Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1907-07-26
A PRINCE OF IMPosToRs.
A Sketch of the Extraordinary Career
of BaIsamo, Count Caeliostro.

A Sketch of the Extraordinary Career
of BaIsamo, Count Caeliostro.
The world has always taken an in
terest in its great criminals, an inter-
est no, to be confounded with the
desire 10 protect itself against their
depredations. Daring and resolution
never fail to win attention, and Of
these qualities, as Browning observes:
A crime will do
AS WELL .as to serve as a test
AS a virtue golden through and
through.
II a man has a way Of making up
his mind to do difficult things and then
doing them, even when those things
are wrong, most people are extreme
ly anxious to know how he did them.
For this reason Cagliostro, the self
dubbed Count Alessandro de Caglios-
tro, arch-quack and prince of impos-
tors, the most complete scoundrel Of
the eighteenth century, has a distinct
place in the annals Of that century,
not an enviable place, but unques-
tionably prominent
Nor is it common curiosity alone
that has sought to pierce the veil Of
mystery which has always hung
about him. Carlyle spent a good deal
Of valuable time trying to find out the
truth about Cagliostro. Dumas made
him the hero Of a romance. Schiller
left an unfinished novel, 1.-The Geister-
seher," which was based on the ca
reer of this charlatan. Goethe pom
dered so deeply over certain phases
of that career that it is said he was
absolutely compelled to write his
drama 1.-The Gross-Kophta" to free
himself from the obsession.
Yet these men, even, knew little
about the man Cagliostro, the man
who sat at the center Of the web he
wove. All that is really known about
him comes from certain items In the
French police records, a few letters
of his preserved in the British Muse
um, and a very wooden biography
written by some Roman about the
time Of Cagliostro's trial by the Holy
Inauisition. These state certain facts
in his history, but when the facts are
summed up and placed side by. side
with what Is known of the vogue he
had. the followers he drew, Cagliostro
remains a good deal Of a mystery.
His beginning was as humble as a
mans could be. His father was one
Pietro Balsamo, a poor shopkeeper OF
Palermo, and Beppo, as they called
the boy, ran wild with the rest of the
gamins who frolicked and fought and
thieved in the byways Of the old ST.
Gillian town.
He was born in 1743; before the
middle Of the century, the neighbors
of Balsamo were predicting bad end
for Beppo. He seems to have been
fat and vociferous boy, with a big ap-
petite, and the larder at home being
generally bare, it is easy to picture
him repairing the deficiency elsewhere
and thereby getting his first lessons In
crime.
Later, his thoughts apparently turn
ed to ecclesiasticism, for at the age
of fifteen he entered the Convent OF
Cartegirone as a novice. The monks
set him at work in the convent apoth-
ecary, which, whether 1t had happen
ed by chance or his own intention,
gave him a fine training for the ca
reer he was later to embark upon.
For here he dipped into the books OF
the chemists and the old alchemists,
watched the monks at their distilla-
tions. and took with sharp ears the
talks that went on concerning divin-
ing-rods, treasure digging, the trans
mutation of metals, and similar su-
perstitions of that superstitious age
But his stay at the convent was
short. Being required to read aloud
from a book Of martyrology while the
monks ate dinner, he enlivened mis-
task by substituting the names or BAD
characters of Palermo for the names
Of the saints. or course. the horr1-
fed monks elected him, with a good
flogging for a farewell
Pietro Balsamo had died, leaving
Beppo's mother with several children
and nothing to feed them. Beppo,
therefore, returning to Palermo, quar-
tered himself upon an uncle, and pro-
ceeded to make the most Of his mar
row resources. What with a forgery
or two, a few deft robberies, and some
involuntary visits to the Palermo
prison, some months passed away.
Meantime, Beppo was branching
out as a fortune-teller and getting
reputation as a sorcerer. His second
departure from Palermo was quite alb
rupt
He had told one Marano, a gold
smith, in strict confidence, that with
his divining-rod he had located vast
treasure in certain rock-chasm, and
Marano had joyfully entered into
compact by which he was to pay Bal
samo sixty ounces in gold for the sole
right to the treasure. But as Marano
bent over his spade, on the appointed
night, in the lonely chasm, there came
accomplices Of Balsamo's, who beat
him sorely and abstracted his sixty
ounces of gold, leaving him for dead.
He was not dead, though, and next
day he appeared in Palermo with the
truly Sicilian intention of stabbing
Balsamo. Balsamo had figured in
many a street brawl, but he had no
taste for a stilletto in his back. There
fore, as the Roman biographer puts
it, he fled from Palermo, and over
ran the whole EARTH"
He was heard of at Messina, In the
laboratory of one Althotas; then jour-
neying with Althotas to Egypt, where
the two made a small fortune selling
hempen fabrics which they had treat
ed to look like silk; then at Malta, as
guest of the alchemist Pinto, Grand
Master of the knights. In the course
of his wanderings Balsamo grew a
beard and changed his name several
times, till he finally entered Rome as
Count de Cagliostro, the name he al
ways afterwards bore. When, years
10 ha Of hiS trial for