From England Cagliostro went to the Hague, where he inaugurated a lodge of female masons, over which his wife presided as Grand Mistress. Throughout Holland he was received by the lodges with masonic honors—beneath “arches of steel.” He discoursed volubly upon magic and masonry to enraptured thousands. In March, 1779, he made his appearance at Mitau,[10] in the Baltic Provinces, which he regarded as the stepping-stone to St. Petersburg. He placed great hope in Catherine II of Russia—“the avowed champion of advanced thought.” He hoped to promulgate widely his new and mysterious religious cult in the land of the Czars, with all the pomp and glamour of the East. The nobility of Kurland received him with open arms. Some of them offered to place him on the ducal throne, so he claimed. He wisely refused the offer. Cagliostro eventually made a fiasco at Mitau and left in hot haste. In St. Petersburg his stay was as short. Catherine II was too clever a woman to be his dupe. She ordered the charlatan to leave Russia, which he forthwith did. Prospects of Siberia doubtless hastened his departure. In May, 1780, he turned up at Warsaw. A leading prince lodged him in his palace. Here Cagliostro “paraded himself in the white shoes and red heels of a noble.” His spirit séances were not a success. He chose as his clairvoyant a little girl, eight years of age. After pouring oil into her hands, he closed her in a room, the door of which was hung with a black curtain. The spectators sat outside. He interrogated the child concerning the visions that appeared to her. Among other tests, he requested the spectators to inscribe their names on a piece of paper which he appeared to burn before their very eyes. Calling to the child that a note would flutter down at her feet, he requested her to pass it to him through the door. He passed his hand through the opening of the door to receive the note. In the next instant he produced a note closed with a freemason’s seal, which contained the signatures of the spectators. This was nothing more than the trick of a prestidigitateur, such {55} as was performed by Philadelphia and Pinetti, the two great sleight of hand artists of the period. The next day the clairvoyant confessed the fact that she had been tutored by the magician, and that the visions were but figments of the imagination. Cagliostro secured a new subject, a girl of sixteen, but had the folly to fall in love with his accomplice. In exasperation she repeated the confession of her predecessor. The Polish nobles now insisted that Cagliostro invoke the spirit of the Grand Kophta (the Egyptian High Priest). This séance took place “in a dark room, on a sort of stage, lit with two candles only, and filled with clouds of incense.” The Grand Kophta appeared. Through the uncertain light the spectators beheld an imposing figure in white robes and turban. A snowy beard fell upon its breast.