturally, making the most outrageous statements with apparently
complete unconsciousness. The physician-chemist, besides his healing
powers, had his reputation as an alchemist and adept of the arcane
sciences. The supposed restoration in a miraculous manner of the infant
child of an illustrious nobleman to health exalted him to the pinnacle
of celebrity, and his extravagant pretensions, assisted, as they
powerfully were, by the naïve beauty of his wife, were beginning to be
taken seriously, but the combined result of an amour between Lorenza
and Prince Poternki, Prime Minister and favourite of the Czarina,
Catherine, and the discovery that the nobleman’s child had been
apparently changed, caused them to depart hastily with immense spoils
towards the German frontier.
They tarried at Warsaw for a time, and there the Italian biographer
tells us that Cagliostro made use of all his artifices to deceive a
prince to whom he was introduced, and who was exceedingly anxious
to obtain, with the help of the pretended magician, the permanent
command of a devil. Cagliostro puffed him up for a long time with the
expectation of gratifying this preposterous ambition, and actually
procured presents from him to the amount of several thousand crowns.
The prince at length perceiving that there was no hope of retaining one
of the infernal spirits in his service, wished to make himself master
of the earthly affections of the countess, but in this too he was
disappointed, the lady positively refusing to comply with his desires.
Finding himself thus balked in both his attempts, he abandoned every
sentiment but revenge, and intimidated our adventurer and his wife so
much by his menaces that they were obliged to restore his presents.
The veracity of this account is not, however, beyond suspicion, and
other of his biographers represent Cagliostro proceeding directly
to Francfurt and thence to Strasbourg, into which, more wealthy and
successful than ever, he made a triumphal entry. The distinguished
visitor, the Rosicrucian, the alchemist, the physician, the sublime
count, had been expected since early morning by the bourgeois of the
old town, and the following extraordinary account in the _Dictionnaire
des Sciences Occultes_ has been given by an anonymous biographer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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