his disconsolate adepts learned that he was on the road to England. Once in London he recovered his energy. He was received with great honour; many of his disciples from Lyons and Paris followed him. The English masons invited him to the metropolitan lodge, and gave him the first place, that of grand orient. He was entreated to convene a masonic lodge of the Egyptian rite, and consented with some sadness, for the memory of the brilliant Paris lodge which he had been on the point of founding was incessantly before him. He could not console himself for the fall of that beautiful and long-cherished plan, which had cost him so much study, pains, and preaching. It was from this discreet distance that Cagliostro addressed his famous Letter to the People of France, which was translated into a number of languages, and circulated widely through Europe. It predicted the French Revolution, the demolishment of the Bastile, and the rise of a great prince who would abolish the infamous _lettres de cachet_, convoke the States-General, and re-establish the true religion. The publication was intemperate in its language and revolutionary in its sentiments, and close upon its heels followed his well-known quarrel with the _Courrier de l’Europe_, which resulted in the exposure of the real life of Cagliostro from beginning to end. Dreading the rage of his innumerable dupes, and extreme measures on the part of his creditors, he hastened to quit London, disembarked in Holland, crossed Germany, took refuge in Basle, where the patriarchal hospitality of the Swiss cantons to some extent reassured the unmasked adept. From the moment, however, of this exposure, the descent of Cagliostro was simply headlong in its rapidity. Nevertheless, he was followed by some of his initiates, who pressed him to return to France, assuring him of the powerful protection of exalted masonic dignitaries. In his hesitation he wrote to the Baron de Breteuil, the king’s minister of the house, but, as it chanced, a personal enemy of the Cardinal de Rohan. Considering Cagliostro as a _protégé_ of the prince, he replied that if he had sufficient effrontery to set foot within the limits of the kingdom, he should be arrested and transferred to a prison in Paris, there to await prosecution as a common swindler, who should answer to the royal justice for his criminal life.