It not unfrequently happens with countries that have been at war, that the signature of the treaty of peace is followed after no long lapse of time by a formal alliance between the erstwhile foes, there being obviously two methods of gaining one’s ends, the method of grab and the method of give and take, and the failure of one suggesting the advisability of adopting the other. So at least reasoned the French Government, and the payment of Morande’s price was followed in due course by his employment on behalf of the said Government in the capacity of subsidised journalist, and spy. Morande was nothing loth to come to terms, and eventually blossomed out into the Editor of the _Courier de l’Europe_. This journal, originally started by Latour under the ægis of the French Government, was soon read in every corner of the Continent. This was the weapon which of all others the blackmailer desired for his purposes. “In it,” says Brisset, “he tore to pieces the most estimable people, and manufactured, or caused to be manufactured, articles to ruin any one whom he feared.” Cagliostro had—all unwittingly—made dire enemies of the French Court through his acquittal in the trial over the Diamond Necklace affair. To acquit Cagliostro, who had no more to do with the matter in question than the man in the moon, appeared from the royal standpoint to be tantamount to incriminating the Queen, on whom, in fact, suspicion long and not unnaturally rested. Morande, therefore, received his instructions from Paris to ruin Cagliostro’s reputation. The means ready to his hand was the _Courier de l’Europe_. Hence the story of Joseph Balsamo and his identification with the _soi-disant_ Count Cagliostro. To say that the authority hardly seems adequate is surely to put it mildly. And yet Carlyle, and others before and after him, have quietly accepted the statement of the paid blackmailer as sufficient evidence of the character and history of his victim!