Last Alchemist : Count Cagliostro, Master of Magic in the Age of Reason by Iain McCalman

Author:Iain McCalman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2014-05-07T21:00:00+00:00

Jeanne’s own house was now almost literally overshadowed by the far grander maison de Cagliostro at 1 rue St.-Claude, off the boulevard St.-Antoine. Rohan had chosen the premises himself so that he could stroll over from his palace most evenings to consult with the seer and flirt with Seraphina, whom he called his “petite comtesse.” The costly gifts Rohan heaped on the woman suggested to Jeanne that this was a particularly close relationship. As for the Cagliostros’ house: it was fit for royals. It boasted a high-walled portico, two flagged courtyards filled with shady trees, and a long stone staircase winding up three floors to spacious chambers. Jeanne rightly suspected that Rohan had funded the alembics, athanors, creusets, and flasks that bubbled on the stoves every day, as well as the lush Oriental furnishings of the chambre egyptienne where the Copt staged his necromantic seances. Here, a black embalmed ibis stood on stiltlike legs, a stuffed alligator with gaping jaws rotated slowly from the ceiling, and strange hieroglyphs covered the walls.

Jeanne could hardly fail to notice that a cult of Cagliostro was sweeping Paris. It was as if the city, so intoxicated by novelty, had been waiting for him to arrive. Cagliostromania was supplanting the balloon craze of the last few years, which had induced Jeanne to buy a ten-foot-high blue cabriolet shaped like Pilastre de Rozier’s famous hot air balloon. Given that aeronauts could now soar to the heavens and Dr. Mesmer could make people swoon with magnetic waves, even Cagliostro’s fantastic claims seemed possible. After all, his Egyptian Masonry entailed science, religion, and magic.

Princess Guemene, the cardinal’s niece, was one of the first Parisian socialites to join a new Isis lodge that Cagliostro and Seraphina established in the rue Verte on 7 August 1785. The Copt’s recent stay in the south of France had consolidated his movement’s fame, bringing influential new devotees such as the Masonic leader J. B. Willermoz and his clever nephew, Rey de Morande. The latter helped Cagliostro systematize Egyptian Rite ritual into a booklet. This same Lyons circle also funded the rite’s first purpose-built mother lodge, known as La Sagesse Triomphante. Egyptian Freemasonry could now keep company with prestigious European rivals. Though Jeanne didn’t know it, Cagliostro’s real reason for coming to Paris had been to attend a special international congress of mystical Freemasons called to reach an alliance with his movement. The congress had collapsed when Cagliostro declared haughtily that other rites must burn their archives and join him unconditionally.

This condescension was fed by the luster of his new Parisian disciples. The titled nobility flocked to him, including the prince de Montmorency, who accepted the title of Parisian patron of the Egyptian movement; and the duc d’Orleans, Royal Prince and Grand Master of French Masonry since 1771. A small “Supreme Council of the Egyptian Rite” was led by the treasurer-general of the French marine, Claude Baudard de Saint-James, one of Cardinal Rohan’s longest-suffering creditors.

Another devoted admirer, Madame de Flammerans, tried unsuccessfully to get her uncle, the bishop of Bruges, to pressure the pope into recognizing Cagliostro’s rite.

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