Meanwhile, after visiting Mittau, where he was enthusiastically taken up by Marshal von Medem, the head of the Masonic Lodge at that place, he passed on to Petersburg, Warsaw, and thence to Strassburg. Here he was destined to enjoy a great triumph and to win a powerful friend, who was eventually, through a pure accident, to prove the cause of his undoing. This was none other than the notorious Cardinal de Rohan. It is hardly necessary to state that the ecclesiastical dignitary of the eighteenth century in France was not selected for his high office by reason of his exemplary life or his Christian virtues. To neither of these did Cardinal de Rohan make any claim. Yet honours had fallen thick and fast upon him. He was Bishop of Strassburg, Grand Almoner of France, Cardinal, Prince of the Empire, Landgrave of Alsace, in addition to being Abbot of the richest abbey in France, the Abbey of St Waast Handsune. Of fascinating manner, an aristocrat of the aristocrats, there was no position in the kingdom to which he did not feel justified in aspiring. The fact that he enjoyed a reputation for dissipation and extravagance did not appear calculated to tell against him in such an age. Surprising as it may seem, the Cardinal combined with a pleasure-loving disposition a passion for alchemy and the pursuit of the occult sciences, and the arrival of Cagliostro at Strassburg naturally enough excited his interest to no small degree. The Cardinal determined to lose no time in making the acquaintance of the man about whom and whose marvellous cures the whole town was already talking almost before he set foot in its streets. But Cagliostro was inclined to ride the high horse. “If the Cardinal is ill,” he replied to the great man’s messenger, “let him come to me and I will cure him. If not, he has no need of me nor I of him.” In spite of the Count’s stand-offishness, the Cardinal was not to be denied, and the acquaintance once made soon ripened into the closest intimacy. Cagliostro was told to consider the palace his own, and he and his wife resided there on the footing of the most honoured guests. Marvellous tales are told of the results of his experiments in the Cardinal’s laboratory, how he manufactured gold and jewels, and finally showed De Rohan in the crystal the form of the woman whom he had loved. It is on these stories alone that the reputation of Cagliostro as an alchemist really rests, and in the absence of further confirmatory evidence one is inclined to take them with a grain of salt. However this may be, it is certain that the Cardinal was completely won over, and Cagliostro took care not to lose caste by assuming airs of humility or deference. Never, certainly, was there less of a snob than this marvellous adventurer. “Cagliostro,” says Madame d’Oberkirch, “treated him and his other distinguished admirers as if they were under the deepest obligation to him; but he under none whatever to them.” As