To set men upon researches which might lead them to the absolute philosophy by the attraction of gold, such would appear to have been the end of the propaganda connected with the name of Lascaris; reflection on Hermetic books would of necessity lead those who studied to a knowledge of the Kabalah. As a fact, the initiates of the eighteenth century thought that their time had come—some for the foundation of a new hierarchy, others for the subversion of all authority and for setting on the summits of the social order the level of equality. The Secret Societies sent their scouts through the world to sound opinion, and at need awaken it. After Saint-Germain and Lascaris came Mesmer, and Mesmer was succeeded by Cagliostro. But they were not all of the same school: Saint-Germain was the ambassador of illuminated theosophists, while Lascaris represented the naturalists attached to the tradition of Hermes. Cagliostro was the agent of the Templars, and this is how he came to announce, in a circular addressed to all Masons in London, that the time had come to build the Temple of the Eternal. Like the Templars, Cagliostro was addicted to the practices of Black Magic and to the fatal science of evocations. He divined past and present, predicted things to come, wrought marvellous cures and pretended to make gold. He introduced a new Rite under the name of Egyptian Masonry and sought to restore the mysterious worship of Isis. Wearing a _nemys_ like that of the Theban sphinx, he presided in person over nocturnal assemblies, in chambers emblazoned with hieroglyphics and lighted by torches. His priestesses were young girls, whom he called doves, and he placed them in a condition of ecstasy by means of hydromancy in order to obtain oracles, water being an excellent conductor, a powerful reflector, and highly refracting medium for the Astral Light, as proved by sea and cloud mirages. It is obvious that Cagliostro was a successor of Mesmer and had the key of mediumistic phenomena; he was himself a medium, meaning that he was a man whose nervous organisation was exceptionally impressionable, and to this he joined a fund of ingenuity and assurance, public exaggeration and the imagination—especially of women—supplying the rest. Cagliostro had an extravagant success; his bust was to be seen everywhere—inscribed: “The divine Cagliostro.” A reaction equivalent to the enthusiasm was of course to be foreseen; after having been a god, he became an intriguer and impostor, the debaucher of his wife, a scoundrel in fine, to whom the Roman Inquisition shewed grace by merely condemning him to perpetual imprisonment. The fact that his wife sold him lends colour to the idea that previously he had sold his wife.[317] He was taken in a snare, his prosecution followed and his accusers published as much of the process as they pleased. The revolution came in the meantime, and everyone forgot Cagliostro.