pages: unmaskingrobert00houdgoog.pdf, 281
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unmaskingrobert00houdgoog.pdf | 281 | THE UNMASKING OF ROBERT-HOUDIN languages. These two adventurers travelled in Egypt, and when Althotas died Cagliostro went to Naples and Rome, where he married a beautiful girdle-maker named Seraphinia Feliciani. This woman shared both his tri- umphs and his disgrace. In 1776 they arrived in London, where he announced himself as the Count di Cagliostro. The title was assumed, the name was borrowed from his mother's side of the house. Here for the first time Cag- liostro announced himself also a worker of miracles or wonders. He exhibited two mysterious substances, "Materia Prima," with which he transmuted all baser metals into gold, and "Egyptian Winc," with which he claimed to prolong life. His wife, who was just past twenty, he declared was more than sixty, her youthful appearance being due to the use of his elixir. He founded a spurious Egyptian rite in connection with the Masonic order which has been recognized as a blot upon Masonic history, and he claimed thousands of Masonic dupes. All over the Continent he and his beautiful wife travelled, now healing the poor for nothing, now duping the rich, but always living in a most picturesque, voluptuous fashion. He dipped into spiritualism and mesmerism, but wherever he went his converts followed after. In 1789, while in Rome, he was seized by that invincible power, the Holy Inquisition, and was condemned to death. Later Pope Pius VI. changed the sentence to life imprison- ment. Confinement made him more daring than ever. He asked for a confessor, and when a Capuchin monk was permitted to enter his cell in this capacity Cagliostro endeavored to choke him and escape in his robes. The [ 252] |