In his standard history of medicine, Garrison claims that their social position was even higher than it is today. They wore swords like the nobility, and muffs in winter to protect their fingers, whose sensitive touch was so important in reaching a diagnosis. Voltaire and Rousseau’s doctor, Tronchin, was one of the best-known figures of the age. (He was the person who made the then revolutionary discovery that physical activity was not harmful to the constitution.) Also widely celebrated was a M Pomme, who ascribed the vapeurs, as nervous disorders were known at the time, to a general dehydration of the central nervous system, and immersed his patients in water. Medical science had become a kind of mania, like everything else at the time. Women threw themselves into it with a passion. The young Comte de Coigny was so keen on his anatomical studies that he kept a cadaver in his luggage to dissect even when travelling. Followers of the Comtesse du Voisenon smuggled a ‘news’ item into a copy of the Journal des Sages announcing that the society of doctors had elected her as their president, and in true eighteenth-century style the Comtesse found this entirely natural. (L V du Bled.)
When Cagliostro arrived in Paris, the previous miracle-doctor, Mesmer, who discovered animal magnetism and produced miraculous forces with his magical buckets, had now gone out of fashion and disappeared from the scene, his pockets bulging with cash. Cagliostro’s fame had gone before him, and he arrived in a blaze of publicity. His followers had distributed thousands upon thousands of copies of his portrait, adorned with the inscription:
De l’ami des humains reconnoisez les traits:
Tous ses jours sont marqués par de nouveaux bienfaits;
Il prolonge la vie, il secourt l’indigence.
Le plaisir d’être utile est seul sa récompense.
Acknowledge the virtues of the friend of humanity:
Every one of his days is marked by new acts of goodness.
He prolongs life, succours the needy,
His sole recompense the joy of service.
— It doesn’t sound much better in the French!—
We can see how much stress Cagliostro placed on his philanthropy. It was far more important in winning people over than his mysticism. It is a truly noble age when the charlatan’s first concern is to reassure people that his heart is in the right place.
He immediately found favour through an announcement directed at Parisian taste — he had founded a Freemasonry lodge for women. Its Grand Mistress was Lorenza, and its membership included names of the highest rank: Brienne, Polignac, Brassas, the Comtesse de Choiseul, Mme Genlis and others. The Grand Master and Protector of the Egyptian Rite was the Duc de Montmorency, its Grand Inspector the fermier général Laborde, and its treasurer the powerful financier Sainte-James. It can be said without qualification that Cagliostro had arrived.
It is not entirely clear what the women did in their lodges. According to Haven, it was no different from the men. Naturally, the non-initiated were convinced that wild orgies took place, with the ladies’ admirers appearing in the form of charitable genies, and that Lorenza taught them that pleasure was everything. What is certain is that they were given pretty little pyramids as presents, and the Seven Spirits, including Zobiachel, duly appeared before them.
But while all this was going on, Cagliostro did not lose sight of the one thing that mattered, his main business: Rohan. He took care to maintain a warm relationship with him, and Rohan almost certainly continued to lavish significant gifts on his guide to all things mystical.
Inevitably, Rohan also sought his advice in the matter of the Queen’s favour. Cagliostro had little enthusiasm for Jeanne, because he knew full well that she was fishing in the same pond, but he did not see her as a serious threat. It served his interests that she should keep Rohan’s hopes alive, since pessimists are not enamoured of prophets, and his prophesies regularly revealed that the Queen would soon be taking Rohan back into her favour.
La Motte had a little fifteen-year-old relation called Marie-Jeanne de la Tour. It became apparent that this young lady met all Cagliostro’s conditions for a perfect ‘dove’, or medium: an angelic innocence, a highly-strung nature and blue eyes; it was also important that she had been born under Capricorn. Her mother, struggling under the weight of temporary material concerns, and telling herself it would always be advisable to be in the Cardinal’s good books, was happy to put the girl at his and Cagliostro’s disposal.
Cagliostro received her in the laboratory at the Hôtel de Strasbourg.
“Young lady, it is true that you are innocent?” he asked her directly.
“Of course, sir.”
“We shall soon see. Offer up your soul to God, go and stand behind the screen, and concentrate on the thing you would most like to see. If you are innocent, it will appear to you, but if you are not, you will see nothing.”
Mlle de la Tour retired behind the screen, while Cagliostro and Rohan remained where they were. Cagliostro drew certain magical signs in the air, and said to the girclass="underline"
“Stamp your pretty little foot and tell me — did you see anything?”
“I saw nothing,” the girl replied, trusting in the truth.
“Then you are not innocent.”
The girl could not bear the suspicion, and quickly called out that she could now see what she wanted to see.
A surviving notebook contains a deposition made to the Court about a second visit.
Marie-Jeanne went with her mother to the Hôtel de Strasbourg, where she was met by the Cardinal and Cagliostro. They gave her a white apron, told her to say a few prayers, and stood her before a table on which a jug of clear water stood between two candles. Cagliostro waved his sword behind a screen and called on the assistance of the Great Kophta and the Archangels Raphael and Michael. Then he asked the girclass="underline"
“Tell me, young lady, did you see the Queen in the glass vessel?”
Marie-Jeanne had by now realised what would constitute a suitable response in the eyes of the magician.
“But of course,” she replied eagerly (“so that I could get away,” she later told the court).
“Young lady, do you see the angels and the little figures” (the so-called petits bonhommes) “who are trying to kiss you?”
“No,” she replied modestly.
“Make as if you were angry, and stamp your pretty little foot,” he said, “to summon the Great Kophta here instantly, and tell the angels to come and embrace you.”
“Oh yes, they’re here already,” the girl replied (“just to get away”), and she gave the petits bonhommes a kiss.
Whereupon Rohan fell to his knees and prayed. Then he asked Marie-Jeanne to tell no one about what had taken place.
Three days later the girl returned to the Cardinal’s palace. This time they gave her a long white shirt with a “great sun” in the middle and two blue ribbons forming a cross — a costume designed by Cagliostro himself. She was taken into Rohan’s bedroom, which was ablaze with candles. Once again there was a glass vessel on a table, filled with water and surrounded by stars, petits bonhommes and other symbols she had not seen before — Egyptian hieroglyphs representing Isis and the bull Apis. Cagliostro again brandished his sword, and asked: