She is truly a wonderful woman, with something of La Joconde about her. Her expression changes very little but it is very difficult to describe. It is quite as caressing and ingenuous as perverse and cruel. There is a wealth of experience in her gaze and a bitterness in her unchanging smile--such a wealth of experience, indeed, that one is willing to allow her the eighty years she allots to herself. Now and again she draws from her pocket a small golden mirror, lets fall on it two drops from a tiny flask, dries it, and looks at herself in it. And once more she is Youth in its most adorable perfection. When we questioned her about it, she replied: “This mirror belonged to Cagliostro. For those who look at themselves in it with assured confidence, time stands still. Look: the date is engraved on the back, 1783, and it is followed by four lines which are the list of the four great enigmas. These enigmas which he had set himself the task of solving, he had from the lips of Queen Marie Antoinette herself; and he was wont to say, so at least they told me, that the man who found the key to them would be a King of Kings.”[A] “May one hear them?” somebody asked. “Why not? To know them is not to solve them; and Cagliostro himself hadn’t the time to do so. I can only give you their titles. They are: “In Robore Fortuna. “The Flag-stone of the Bohemian Kings. “The Fortunes of the Kings of France. “The Candlestick with Seven Branches.” Afterwards she talked to all of us in turn; and to each she made astonishing revelations. But that was only the prelude; and the Empress, though she refused to put the most trivial question about matters which concerned her personally, asked her to throw some light on the future. “Would your Majesty be so good as to breathe lightly on this,” said the Countess, holding out the mirror. And forthwith, after examining the mist that the Queen’s breath had spread over its surface she murmured: “I see many excellent things.... In the summer a great war.... Victory.... The return of the troops under the Arc de Triomphe.... They are cheering the Emperor.... The Prince Imperial....” Godfrey d’Etigues folded the paper and went on: “Such is the document which has been communicated to us. It is a disconcerting document since it was published several weeks before the war it foretold. What was this woman? Who was this adventuress whose dangerous predictions, acting on the somewhat feeble mind of our unfortunate sovereign, played their part in bringing about the catastrophe of 1870? Someone--you will find it in the same number of the _Charivari_, said to her one day: “‘Granted that you are the daughter of Cagliostro, who was your mother?’ “‘For my mother,’ she replied, ‘you must look high among the contemporaries of Cagliostro ... higher still.... Yes: that’s right ... Josephine de Beauharnais, the future wife of Bonaparte, Empress that was to be.’