Many theosophical writers have placed implicit belief in the mission of Cagliostro. They have regarded him as a genuine adept in magic and alchemy, and not a _chevalier d’industrie_ preying upon a credulous world. Totally ignoring the evidence contained in the police archives[16] of Paris and the numerous brochures by eminent men and women who personally knew Cagliostro, they point to the Inquisition biography as a mass of false evidence compiled by religious bigots, and consequently unreliable, as if no other testimony regarding Cagliostro’s character existed. Father Marcellus had an ecclesiastical axe to grind, {78} it is true, to prove Cagliostro a freemason and heretic (heinous crimes in the eyes of the Roman Church, but absurd charges in the eyes of all tolerant men), nevertheless he showed conclusively that Joseph Balsamo of Palermo, the man of many aliases, was also a charlatan, impostor and evil liver. All impartial contemporary biographers corroborate the facts adduced by the Inquisition in this respect. The Cardinal de Rohan is not a competent witness for Cagliostro, for he was blinded by his superstitious belief in magic and alchemy. _Populus vult decipi, decipiatur_—people who wish to be deceived are deceived. [16] See _Documents manuscrits_ in the French archives at Paris (Cartons: X2 B 1417—F7, 4445 B—Y, 11514—Y, 13125.) Some writers have asserted that Cagliostro was the agent of the Templars, and therefore wrote to the freemasons of London that the time had arrived to begin the work of rebuilding the Temple of the Eternal. With the heads of the Order he had vowed to overturn the Throne and the Altar upon the tomb of the martyred Grand Master of Templars, Jacques de Molai. Learned in the esoteric doctrines of the Orient, the Knights Templars, or Poor Fellow Soldiery of the Holy House of the Temple, were accused of sorcery and witchcraft, hence their persecution by the Church, and Philippe le Bel of France. De Molai, before he was burned to death in Paris, organized and instituted what afterwards became in the eighteenth century occult, hermetic or Scottish Masonry. And thus the freemasons traced their order to the Templars of the Middle Ages, from whom they inherited the theosophical doctrines of Egypt and India. Such is the romantic but improbable legend. Color is lent to the story by Cagliostro himself. Among other Munchausen tales related by him to his Inquisitors, he told how he had visited the Illuminati of Frankfurt, when on his way to Strasburg. In an underground cavern the secret Grand Master of Templars “showed him his signature under a horrible form of oath, traced in blood, and pledged him to destroy all despots, especially in Rome.”