usual, our hero was besieged at Strassburg by those who would profit by his medical knowledge and skill as a healer, for he really appears to have possessed both, and as usual by obliging his clients he incurred the inveterate hostility of the medical profession. In all ages of the world’s history the natural healer has had the doctor as his enemy, and the prophet, the priest. Orthodoxy has ever closed its ranks against those who poach on its preserves. Doubtless it is the natural instinct of self-defence. For Cagliostro, however, it was extremely inconvenient. The people would throng his doorsteps to be cured and make him heal them willy-nilly, and the medical profession were equally determined to make each place in which he practised his medical skill too hot for him. Others might have been willing to let the dogs bark, but a fatal sensitiveness to criticism made the Count an all too easy target for their venom. They drove him from Strassburg as they had driven him from other places, in spite of the entreaties of De Rohan, who pressed him to stay and disregard their clamour. We need not follow Cagliostro from Strassburg to Bordeaux and from Bordeaux to Lyons, where he added further laurels to his reputation and founded further Lodges of Egyptian Masonry. He might have remained indefinitely to all appearance at the latter place if it had not been for the solicitations of Cardinal de Rohan, who urged him to respond to the appeals of Parisian Society and visit the gay capital, where he guaranteed him an enthusiastic reception. He even sent a special messenger to back his request, and perhaps Cagliostro himself had heard the capital of cultured Europe a-calling. Anyhow he came, his evil fate—if not Paris—summoning him. Cagliostro declared that he took the greatest precaution on arriving there to avoid causing ill-will. However this may be, he immediately became “the rage” in fashionable circles; people flocked to him by hundreds to be cured, and the stories of the miracles which he was supposed to have effected were the talk of every dinner-party in the capital. Mesmer had already left Paris with a fortune of 340,000 livres, made by his lucrative practice, in his pocket. Paris, craving for a new excitement, was ready to receive with open arms the wonder-worker of whom it was said that no one of all his patients ever succeeded in making him accept the least mark of gratitude.[16] Cagliostro was here surfeited with flattery. Houdin executed his bust. His statuettes were in every shop window. His portrait was in every house. Those who claimed to have been cured by him were met with on all sides. Angels, it is said, and heroes of Biblical story appeared at his séances. No story was too absurd for Paris to believe about him.