That when in Paris in 1778 he was told by the Marchesa de Crona that the Ba'al Shem of London had taught her the Cabala. Falk seems also to have been on intimate terms with that strange adventurer Baron Theodor de Neuhoff.... Falk's principal friends were the London bankers Aaron Goldsmid and his son.[483] Pawnbroking and successful speculation enabled him to acquire a considerable fortune. He left large sums of money to charity, and the overseers of the United Synagogue in London still distribute annually certain payments left by him for the poor. Nothing of all this would lead one to suppose that Falk could be regarded in the light of a black magician; it is therefore surprising to find Dr. Adler observing that a horrible account of a Jewish Cabalist in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ for September 1762 "obviously refers to Dr. Falk, though his name is not mentioned."[484] This man is described as "a christened Jew and the biggest rogue and villain in all the world," who "had been imprisoned everywhere and banished out of all countries in Germany, and also sometimes publicly whipped, so that his back lost all the old skin, and became new again, and yet left never off from his villainies, but grew always worse." The writer goes on to relate that the Cabalist offered to teach him certain mysteries, but explained that before entering on any "experiments of the said godly mysteries, we must first avoid all churches and places of worshipping as unclean"; he then bound his initiate by a very strong oath and proceeded to tell him that he must steal a Hebrew Bible from a Protestant and also procure "one pound of blood out of the veins of an honest Protestant." The initiate thereupon robbed a Protestant of all his effects, but had himself bled of about three-quarters of a pound of blood, which he gave to the magician. He thus describes the ceremony that took place: Then the next night about 11 o'clock, we both went into the garden of my own, and the cabalist put a cross, tainted with my blood, in each corner of the garden, and in the middle of the garden a threefold circle ... in the first circle were written all the names of God in Hebrew; in the second all the names of the angels; and in the third the first chapter of the holy Gospel of St. John, and it was all written with my blood. The cruelties then performed by the Cabalist on a he-goat are too loathsome to transcribe. The whole story, indeed, appears a farrago of nonsense and would not be worth quoting but for the fact that it appears to be taken seriously by Dr. Adler as a description of the great Ba'al Shem.