 CHAPTER 38 CHARMS AND INCANTATIONS It is worthwhile to print in plain English for my readers, a good selection of the very words which have been believed, or are still believed, to possess magic power. Then any who choose may operate by themselves or may put some bold friend up in a corner and blaze away at him or her until they are wholly satisfied about the power of magic. The Roman catech, so famous for his grumbness and virtue, believed that if he were ill, it would much help him or that it would cure sprains and others to say over these words. Darius, Dardaris, Asteris, Ista, Pista, Sista, or as another account has it, Moutas, Darius, Dardaris, Asteris, or as still another account says, Huat, Huat, Huat, Ista, Pista, Sista, Domiaba, Damnaustra. And sure enough, nothing is truer, as any physician will tell you, that if the old censor only believed hard enough, it would almost certainly help him. Not by the force of the words, but by the force of his own ancient Roman imagination. Here are some Greek words of no less virtue, Ascii, Katasci, Tetrax. When the Greek priests let out of their doors those who had been completely initiated in the Ellusinian Mysteries, they said to them, last of all the awful and powerful words, Konks Ompax. If you want to know what the usual result was, just say them to somebody and you will see instantly. The ancient Hebrews believed that there was a secret name of God, usually thought to be inexpressible and only to be represented by a mystic figure kept in the temple, and that if anyone could learn it, and repeat it, he could rule the intelligent and unintelligent creation at his will. It is supposed by some that Jehovah is the word which stands for this secret name. And some Hebraists think that the word Yahweh is much more nearly the right one. The Mohammedans, who have received many notions from the Jews, believed the same story about the secret name of God, and they think it was engraved on Solomon's signet, thus all readers of the Arabian Knights will very well remember. The Jews believed that if you pronounce the word Satan, any evil spirit that happened to be by could in consequence instantly pop into you if he wished, and possess you, as the devils in the New Testament possessed people. Some ancient cities had a secret name, and it was believed that if their enemies could find this out, they could conjure with it so as to destroy such cities. Thus the secret name of Rome was Valensia, and the word was very carefully kept, with the intention that none should know it except one or two of the chief pontiffs. Mr. Borough, in one of his books, tells about a charm which a Gypsy woman knew, and which she used to repeat to herself as a means of obtaining supernatural aid when she happened to want it. This was Sabaoka and Rekar Maria Ereiria. She induced her after much effort to repeat the words to him, but she always wished she had not, with an evident conviction that some harm would result. He explained to her that they consisted of a very simple phrase, but it made no difference. An ancient physician named Serena Samonikus used to be quite sure of curing fevers by means of what he called abracadabra, which was a sort of inscription to be written on something and worn on the patient's person. It was as follows, abracadabra, bracadabra, bracadab, acada, cad, a. Another gentleman of the same school used to cure sore eyes by hanging round the patient's neck an inscription made up of only two letters, a and z. But how he mixed them we unfortunately do not know. By the way, many of the German peasantry in the more ignorant districts still believe that to write abracadabra on a slip of paper and keep it with you will protect you from wounds, and that if your house is on fire, to throw this strip into it will put the fire out. Many charms or incantations call on God, Christ or some saints, just as the heathen ones call on a spirit. Here is one for epilepsy that seems to appeal to both religions, as if with a queer proviso against any possible mystic about either. Taking the epileptic by the hand you whisper in his ear, I adjure thee by the sun and the moon and the gospel of today, that thou arise and no more fall to the ground, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. A charm for the cramp found in vogue in some rustic regions is this. The devil is tying a knot in my leg, Mark, Luke and John, Unlose it, I beg. Crosses three we make to ease us, two for the thieves and one for Christ Jesus. Here is another, often used in Ireland, which in the same spirit of superstition and ignorant irreverence uses the name of the Saviour for a slight human occasion. It is to cure the toothache, and requires a repeating of the following string of words. Saint Peter is sitting on a marble stone, our Saviour passing by asked him what was the matter. O Lord, a toothache, stand up Peter and follow me, and whoever keeps these words in memory of me shall never be troubled with a toothache. Amen. The English astrologer, Lily, after the death of his wife, formerly a Mrs. Wright, found in a scarlet bag which she wore under her arm a pure gold sigil or round plate worth about ten dollars in gold, which the former husband of the defunct had used to exorcise a spirit that plagued him. In case any of my readers can afford bullion enough, and would like to drive away any such visitor, let them get such a plate and have engraved round the edge of one side. We see Leo D. Tribus, Judea, Tetragrammaton, plus inside this engrave a holy lamp round the edge of the other side, engrave anaphale, and three crosses, thus plus plus plus, and in the middle, Sanctus Petrus alpha a omega. The witches have always had incantations, which they have used to make a broomstick into a horse to kill or to sicken animals and persons etc. Most of these are sufficiently stupid, and not half so wonderful as one I know, which may be found in a certain mysterious volume called the girl's own book, and which, as I can depose, has often powered tickle children. It is this. Bandy-legged perachio mustachio, whiskerifesticus, the bald and brave bombardino of Baghdad, helped a balmy-leaked bluebird Basha of bevel mandrel beat down an abominable bumblebee at Balzora. But to the other witches, their charms were repeated sometimes in their own language, and sometimes in gibberish. When the scotch-witches wanted to fly away to their witches' sabbat, they straddled a broom-cantle, a corn-stock, a straw, or a rush, and cried out, Horace and Haddock in the devil's name, and immediately away they flew, forty times as high as the moon, if they wished. Some English witches and Somerset-chire used instead to say, Thout, Thout, Thou-out, and about, and when they wished to return from their meeting, they said, Rent-im-Torment-im, if this form of the charm does not manufacture a horse, not even a saw-horse, then I recommend another version of it. Thus, Horace and Paddock, Horace and Go, Horace and Pellets, ho, ho, ho. Some witches said, in high dutch, up and away, high, upper-loved, and nowhere stay. Scotch-witches had modes of working destruction to the persons or property of those to whom they meant evil, which were strikingly like the Negro-Obia or Mandinga. One of these was to make a hash of the flesh of an unbaptised child, with that of dogs and sheep, and to put this goodly dish in the house of the victim, residing the following rhyme. If we put this until this hame, in our lord the devil's name, the first hand that handled the burned and scalded may they be, we will destroy houses and hout with the sheep and nought, that is cattle, into the fault, and little shall come to the fore, that is to remain, of all the rest of the little store. Another used to destroy the sons of a certain gentleman named Gordon was to make images for the boys, of clay and paste, and put them in a fire, saying, We put this water among this meal for lawn pining and ill-heel, we put it into the fire to burn them up, stalk and stour, that is, tack and bent, that they be burned with our will, like any stickle, stubble, in a kiln. In case any lady reader finds herself changed into a hair, let her remember how the witch Isabel Gaudi changed hersle from hair back to woman, it was by repeating, Hair, hair, God sent thee care, I am in a hair's likeness now, but I shall be woman even now. Hair, hair, God sent thee care. About the year 1600, there was both hanged and burned at Amsterdam a poor demented Dutch girl who alleged that she could make cattle sterile and be rich pigs and paltry by saying to them, Cheerious and Cheerious in Cheerious. I recommend to say this first to an old hen, and if found useful, it might then be tried on a pig. Not far from the same time a woman was executed as a witch at Bamberg, having, as was often the case, been forced by torture to make a confession. She said that the devil had given her power to send diseases upon those she hated by saying complimentary things about them as, What a strong man, what a beautiful woman, what a sweet child. It is my own impression that this species of cursing may safely be tried where it does not include a falsehood. Here are two charms with the German witches used to repeat to raise the devil within the form of a he goat. The last two words to be screamed at quickly. This second one, it must be remembered, is to be read backward except the two last words. It was supposed to be the strongest of all and was used if the first one failed. In case the devil stayed too long, he could be made to take himself off by addressing to him the following statement repeated backward. Which would evidently make almost anybody go away. A German charm to improve one's finances was perhaps no worse than gambling in gold. It run thus. As God be welcomed, gentle moon, make thou my money more and soon. To get rid of a fever in the German manner, go and tie up a bow of a tree saying, Twig, I bind thee, Fever, now leave me. To give your egg to a willow tree, tie three knots in a branch of it early in the morning and say, Good morning, old one, I give thee the cold. Good morning, old one. And turn and run away as fast as you can without looking back. Enough of this nonsense. It is pure memory. Yet it is worthwhile to know exactly what the means were, which in ancient times were relied on for such purpose, and it is not useless to put this matter on record, for just such formulas are believed in now by many people. Even in this city there are witches who humbug the more foolish part of the community out of their money by means just as foolish as these. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Bristol was, in 1812, the second commercial city of Great Britain, having in particular an extensive East India trade. Among its inhabitants were merchants, reckoned remarkably shrewd, and many of them very wealthy, and quite a number of aristocratic families who were looked up to with the abject toad-eating kind of civility that follows the nobility. On the whole, Bristol was a very fashionable, rich, cultivated, and intelligent place, considering. One fine evening in the winter of 1812 to 13, the White Lion Hotel, a leading inn at Bristol, was thrown into a wonderful flutter by the announcement that a very beautiful and fabulously wealthy lady, the Princess Caraboo, had just arrived by ship from an Oriental port. Her agent, a swarthy and wisened little Asiatic, who spoke imperfect English, gave this information and ordered the most sumptuous suite of rooms and the house. Of course there was great activity in all manner of preparations, and the mysterious character of this lovely but high-born stranger caused a wonderful flutter of excitement, which grew and grew until the fair stranger at length deigned to arrive. She came at about ten o'clock in great state, and with two or three coaches packed with servants and luggage, the former of singularly dingy complexion and fantastic vestments, and the latter of the most curious forms and material imaginable. The eager anticipations of hosts and guests alike were not only fully justified but even exceeded by the rare beauty of the unknown, the Oriental style and magnificence of her attire and that of her attendance and the enormous bulk of her baggage, a circumstance that has no less weight at an English inn than anywhere else. The stranger, too, was most liberal with her fees to the servants, which were always in gold. It was quickly discovered that her ladyship spoke not one word of English, and even her agent, a dark, wild, queer little fellow, got along with it but indifferently, preferring all his requests in very broken china indeed. The landlord thought it a splendid opportunity to create a long bill, and got up rooms and a dinner in flaring style, with wax candles, a mob of waders, ringing of bells, and immense ceremony. But the lady, like a real princess, while well enough pleased and very gracious, took all this as a matter of course, and preferred her own cook, a flat-faced, pugnosed, yellow-breached, and almond-eyed Oriental, with a pigtail dangling from his scalp, which was shaved clean, excepting at the back of the head. This gentleman ran about in the kitchen-yard with queer little brass utensils, wherein he concocted sundry diabolical preparations, as they seemed to the English servants to be, of herbs, rice, curry powder, et cetera, et cetera, for the repast of his mistress. For the next three or four days the white lion was in a state bordering upon frenzy, at the singular deportment of the princess and her numerous attendants. The former arrayed herself in the most astonishing combinations of apparel that had ever been seen by the good gossips of Bristol, and the latter indulged in gymnastic antics and vocal chantings that almost deafened the neighborhood. There was a peculiar nasal ballad in which they were fond of indulging, that commenced about midnight, and kept up until well-nigh morning, that drove the neighbors almost beside themselves. It sounded like a concert by a committee of infuriated cats, and wound up with protracted whining notes commencing in a whimper, and then with a sudden jerk bursting into a loud monotonous howl. Yet, with all, these attendants, who slept on mats, in the rooms adjacent to that of their mistress, and fed upon the preparations of her own cuisine, were, in the main, very civil and inoffensive, and seemed to look upon the princess with the utmost awe. The agent, or secretary, or prime minister, or whatever he might be called, was very mysterious as to the objects, purposes, history, and antecedents of her highness. And the quinnunks were in despair until, one morning, the Bristol Mirror, then a leading paper, came out with a flaring announcement, expressing the pleasure it felt in acquainting the public with the fact that a very eminent and interesting foreign personage had arrived from her home in the remotest east to proffer his majesty, George III, the unobstructed commerce and friendship of her realm, which was as remarkable for its untold wealth as for its marvelous beauty. The lady was described as a befitting representative of the loveliness and opulence of this new gold-conda and ophir in one, since her matchless wealth and munificence were approached only by her ravishing personal charms. The other papers took up the topic, and were even more extravagant. Felix Farley's journal gave a long narrative of her wanderings and extraordinary adventures in the uttermost east, as gleaned, of course, from her garrulous agent. The island of her chief residence was described as being a vast extent and fertility, immensely rich and populous, and possessing many rare and beautiful arts unknown to the nations of Europe. The princess had become desperately enamored of a certain young Englishman of high rank, who had been shipwrecked on her coast, but had afterward escaped, and as she learned safely reached a port in China, and thence departed for Europe. The princess had hereupon set out upon her journeyings over the world in search of him, in order to facilitate her enterprise, and softened by the deep affection she felt for the son of Albion, she had determined to break through the usages of her country, and form an alliance with that of her beloved. Such were the statements everywhere put in circulation, and when the long bows of the place got full hold of it, Gulliver, Peter Wilkins, and Sinbad the Sailor were completely eclipsed. Diamonds as big as hen's eggs, and pearls the size of hazelnuts, were said to be the commonest buttons and ornaments the princess wore, and her silks and shawls were set beyond all price. The announcement of this romantic and mysterious history, this boundless wealth, this interesting mission from majesty to majesty in person, and the reality which everyone could see of so much grace and beauty, supplied all that was wanting to set the upper tandem of the place in a blaze, it was hardly etiquette for a royal visitor to receive much company before having been presented at court, but as this princely lady came from a point so far outside of the pale of Christendom, and all its formalities, it was deemed not out of place to show her befitting attentions, and the ice once broken there was no arresting the flood. The aristocracy of Bristol vied with each other in seeing who should be first and most extravagant in their demonstrations. The street in front of the white lion was day after day blocked up with eloquent equipages, and her reception rooms thronged with fair women and brave men. Milleners and Mantua-makers pressed upon the lovely and mysterious princess caribou the most exquisite hats, dresses, and laces just to acquaint her with the fashionable style and solicit her distinguished patronage. Dry Goodsmann sent her rare patterns of their costliest and richest stuffs, perfumers, their most exquisite toilet cases, filled with odours sweet, jewelers, their most superb sets of gems, and florists and visitors nearly suffocated her with the scarcest and most delicate exotics. Pictures, sketches, and engravings, oil paintings, and portraits on ivory of her rapturous admirers poured in from all sides, and her own fine form and features were reproduced by a score of artists. Daily she was faded and nightly serenaded until the princess caribou became the furor of the United Kingdom. Magnificent entertainments were given her in private mansions, and at length, to cap the climax, Mr. Worrell, the recorder of Bristol, managed, by his influence, to bring about for her a grand municipal reception in the town hall, and people from far and near thronged to it in thousands. In the meantime, the papers were gravely trying to make out whether the caribou'd country meant some remote portion of Japan, or the island of Borneo, or some comparatively unfamiliar archipelago in the Romotist east, and the mirror was publishing type expressly cut for the purpose of representing the characters of the language in which the princess spoke and wrote. They were certainly very uncouth, and pretended sages, who knew very well that there was no one to contradict them, declared that they were ancient Coptic. Upon reading the sequel of the story, one is irresistibly reminded of the ancient Roman inscription discovered by one of Dickens characters, which some irreverent rogue subsequently declared to be nothing more or less than Bill stumps his mark. All this went on for about a fortnight until the whole town, and a good deal of the surrounding country, had made complete fools of themselves, and only the naughty little boys in the streets held out against the prevailing mania, probably because they were not admitted to the sport. Their salutations took the form of an inharmonious, thoroughfare ballad, the chorus of which terminated with, Bu-hoo-hoo, and who's the princess caribou, yelled out at the top of their voices. At length one day the luggage of Her Highness was embarked upon a small vessel to be taken round by water to London, while she announced, through her agent, her intention to reach the capital by post-coaching. Of course the most superb travelling carriages and teams were placed at her disposal, but, courteously declining all these offers, she set out in the night-time with a hired establishment, attended by her retinue. Days and weeks rolled on, and yet no announcement came of the arrival of Her Highness at London, or at any of the intervening cities after the first two or three towns eastward of Bristol. Inquiry began to be made, and, after long and patient, but on availing search, it became apparent to divers and sundry dignitaries in the old town that somebody had been very particularly sold. The landlord at the White Lion, who had accepted the agent's order for one thousand pounds on a Calcutta firm in London, poor Mr. Worrell, who had been master of ceremonies at the Town Hall Affair, and had spent large sums of money, and the trade's people and others who sent their finest goods all felt that they had heard something drop. The Princess Caribou had disappeared as mysteriously as she came. For years the people of Bristol were unmercifully ridiculed throughout the entire kingdom on account of this affair, and burlesque songs and plays immortalized its incidents for successive seasons. One of these insisted that the Princess was no other than an actress of more notoriety than note humbly born in the immediate vicinity of the old city, where she practiced this gigantic hoax, and that she had been assisted in it by a set of disillute young noblemen and actors who furnished the money she had spent, got up the oriental dresses, published the fibs, and fomented the excitement. At all events, the net profit to her and her confederates and the affair must have been some ten thousand pounds. Within a few months, and since the first publication of the above paragraphs, the English newspapers have recorded the death of the Princess Caribou, who it appears afterward married in her own racket in life, and spent a considerable number of years of usefulness in the leech trade, an occupation not without a metaphorical likeness to her early and more ambitious exploit. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This reading is by Yuan Ji. The Humbugs of the World by P. T. Barnum. Adventurers Chapter 40 Count Cahliostro, alias Joseph Balsamo, known also as Cursed Joe. One of the most striking, amusing, and instructive pages in the history of Humbug is the life of Count Alessandro de Cahliostro, whose real name was Joseph or Giuseppe Balsamo. He was born at Palermo in 1743, and very early began to manifest his brilliant talents for roguery. He ran away from his first boarding school at the age of 11 or 12, getting up a masquerade of goblins by the aid of some scampish school fellows, which frightened the monkish watchmen of the gates away from their posts nearly dead with terror. He had gained little at the school, except the pleasant surname of Bepo Maldetto, or Cursed Joe. At the age of 13, he was a second time expelled from the convent of Cartagirone, belonging to the order of Ben Fratelli, the goodfathers having in vain endeavour to train him up in the way he should go. While in this convent, the boy was in charge of the apothecary, and probably picked up more less of the smattering of chemistry and physics which he afterwards used. His final offence was a ridiculous and characteristic one. He was a greedy and thievish fellow, and by way of penalty said to read aloud about the ancient martyrs. Those dry, though pious old gentlemen, while the monks ate dinner. Thus put to what he liked least, and deprived of what he liked best, he impudently extemporised, instead of the stories of the holy agonies, all the in decoror scandal he could think of about the more notorious, disreputable women of Palermo, putting their names instead of those of the martyrs. After this, Master Joe proceeded to distinguish himself by forging opera tickets and even documents of various kinds, indiscriminate pilfering and swindling, interpreting visions, conjuring, and finally, it is declared, a touch of genuine assassination. Pretty soon, he made a foolish greedy goldsmith, Juan Marano, believe that there was a treasure hidden in the sand on the seashore near Palermo, and induced the silly man to go one night to dig it up. Having reached the spot, the dupe was made to strip himself to his shirt and drawers. A magic circle was drawn round him, with all sorts of raw head and bloody bone ceremonies, and Beppo, exhorting him not to leave the ring, lest the spirit should kill him, stepped out of sight to make the incantations to raise them. Almost instantly, six devils, horned, hoofed, tailed, and clawed, breathing fire and smoked, leaped from among the rocks and beat the wretched goldsmith senseless, and almost to death. They were, of course, cursed Joe and some confederates, and taking Marano's money and valuables, they left him. He got home in wretched blight, but had sense enough left to suspect Master Joe, whom he shortly promised, after the Sicilian manner, to assassinate. So Joe ran away from Palermo and went to Messina. Yei said he fell in with a venerable humbug named Athlotus, an Armenian sage who united his talents with Beppo's own in making a peculiar preparation of flax and hemp, and passing it off upon the people of Alexandria and Egypt as a new kind of silk. This feat made not only a sensation, but plenty of money, and the two swindlers now traversed Greece, Turkey, and Arabia in various directions, stirring up the Oriental Old Fogies in amazing style. Herums and palaces, according to Carliostro's own apocryphal story, were thrown open to them everywhere, and while the sheriff of Makusha took Basaw under his high protection, one of the grand muftis actually gave him splendid apartments in his own abode. It is only necessary to reflect upon the unbounded reverence felt by all good musulmen for these exalted dignitaries to comprehend the height of distinction thus attained by the Palermo Thimble Riga. Among the many obscure records that exist in the Italian, French and German languages, touching this arching poster, there is a hint of a night adventure in the harem of a high and mighty personage at Makka, whereby the latter was put out of doors with his robes torn and his beard cinched by his own domestics, and left to wander in the streets, while Beppo in disguise received the salams and sequins of the establishment, including the attentions of the fair ones there engaged for an entire night. His escape to the sea coast after this adventure was almost miraculous, but escape he did, and shortly afterward turned up in Rome, with the title conferred by himself of Count Carliostro, the reputation of enormous wealth and genuine and enthusiastic letters of recommendation from Pinto, Grandmaster of the Knights of Malta. Pinto was an alchemist, and had been fooled to the top of his bent by the cunning Joseph. These letters introduced our humbug into the first families of Rome, who, like some other first families, were first also as fools. He also married a very beautiful, very shrewd, and very wicked Roman Donzella, Lorenzo Feliciano by name, and the worthy couple, combining their various talents and regarding the world as their oyster, at once proceeded to open it in the most scientific style. I cannot follow this wonderful human chameleon in all his transformations, under his various names of Fischio, Melissa, Fennice, Anna, Pellegrini, Harath and Belmonte, nor state the studies and processes by which he picked up sufficient knowledge of physics, chemistry, the hidden properties of numbers, astronomy, astrology, mesmerism, clairvoyance and the genuine, old-fashioned black art, but suffice it to say that he travelled through every part of Europe and set it in a blaze with excitement. There were always enough of silicox germs, young and old of high degree to be allured by the siren smiles of his countess, and dupes of both sexes everywhere to swallow his yarns and gap at his juggleries. In the course of his rambles, he paid a visit to his great-brother Humbug, the Count of Saint Germain in Westphalia, or Schleswig, and it was not long afterward that he began to publish to the world his grand discoveries in alchemy of the philosopher's stone and the Alexa of life for waters of perpetual youth. These and many similar wonders were declared to be the result of his investigations under the Arch of Old Egyptian Masonry, which degree he claimed to have revived. This notion of Egyptian Masonry Cochleostro is said to have found in some manuscripts left by one George Cofton, which fell into our quacks' hands. This degree was to give perfection to human beings by means of moral and physical regeneration. Of these two, the former was to be secured by means of a pentagon, which removes original sin and renews pristine innocence. The physical kind of regeneration was to be bought about by using the prime matter, or philosopher's stone, and the acacia which two ingredients will give immortal youth. In this new structure, he assumed the title of the grand copter, and actually claimed the worship of his followers, declaring that the institution had been established by Inoch and Ilias, and that he had been summoned by spiritual agencies to restore it to its pristine glory. In fact, this pretension, which influenced thousands upon thousands of believers, was one of the most daring imposters that ever saw the light. And it is astounding to think that, so later 1780, it should, for a long time, have been entirely successful. The preparatory course of exercises for admission to the Mystic Brotherhood had been described as a series of purgation, starvation and desperation lasting for 40 days, and ending in physical regeneration and an immortality on earth. The celebrated Lovater, a mild and genial but feeble man, became one of Cachliostra's disciples, and was bamboozled to his heart's content. In fact, may to believe that the Count could put the devil into him, or take him out, as the case might be. The wondrous water of beauty that made old wrinkled faces look young, smooth and blooming again, was the special merchandise of the Countess, and was, of course, in great request among the faded view and dowagers of the day, were easily persuaded of their own restored loveliness. The transmutation of baser metals into gold usually terminated in the transmigration of all the gold these victims had into the Count's own purse. In 1776 the Count and Countess came to London. Here, funnily enough, they fell into the hands of a gambler, a shyster and a female scamp, who together tormented them almost to death, because the Count would not pick them out lucky numbers to gamble by. They persecuted him fairly into jail, and plagued and out swindled him so awfully that after a time the poor Count sneaked back to the continent with only 50 pounds left of the 3,000 which he had brought with him. One incident of Cachliostro's English experience was the affair of the Ossinical pigs, a notice of which may be found in the public advertiser of London of September 3rd 1786. A Frenchman named Morande was at that time editing their paper in his own language entitled La Courrière de l'Europe, and lost no opportunity to denounce the Count as a humbug. Cachliostro at length, irritated by these repeated attacks, published in the advertiser an open challenge, offering to forfeit 5,000 guineas if Morande should not be found dead in his bed on the morning after partaking of the flesh of a pig to be selected by himself from among a drove fattened by the Count, the cooking etc all to be done at Morande's own house, and under his own eye. The time was fixed for the singular repost, but when it came around, the French editor backed down completely to the great delight of his opponent and his credulous followers. Cachliostro and his spouse now resume their travels upon the continent, and by their usual arts and trades in a great measure anew their fallen fortunes. Among other new dodgers you now assume so supernatural a piety that, he said, he could distinguish an unbeliever by the smell, which of course was just the opposite of the odor of sanctity. The Count's claim to have lived for hundreds of years was, by some, thoroughly believed. He has scribed his immortality to his own Alexa, and his comparatively youthful appearance to his water of beauty. His Countess readily assisting him by speaking of a son, a colonel in the Dutch service, 50 years old, whilst she appeared scarcely more than 20. At length, in Rome, he and the Countess fell into the clutches of the Holy Office, and both having been tried for their manifold offenses against the Church, were found guilty, and in spite of their contrition and eager confessions, he mewed for life. The Count within the walls of the castle of Saint-Lion in the Duchy of Urbino, where after eight years' imprisonment he died in 1795, and the Countess in a suburban convent which she died some time after. The portraits of Cachliostro, of which a number are extant, are pictures of a strong-built, bull-necked, fat, gross man with a snub nose, a vulgar face, a look of sensuality and low, hypocritical cunning. The celebrated story of the diamond necklace in which Cachliostro, Marie Antoinette, the Cardinal de Rohan, and others were mixed in such a hodgepodge of rascality and folly must form a narrative by itself. In my sketch of Joseph Balsama, alias the Count Alessandro de Cachliostro, I refer to the affair of the diamond necklace, known in French history as the Collier de la Rienne, or Queen's Necklace. From the manner in which the name and reputation of Marie Antoinette, the consort of Louis XVI, became entangled in it. I shall now give a brief account of this celebrated imposition, perhaps the boldest and shrewdest ever known, and almost wholly the work of a woman, on the quay de la Ferelle, not far from the Pont-Neu, stood the establishment, part shop, part manufacturing, part manufacturing, of Mrs Burma and Bessagna, the most celebrated jewelers of their day. After triumphs which had given them worldwide fame during the reign of Louis XV and made them fabulously rich, they determined, with the advent of Louis XVI, to eclipse all their former efforts and crown the professional glory of their lives. Their correspondence in every chief jewel market of the world was summoned to aid their enterprise, and in the course of some two or three years, they succeeded in collecting the finest and most remarkable diamonds that could be procured in the whole world of commerce. The next idea was to combine all these superb fragments in one grand ornament to grace the form of beauty. A necklace was the article fixed upon, and the best experience and most delicate taste that Europe could boast were expended on the design. Each and every diamond was specially set and faced in such a manner as to reveal its excellence to the utmost advantage, and all were arranged together in the style best calculated to harmonise their united effect. Form, shape and the minutest shades of colour were studied, and the result, after many attempts and many failures, and the anxious labour of many months, was the most exquisite triumph that the genius of lapidary and the goldsmith could conceive. The whole necklace consisted of three triple rows of diamonds, or nine rows in all, containing 800 faultless gems. The triple rows fell away from each in the most graceful and flexible curves over each side of the breast and each shoulder at the wearer. The curves starting from the throat went so magnificent pendent, depending from a single knot of diamonds. Features large as a hazelnut hung down halfway upon the bosom in the design of a cross and crown, surrounded by the lilies of the royal house. The lilies themselves dangling on stems, which were strung with smaller jewels. Rich clusters and festoon spread from the loop over each shoulder, and the central loop on the back of the neck was joined in a pattern of emblematic magnificence corresponding with that in front. It was in 1782 that this grand work was finally completed, and the happy owners gloated with delight over a monument of skill as matchless in its way as the pyramids themselves. But alas, the necklace might as well have been constructed of the common boulders piled in those same pyramids as of the finest jewels of the mine, for all the good it seemed destined to bring the poor jewelers, beyond the rapture of beholding it and calling it theirs. The necklace was worth 1,500,000 francs, equivalent to more than 300,000 in gold, as money then went, or nearly 500,000 in gold nowadays. Rather too large a sum to keep locked up in a casket, the reader will confess, and then it seems that Mesas Burma and Bessonia had not entirely paid for it yet. They had 10 creditors on the diamonds in different countries, and an immense capital still locked up in their other jewelry. Of course, then, after their first delight had subsided, they were most anxious to sell an article that had to be constantly and painfully watched. And that might so easily disappear, how many a nimble-fingered and stout-hearted rogue would not in those days have imperiled a dozen lives to clutch that blazing handful of dross, convertible into an Elysium of pomp and pleasure. It would hardly have been a safe noonday plaything in Moral Gotham. Let alone the disalute Paris of 80 years ago, the first thought, of course, that killed in the breasts of Boma and Bessonia, was that the only proper resting place for their matchless bobble was the snowy neck of the Queen Marie Antoinette, then the admired and beloved of all. Her peerless beauty alone could live in the glow of such supernal splendour, and the French throne was the only one in Christendom that could sustain such glittering weight. Moreover, the Queen had already once been a good customer to the court jewelers. For in 1774, she bought four diamonds of them for $75,000. Louis XV would not have hesitated to fling it on the shoulders of the Douberry, and Louis XVI, in spite of his odd notions upon economy and just administration, easily listened to the delicate insinuations of his court jewelers, and, one fine morning, laid the necklace in its casket on the table of his Queen. Her Majesty, for a moment, yielded to the promptings of feminine weakness, and danced and laughed with the glee of an overjoyed child in the new sunshine of those burning, sparkling, dazzling gems. Once and once only, she placed it on her neck and breast, and probably the world has never before or since seen such a countenance in such a setting. It was almost the head of an angel shining in the glory of the spheres, but a better thought prevailed, and quickly removing it, she, with a wave of her beautiful hand, declined the gift, and besought the King to apply the sum to any other purpose that would be useful or honourable to France, whose finances were sadly straightened. We want ships of war more than we do necklaces, said she. The King was really delighted at this act of the Queens, and the incident soon becoming widely known gave the latter immense popularity for at least 24 hours after it occurred. In fact, the amount was really applied to the construction of a grand line of battleship called the Sovereign, after the great admiral of that name, Burma, who seems to have been the business manager of the jeweller firm, found his necklace as troublesome, as the cobbler did the elephant he won in a raffle, and tried so perseveringly to induce the Queen to buy it, but he became a real torment. She seems to have thought him a little cracked on the subject, and one day, when he obtained a private audience, he besought her either to buy the necklace, or to let him go and drown himself in the same. Out of all patience, the Queen intimated that he would have been wiser to secure a customer to begin with, that she would not buy, that if he chose to throw himself into the same, it would be entirely on his own responsibility, and that as for the necklace, he had better pick it to pieces and sell it. The poor German, for Burma was a native of Saxony, departed in deep distress, but accepted neither his own suggestion nor the Queens. The court jewellers busied themselves in peddling their necklace about among the courts of Europe, but none of these concerns found it convenient, just then, to pay out $360,000 for a concatenation of 800 diamonds. Still, the sparkling elephant remained on the jeweller's hands, time passed on. Madame Campan, one of the Queen's confidential ladies, happened to meet Burma one day, and the necklace was looted to. What is the state of affairs about the necklace? asked the lady. Highly satisfactory, replied Burma, whose serenity of countenance Madame Campan had already remarked. I have sold it to the Sultan at Constantinople, for his favourite sultana. This the lady thought rather curious, but she was glad the thing was disposed of, and said no more. Time passed on again. In the beginning of August 1785, Burma took the trouble to call Madame Campan at her country house. Somewhat to her surprise, has the Queen given you no message for me? he inquired. No, said the lady. What message should she give? An answer to my note, said the jeweller. Madame remembered a note which the Queen had received from Burma a little while before, along with some ornaments sent by his hands to her as a present from the King. It congratulated her on having the finest diamonds in Europe, and hoped she would remember him. The Queen could make nothing of it, and destroyed it. Madame Campan therefore replied, there is no answer. The Queen burned the note. She does not even understand what you meant by writing that note. This statement very quickly elicited from the now startled German, a story which astounded the lady. He said the Queen owed him the first instalment of the money for the diamond necklace. That she had bought it, after all, that the story about the Sultana was a lie told by her directions to hide the fact. It's the Queen meant to pay by instalments, and did not wish the purchase known, and Burma said she had employed the Cardinal de Rowan to buy the necklace for her, and it had been delivered to him, for her, and by him to her. Now the Queen, as Madame Campan knew very well, had always strongly disliked this Cardinal. He had even been kept from attending a court in consequence, and she had not so much as spoken to him for years. And so Madame Campan told Burma, and further she told him he had been imposed upon. No, said the man of sparklers decisively. It is you who I deceived. She is decidedly friendly to the Cardinal. I have myself the documents with her own signature authorising the transaction. For I have had to let the bankers see them in order to get a little time on my own payments. Here was a monstrous mystification for the Lady of Honor, who told Burma to instantly go and see his official superior, the Chief of the King's Household. She herself, being very soon afterwards, summoned to the Queen's presence. The affair came up, and she told the Queen all she knew about it. Marie Antoinette was profoundly distressed by the evident existence of a great scandal and swindle, with which she was plainly to be mixed up through the forged signatures to the documents which Burma had been relying on. Now for the Cardinal, Louis de Rohan, a seon of the Great House of Rowan, and one of the proudest of France, was descended of the blood royal of Brittany, was a handsome, proud, dissolute, foolish, credulous, unprincipled noble, now almost fifty years old, a thorough rake of large revenues, but deeply in debt. He was peer of France, Archbishop of Strasbourg, Grand Ormono of France, commander of the Order of the Holy Ghost, commended a tour of the benefits of Saint Vaste de Arras, said to be the most wealthy in Europe, and a Cardinal. He had been ambassador at Vienna, a little after Marie Antoinette was married to the Delphian, and while there had taken advantage of his official station to do a tremendous quantity of smuggling, he had also further and most deeply offended the Empress Maria Theresa, by outrageous debaucheries, by gross irreligion, and above all by a rather flat, but in effect stingly satirical description of her conduct about the petition of Poland. This she never forgave him, neither did her daughter Marie Antoinette, and accordingly, when he presented himself for Paris soon after she became Queen, he received a curt repulse, and an intimation that he had better go to Strasbourg. Now in those days a sentence of exclusion from court was to a French noble, but just this side of a banishment to a tofé, and de Rowan was just silly enough to fill this inflection most intensely. He went however, and from that time onward, for year after year, lived the life of a persevering Adam thrust out of his paradise, hanging about the gate, and trying all possible ways to sneak in again. Once for instance, he had induced the porter at the palace of Trianon to let him get inside the grounds during an illumination, and was recognised by the glow of his cardinal's red stockings from under his cloak, but he was only laughed at for his pains. The porter was turned off, and the poor, silly, miserable cardinal remained out in the cold, breaking his heart over his exclusion from the most tedious mess of conventionalities that ever was contrived, except those of the Court of Spain. About 1783, this great fool fell in with an equally great naïve who must be spoken of here, where he begins to converge along with the rest towards the explosion of the necklace swindle. This was Cagliostro, who at that time came to Strasburg and created a tremendous excitement with his fascinating counters, his Egyptian masonry, his Bajiric food, a kind of brandrous pill of the period, which he fed out to poor, sick people, his elixir of lie, and other humbugs. The cardinal sent an intimation that he would like to see the quack. The quack, his impudence was far greater than the cardinal's pride. Then back this sublime reply, if he is sick, let him come to me, and I will cure him. If he is well, it is not need to see me, nor I him. This piece of impudence made the fool of a cardinal more eager than ever. After some more effected shyness, Cagliostro allowed himself to be seen. He was just the man to captivate the cardinal, and they were quickly intimate personal friends, practicing transmutation, alchemy, masonry, and still more particularly conducting a great many experiments on the cardinal's remarkably fine stock of toque wine. Whatever the poor Durohan had to do, he consulted Cagliostro about it, and when the latter went to Switzerland, his dupe maintained a constant communication with him in Cypher. Lastly is to be mentioned Jean de Saint-Remy, Countess of Le Mont-de-Voilà, de France, the chief scoundrel if any term may be used of a woman, of the necklace affair. She seems to have been really a descendant of the royal house of Voilà, to which Francis I belonged. Through an illegitimate son of Henry II, created Countess de Saint-Remy. The family had run down and become poor and rascally, one of Jean's immediate ancestors having practiced counterfeiting for a living. She herself had been protected by certain kind-hearted countess de Blanc-villiers, was receiving a small pension from the court of about three hundred and twenty-five dollars a year, had married a certain tall soldier named Le Mont, had come to Paris, and was living in poverty in a garret, hovering about as it were for a chance to better her circumstances. She was a quick-witted, bright-eyed, brazen-faced hussy, not beautiful, but with lively pretty ways and indeed somewhat fascinating. Her protractress, the countess de Blanc-villiers, was now dead. While she was alive, Jean had once visited her at Deroen's Palace of Severn, and had thus scraped a slight acquaintance with the gay cardinal, which she resumed doing her abode at Paris. Everybody at Paris knew about the diamond necklace and about Deroen's desire to get into court favour. This sharp-witted, female swindler now came in amongst the elements I have thus far been describing, to frame necklace, jeweler, cardinal, queen, and swindler, all together into her plot, just as the keystone drops into an arch and locks it up tight. No mortal knows where ideas come from. Suddenly a conception is in the mind, whence or how, we do not know, any more than we know life. The devil himself might have furnished that which now popped into the cunning, wicked mind of this adventurous. This is what she saw all at once. Burma is crazy to sell his necklace, Deroen is crazy after the queen's favour, I am crazy after money. Now if I can make Deroen think that the queen wants the necklace and will become his friend in return for his helping her to it, if I can make him think I am her agent to him, then I can steal her diamonds in their transit. A wonderfully cunning and hearty scheme and most wonderful was the cool, keen promptitude with which it was executed. The countess began to hint to the cardinal that she was fast getting into the queen's good graces, by virtue of being a capital gossip and storyteller, and that she had frequent private audiences. Soon she added intimations that the queen was far from being really so displeased with the cardinal, as he supposed, at this the old fool bit instantly and showed the keenest emotions of hope and delight. On a further suggestion, he presently drew up a letter or memoir humbly and plaintively stating his case, which the countess undertook to put into the queen's hands. It was the first of over 200 notes from him, notes of her basement, beseeching argument, expostulation and so on, all entrusted to Deroen. She burnt them I suppose. In order to make her dupe sure that she told the truth about her access to the queen, Jean more than once made him go and watch her enter a side gate into the grounds of the Trianon palace, to which she had somehow attained a key, and after waiting, he saw her come out again, sometimes under the escort of a man who was, she said, one of the desk-law, a confidential valet of the queen. This was Villette de Reteau, a pal of Jean's and of her husband Lamotte, who had, by the way, become a low-class gambler and swindler by occupation. Next Jean talked about the queen's charities, and on one occasion told how much the amour wall, Marie and a twinette, longed to expend certain sums for benevolent purposes if she only had them, but she was out of funds and the king was so close about money. The poor cardinal bit again, if the queen would only allow him the honour to furnish the little amount. The countess evidently hadn't thought of that, she reflected, hesitated. The cardinal urged, she consented. It was not much, and was so kind as to carry the cash herself. At their next meeting, she reported that the queen was delighted, telling a very nice story about it. The cardinal would only be too happy to do so again, and sure enough he did, and quite a number of times too, contributing in all to the funds of the countess in this manner, about $25,000. Well, after a time the cardinal is at Strasbourg. When here is a note from the countess, that brings him back again as quick as post horses can carry him. It says that there is something very important, very secret, very delicate, that the queen wants his help about. He is overflowing with zeal. What is it? Only let him know. His life, his purse, his soul, are at the service of his liege lady. His purse is all that is needed. With infinite shyness and circumspection, the countess gradually, half unwillingly, lets him find out that it is the diamond necklace that the queen wants by diabolical ingenuities of talk. She leaves de Rouen to the full conviction that if he secures the queen that necklace, he will then forward bask in all the sunshine of court favour that she can show or control. And at proper time, sundry notes from the queen are bestowed upon the enraptured noodle. These are written in imitation of the queen's handwriting, by that of Villard de Reteau, who personated the queen's valet, and who was an expert at counterfeiting. A last and sublime summit of impudence pretension is reached by a secret interview, which the queen says the countess desires to grant to her beloved servant the cardinal. This suggestion was rendered practicable by one of those mere coincidences, which are found, though rarely in history, and which are too improbable to put into a novel, the casual discovery of a young woman of loose character, who looked much like the queen, whether her name was Designee or Gade Livia, is uncertain. She is usually called by the latter. She was hired and taught, and with immense precautions, this ostrich of a cardinal was one night introduced into the gardens of the Trianon and shown a little nook among the thickets, where a stately female in the similitude of the queen received him with soft-spoken words of kindly greeting, allowed him to kneel and kiss a fair and shapely hand, and showed no particular timidity of any kind. Yet the interview had scarcely more than begun before steps were heard. Someone is coming, exclaimed the lady, it is Monsieur and Madame d'Artois. We must part. There, she gave him a red rose. You know what that means. Farewell. And away they went. Madame Azelle Delivia, to report to her employers, and the cardinal, in a seventh heaven of ineffable tongue-foolery, to his hotel. But the interview, and the lovely little notes that came sometimes, fixed the necklace business, and if further encouragement had been needed, Cagliostro gave it, for the cardinal now consulted him about the future of the affair, having indeed kept him fully informed about it for a long time, as he did of all matters of interest. So the quack set up his tabernacles of mummary in a parlour of the cardinal's hotel, and conducted an Egyptian invocation there all night long in solitude and pomp, and in the morning he decreed, in substance, go ahead. And the cardinal did so, Burma and Bassania, were only too happy to bargain with the great and wealthy church and state dignitary, a memorandum of terms, and time of payment was drawn up, and was submitted to the queen. That is, Swinling Jean carried it off, and brought it back, with an entry made by Villette de Reteau, in the margin, thus Bonne, Bonaprove, Maui Antoinette de France. That is good, good, I approve, Marie Antoinette de France. The payment was to be by instalments, at six months, and quarterly afterwards, the queen to furnish the money to the cardinal. While he remained extensibly holden to the jewelers, she thus keeping out of sight. So the jewels were handed over to the cardinal de Rowan, he took them one evening, in great state, to the lodgings of the countess, where, with all imaginable formality, there came a knock at the door, and when it was open, a tall valet entered, who said solemnly, on the part of the queen. De Rowan knew it was the queen's confidential valet, for he saw with his own eyes that it was the same man, who had escorted the countess from the side gate, at the Trianon, and so it was, to it, Villette de Reteau, who, calmly receiving the 1500,000 franc treasure, marched but as solemnly as he had come in. As that counterfeiting rascal goes out the door, the diamond necklace itself disappears from our knowledge. The swindle was consummated, but there is no whisper of the disposition of the spoils. Villette and Joyne's husband, Lamotte, went to London and Amsterdam, and had some money there, but seemingly no more than the previous pillages upon the cardinal might have supplied. Nor did the countess' subsequent expenditures show that she had any of the proceeds, but that is not the last of the rest of the parties to the affair, by any means. Between this scene and the time when Anxious Boomer, having a little bill to meet, beset Madame Campan about his letter and the money the queen was to pay him, there intervened six months. During that time, Countess Jean was smoothing as well as she could, with endless lies and contrivances, the troubles of the perplexed cardinal, who couldn't seem to see that he was much better off in spite of his loyal performance of his part of the bargain. But this application by Boomer, and the enormous swindle with which it was instantly evident, had been perpetrated on somebody or other, of course, waked up a commotion at once. The barender, Briteil, a deadly enemy of Duroan, got hold of it all, and in his overpowering eagerness to ruin his foe, quickly rendered the matter so public that it was out of the question to hush it up. It seems probable that Jean de Lamotte expected that the business would be kept quiet for the sake of the queen, and that thus any very severe or public punishments would be avoided, and perhaps no inquiries made. It is clear that this would have been the best plan. But de Bruteil's officiousness prevented it, and there was nothing for it but legal measures. Duroan was arrested and put in the best steel. Having barely been able to send a message in German to his hotel, to a trustee secretary, who instantly destroyed all the papers relating to the affair, Jean was also imprisoned. Envalet de Reteau, being caught at Brussels and Amsterdam, were in like manner secured. As for Cagliostro, he was also imprisoned. Some accounts saying that he ostentatiously gave himself up for trial. This was a public trial before the parliament of Paris. With much form, the result was that the cardinal, appearing to be the only fool, not naive, was acquitted. Gay Delivia appeared to have known nothing, except that she was to play a part, and she had been told that the queen wanted her to do so. So she was let go. Valet was banished for life. Lamotte, the countess's husband, had escaped to England, and was condemned to the galleys in his absence, which didn't hurt him much. Cagliostro was acquitted, but Jean was sentenced to be whipped, branded on the shoulder with the letter V for valuce, thief, and banished. This sentence was executed in full, but with great difficulty, for the woman turned perfectly furious on the public scaffold, flew at the hangman like a tiger, bit pieces out of his hands, shrieked, cursed, rolled on the floor, kicked, squirmed, and jumped, until they held her by brute force, tore down her dress, and the red hot iron going aside, as she struggled, plunged full into her snowy white breast, planting there indelibly the horrible black V, while she yelled like a fiend under the torment of the smoking brand. She fled away to England, lived there some time in dissolute courses, and is said to her died in consequence of falling out of a window when drunk, or as another account states, of being flung out by the companions of her orgy, whom she had stung to fury by her frightful scolding. Before her death, she put forth one or two memoirs, false, scandalous things. The unfortunate queen never entirely escaped some shadow of disrepute from the necklace business, for to the very last, both on the trial and afterwards, Jean de la Motte impudently stuck to it, that at least the queen had known about the trick played on the cardinal at the Trianon, and had in fact been hidden close by, and saw and laughed heartily at the whole interview, so saw and morbid was a condition of the public mind in France in those days, when symptoms of the coming revolution were breaking out on every side, that this odious story found many and willing believers. Chapter 42 The Count de Saint-Germain, Sage, Prophet and Magician Superior to Cahliostro, even in accomplishments, and second to him in notoriety only, was that human nondescript, the so-called Count de Saint-Germain, whom Frederick the Great called a man no one has ever been able to make out. The Maquis de Gregoire declares that Saint-Germain was an Alsatian Jew, Simon Wolf by name, and born at Strasbourg about the close of the 17th or beginning of the 18th century. Others insist that he was a Spanish Jesuit named Amar, and others again intimate that his true title was the Maquis de Betmar, and that he was a native of Portugal. The most plausible theory, however, makes him the natural son of an Italian princess, and fixes his birth at Saint Germaino in Savoy about the year 1710, his ostensible father being Juan Rotondo, a tax collector of that district. This supposition is borne out by the fact that he spoke all his many languages with an Italian accent. It was about the year 1750 that he first began to be heard of in Europe as the Count de Saint-Germain, and put forth the astounding pretensions that soon gave him celebrity over the whole continent. The celebrated Maquis de Belial made his acquaintance about that time in Germany, and brought him to Paris, where he was introduced to Madame de Pompadour, whose favor he very quickly gained. The influence of that famous beauty was just then paramount with Louis XV, and the Count was soon one of the most eminent men at court. He was remarkably handsome, as an old portrait that friased off in Saxony in the rooms he once occupied sufficiently indicated, and his musical accomplishments added to the ineffable charm of his manners and conversation, and the miracles he performed rendered him an irresistible attraction, especially to the ladies, who appeared to have almost idolized him. Endowed with an enchanting voice, he could also play every instrument then invoke, but especially excelled upon the violin, which he could handle in such a manner as to give it the effect of a small orchestra. Contemporary writers declare that, in his more ordinary performances, a connoisseur could distinctly hear the separate tones of a full quartet, when the Count was extemporizing on his favorite chromona. His little work, entitled La Musique Razunet, published in England for private circulation only, bears testimony to his musical genius, and to the wondrous eccentricity as well as beauty of his conceptions. But it was in electromency, or divination by signs and circles, hydromancy, or divination by water, collidomancy, or divination by the key, and ductilemency, or divination by the fingers, that the Count chiefly excelled, although he, at the same time, professed alchemy, astrology, and prophecy in the higher branches. The fortunes of the Count Saint-Germain rose so rapidly in France that in 1760 he was sent by Louis XV through the Court of England to assist in negotiations for a peace. Monsieur de Chorcell, then Prime Minister of France, however, greatly feared and detested the Count, and secretly wrote to Pitt, begging the latter to have that personage arrested, as he was certainly a Russian spy. But Saint-Germain, through his attendance sprites, of course, received timely warning and escaped to the continent. In England, he was the inseparable friend of Prince Lobkovitz, a circumstance that gave some color to his alleged connection with the Russians. His sojourn there was equally distinguished by his devotion to the ladies, and his unwavering success at the gambling table, where he won fabulous sums, which were afterward dispensed with imperial magnificence. It was there, too, that he put forward his claims to the highest rank in masonry, and of course added thereby immensely to the eclat of his position. He spoke English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, the Scandinavian and many of the Oriental tongues with equal fluency, and pretended to have traveled over the whole earth, and even to have visited the most distant starry orbs frequently. In the course of a lifetime which, with continual transmigrations, he declared to have lasted for thousands of years. His birth, he said, had been in Chaldea in the dawn of time, and that he was the sole inheritor of the lost sciences and mysteries of his own and the Egyptian race. He spoke of his personal intimacy with all the twelve apostles, and even the august presence of the Saviour, and one of his pretensions would have been most singularly amusing had it not bordered upon profanity. This was no less an assertion that he had upon several occasions remonstrated with the apostle Peter upon the irritability of his temperament. In regard to latter periods of history, he spoke with the careless ease of an everyday looker on, and told anecdotes that the researchers of scholars afterwards fully verified. His predictions were indeed most startling, and the contemporaneous evidence is very strong and explicit that he did foretell the time, place and manner of the death of Louis XV several years before it occurred. His gift of memory was perfectly amazing. Having once read a journal of the day, he could repeat its contents accurately from beginning to end, and to this endowment he united the faculty of writing with both hands in characters like copper plate. Thus he could indict a love letter with his right while he composed a verse with his left hand, and apparently with the utmost facility, a splendid acquisition for the Treasury Department or literary newspaper. He would, however, have been eligible for any faithful post office, since he read the contents of sealed letters at a glance. And by his clairvoyant powers, detected crime were in fact the movements of men in the phenomena of nature at any distance. Like all the great magi and brothers of the Rosie Cross of whom he claimed to be a shining light, he most excelled in medicine, and along with remedies for every ill that flesh is heir to, posted his aqua benedetta as the genuine Alexa of life, capable of restoring youth to age, beauty and strength to decay, and brilliant intellect to the exhausted brain, and if properly applied, protracting human existence through countless centuries. As a proof of its virtues, he pointed to his own youthful appearance, and the testimony of old men who had seen him 60 or 70 years earlier, and who declared that time had made no impression on him. Strangely enough, the Margrave of Ansbach, of whom I shall presently speak, purchased what purported to be the recipe of the aqua benedetta from John Dyke, the English consul at Legorn, towards the close of the last century, and copies of it are still preserved with religious care and the utmost secrecy by certain noble families in Belorna and Vienna, where the preparation has been used, as they believe, with perfect success against a host of diseases. Still another peculiarity of the count would be highly advantageous to any of us, particularly at this period of high prices and culinary scarcity. He never ate nor drank, or at least he was never seen to do so. It is said that boarding house regime in these days is rapidly accustoming a considerable class of our fellow citizens to a similar condition, but I can scarcely believe it. Again, the count would fall into cataleptic swans, which continued often for hours and even days, and during these periods he declared that he visited in spirit the most remote regions of the earth, and even the farthest stars, and would relate with astonishing power the scenes he there had witnessed. He, of course, laid claim to the transmutation of basin metals into gold, and stated that in 1755, while on a visit to India to consult the erudition of the Hindu Brahmins, he solved by their assistance the problem of the artificial crystallization of pure carbon, or in other words, the production of diamonds. One thing is certain, visit that upon a visit to the French ambassador to the Hague in 1780, he in the presence of that functionary, induced him to believe and testify that he broke to pieces with a hammer a superb diamond of his own manufacture. The exact counterpart of another of similar origin, which he had just sold for 5,500 Louis Dior. His career and transformations on the continent were multi-form. In 1762, he was mixed up with the dynastic conspiracies and changes at St. Petersburg, and his importance there was indicated ten years later by the reception given to him at Vienna by the Russian Count Olaf, who accosted him joyously as Karhupadre, dear father, and gave him 20,000 gold in Venetian sequence. From Petersburg, he went to Berlin, where he had once attracted the attention of Frederick the Great, who questioned Voltaire about him, the latter replying, as it is said, that he was a man who knew all things and would live to the end of the world. A fair statement in brief of the position assumed by more than one of our war politicians. In 1774, he took up his abode at Schwabach, in Germany, under the name of Count Zoroge, which is a transposition of Rogozzi, a well-known noble name. The Margrave of Ansbach met him at the house of his favourite Taran, the actress, and became so fond of him that he insisted upon his company to Italy. On his return, he went to Dresden, Leipzig, and Hamburg, and finally to Eckenfjord in Schleswig, where he took up his residence with the land-grave coll of Hesse, and at length in 1783, tired, as he said of life, and disdained any long immortality, he gave up the ghost. It was during Saint Germain's residence in Schleswig that he was visited by the renowned Kachliostl, who openly acknowledged him as master, and learned many of his most precious secrets from him. Among others, the faculty of discriminating the character by the handwriting, and our fascinating birds, animals, and reptiles. To trace the wanderings of Saint Germain is a difficult task, as he had innumerable aliases, and often totally disappeared for months together. In Venice, he was known as the Count de Balamar, at Pisa, as the Chevalier de Schuening, at Milan, as the Chevalier Waldon, at Genoa, as the Count Saltico, etc. In all these journeys, his own personal tastes were quiet and simple, and he manifested more attachment for a pocket copy of Guarini's Pastorfido, his only library, than for any other object in his possession. On the whole, the Count de Saint Germain was a man of magnificent attainments, but the use he made of his talents proved him to be also a most magnificent humbug. End of Chapter 42 The most gorgeous, and, with one sole exception, the most glorious reign that France has ever known, so far as military success is concerned, was that of Louis XIV, the Grand Monarch. His was the age of lavish expenditure, of magnificent structures, grand festivals, superb dress and equipage, aristocratic arrogance, brilliant campaigns, and great victories. It was, moreover, particularly distinguished for the number and high character of the various special embassies sent to the Court of France by foreign powers. Among these, Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Venice rivaled each other in extravagant display and pomp. The singular and really tangible imposture I am about to describe, practised at such a period and on such a man, as Louis of France, was indeed a bold and dashing affair. Leta c'est moi, I am the State, was Louis' celebrated and very significant motto, for in his own hands he had really concentrated all the powers of the realm, and woe to him who trifled with a majesty so real and so imperial. However, notwithstanding all this imposing strength, this mighty domineering will, and this keen intelligence, a man was found bold enough to brave them all in the arena of pure humbug. It was towards the close of the year 1667, when Louis, in the plenitude of military success, returned from his campaign in Flanders, where his invincible troops had proven too much for the broad-breached but gallant Dutchman. In the short space of three months he had added whole provinces, including some 40 or 50 cities and towns, to his dominions, and his fame was ringing throughout Christendom. It had even penetrated to the farthest east, and the king of Siam sent a costly embassy from his remote kingdom to offer his congratulations and fraternal greeting to the most eminent patentate of Europe. Louis had already removed the pageantries of his royal household to his magnificent new palace of Versailles, on which the wealth of conquered kingdoms had been lavished, and there, in the great hall of mirrors, received the homage of his own nobles and the ambassadors of foreign powers. The utmost splendour of which human life was susceptible seemed so common and familiar in those days that the train was dazzling indeed that could excite any very particular attention. What would have seemed stupendous elsewhere was only in conformity with all the rest of the scene at Versailles. But at length there came something that made even the pampered courtiers of the new Babylon Stair, a Persian embassy. Yes, a genuine, actual living envoy from that wonderful empire in the east, which, in her time, had ruled the whole Oriental world and still retained almost fabulous wealth and splendour. It was announced formally one morning to Louis that his most serene excellency, Riza Bay, with an interminable tale of titles, hangars on, and equipages, had reached the port of Marseilles, having journeyed by way of Trebizond and Constantinople to lay before the great King of the Franks brotherly congratulations and gorgeous presence from his own illustrious master, the Shah of Persia. This was something entirely to the taste of the vain French ruler, whom unlimited good fortune had inflated beyond all reasonable proportions. He firmly believed that he was by far the greatest man who had ever lived, and had an embassy from the moon or planet Jupiter been announced to him, would have deemed it not only natural enough, but absolutely due to his preeminence above all other human beings. Nevertheless he was, secretly, immensely pleased with the Persian demonstration, and gave orders that no expense should be spared in giving the strangers a reception worthy of himself and France. It would be needless for me to detail the events of the progress of Riza Bay, from Marseilles to Paris, by way of Avignon and Lyon. It was certainly in keeping with the pretensions of the ambassador. From town to town the progress was a continued ovation, triumphal archers, bonfires, chimes of bells, and harrowing crowds in their best bibs and tuckers, military parades and civic ceremonies, everywhere awaited the children of the farthest east, who were stared at, shouted at, and by some wretched cynics sneered and laughed at, to their hearts content. All modern glory very largely consists in being nearly stunned with every species of noise choked with dust and dragged about through the streets until you are well nigh dead. Witness the Japanese embassy and their visit to this country where, in some cases the poor creatures, after hours of unmitigated boring with all sorts of mummary, actually had their pigtails pulled by young America in the rear, and, as at the windows of Willard's Hotel in Washington, were stirred up with long canes, like the polar bear or the learned seal. Still, Riza Bay and his dozen or two of dusky companions did not, by any means, cut so splendid a figure as had been expected. They had with them some camels, antelopes, bull bulls and monkeys, like any traveling caravan, and were dressed in the most outrageous and outlandish attire. They jabbered, too, a gibberish utterly incomprehensible to the crowd, and did everything that had never been seen or done before. All this, however, delighted the populace. Had they been similarly transmogrified or played such queer pranks themselves, it would only have been food for mockery, but the foreign air and fame of the thing made it all wonderful, and, as the chief rogue in the plot had foreseen, blinded the popular eye and made his embassy a complete success. At length, after some four weeks of slow progress, the Persians arrived at Paris, where they were received, as had been expected, with tremendous ecla. They entered by a barrière du tron, so stile, because it was there that Louis Catois himself had been received upon a temporary throne, set up with splendid decorations and triumphal arches in the open air, when he returned from his Flanders campaign. Risa Bay was, upon this occasion, a little more splendid than he had been on his way from the sea coast, and really loomed up in startling style in his tall, black, rimless hat of wool, shaped precisely like an elongated flower pot, and his silk robes dangling to his heels, and covered with huge painted figures, and bright metal decorations of every shape and size, unknown to European man millinery. A circlet or colour, apparently of gold, set with precious stones, California diamonds, surrounded his neck, and monstrous glittering rings covered all the fingers, and even the thumbs of both his hands. His train, consisting of sword, cup, and pipe-bearers, doctors, chief cooks, and bottle washers, quark extractors, and choropodists, literally so, for it seems that, sharing in the common lot of humanity, great men have horns even in Persia, were similarly arrayed as to fashion, but less stupendously in jewellery. Well, after the throng had scampered, crowded, and shouted themselves hoarse, and had struggled to their homes sufficiently tired and pocket-picked, the ambassador and his suite were lodged in sumptuous apartments in the old royal residence of the Tuileries, under the care and charge of King Louis's own assistant, Major Dommel, and a guard of courtiers and regiments of royal Swiss. Banqueting and music filled up the first evening, and upon the ensuing day, his majesty, who did his visitors a special honour, sent the Duke de l'Échelure, the most polished courtier and diplomatist in France, to announce that he would graciously receive them on the third evening at Versailles. Meanwhile, the most extensive preparations were made for the grand audience thus accorded, and when the appointed occasion had arrived, the entire gallery of mirrors, with all the adjacent spaces and corridors, were crowded with the beauty, the chivalry, the wit, taste, and intellect of France at that dazzling period. The gallery, which is three hundred and eighty feet in length, by fifty in height, derives its name from the priceless mirrors which adorn its walls, reaching from floor to ceiling, opposite the long row of equally tall and richly mullioned windows that look into the great court and gardens. These windows, hung with the costliest silk curtains, and adorned with superb historical statuary, give to the hall a light and aerial appearance indescribably enchanting, while the mirrors reflect in ten thousand variations the hall itself and its moving pageantry, rendering both apparently interminable. Huge marble vases filled with odorous exotics lie at the stairways, and twelve thousand wax lights in gilded brackets and chandeliers of the richest workmanship shone upon three thousand titled heads. Louis the Great himself never appeared to find her advantage. His truly royal countenance was lighted up with pride and satisfaction as the envoy of the haughty Oriental King approached the splendid throne on which he sat, and as he descended a step to meet him, and stood there in his magnificent robes of state, the Persian envoy bent the knee, and with uncovered head presented the credentials of his mission. Of the crowd that immediately surrounded the throne, it is something to say that the grand Colbert, the famous minister, and the admiral de Kers were by no means the most eminent, nor the lovely Duchess of Orleans, and her companion, the bewitching mademoiselle de Keroë, who afterwards changed the policy of Charles II of England by no means the most beautiful personages in the galaxy. A grand ball and supper concluded this night of splendour, and Rizabé was fairly launched at the French court, every member of which, to please the king, tried to outviar his compiers in the aciduity of his attentions, and the value of the books, pictures, gems, equipages, arms, etc., which they heaped upon the illustrious Persian. The latter gentleman very quietly smoked his pipe and lounged on his divan before company, and diligently packed up the goods when he and his jolly companions were left alone. The presence of the char had not yet arrived, but were daily expected via Marseille, and from time to time the olive coloured sweet was diminished by the departure of one of the number, with his chest on a special mission. So stated, to England, Austria, Portugal, Spain, and other European powers. In the meantime the bay was fated in all directions, with every species of entertainment, and it was whispered that the fair ones of that dissolute court were, from the first, eager in the bestowal of their smiles. The king favoured his Persian pet with numerous personal interviews, at which, in broken French, the envoy unfolded the most imposing schemes of Oriental conquest and commerce that his master was cordially willing to share with his great brother of France. At one of these chatty tetetets, the munificent Risa Bay, upon whom the king had already conferred his own portrait set in diamonds, and other gifts worth several millions of francs, placed in the royal hand several superb fragments of opal and turquoise, said to have been found in a district of country bordering on the Caspian Sea, which teamed with limitless treasures of the same kind, and which the Shah of Persia proposed to divide with France for the honour of her alliance. The king was enchanted, for these mere specimens, as they were deemed, must, if genuine, be worth in themselves a mint of money, and a province full of such, why, the thought was charming. Thus the great kingfish was fairly hooked, and Risa Bay could take his time. The golden tide that flowed into him did not slacken, and his own expenses were all provided for at the Tuileries. The only thing remaining to be done was a grand foray on the tradesmen of Paris, and this was splendidly executed. The most exquisite wares of all descriptions were gathered in, without mention of payment, and one by one the Persian phalanx distributed itself through Europe, until only two or three were left with the ambassador. At length word was sent to Versailles that the gifts from the Shah had come, and a day was appointed for their presentation. The day arrived, and the hall of audience was again thrown open. All was jubilee, the king and the court waited, but no Persian, no Risa Bay, no presence from the Shah. That morning three men, without either kaftans or robes, but very much resembling the black legs of the day in their attire and deportment, had left the Tuileries at daylight with a bag and a bundle, and returned no more. They were Risa Bay and his last bodyguard. The bag and the bundle were the smallest in bulk, but the most precious in value of a month's successful plunder. The turquoise and opals left with the king turned out, upon close inspection, to be a new and very ingenious variety of coloured glass, now common enough, and then worth, if anything, about thirty cents in cash. Of course a hue and cry was raised in all directions, but totally in vain. Risa Bay, the Persian Shah and the gentleman in flower pots had gone glimmering through the dream of things that were. Lettate-Sémoire had been sold for thirty cents. It was afterward believed that a noted barber and suspected bandit at Leghorn, who had once really travelled in Persia and there picked up the knowledge and the ready money that served his turn, was the perpetrator of this pretty joke and speculation, as he disappeared from his native city about the time of the embassy in France and did not return. All Europe laughed heartily at the grand monarch and his fair court dames, and an embassy from Persia was, for many years thereafter, an expression similar to Walker in English or Buncombe in American conversation, when the party using it seeks to intimate that the colour of his optics is not a distinct pea green. End of Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Of the Humbugs of the World This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Barry Eads. The Humbugs of the World by P. T. Barnum. Religious Humbugs. Chapter 44 Diamond-Cut Diamond, or Yankee Superstitions. Matthews the Imposter. New York Follies, 30 Years Ago. There is a story that on a great and solemn public occasion of the Romish Church, a pope and a cardinal were, with long faces, performing some of the gyrations of the occasion, when, instead of a pious ejaculation and reply, which were down in the program, once said to the other gravely, in Latin, Mundus Fault De Sepi. And the other replied, with equal gravity and learning, De Sepiatur Ergo. That is, all the world chooses to be fooled. Let it be fooled, then. This seems, perhaps, a reasonable way for priests to talk about ignorant Italians. It may seem inapplicable to cool, sharp, school-trained Protestant Yankees. It is not, however, at least not entirely. Intelligent Northerners have, sometimes, superstition enough in them to make a first-class, popish saint. If it had not been so, I should not have such an absurd religious humbug to tell of as Robert Matthews, notorious in our goodly city some thirty years ago, as Matthias the imposter. In the summer of 1832 there was often seen riding and Broadway in a handsome baroque, or promenading on the battery, usually attended by a sort of friend or servant, a tall man of some forty years of age, quite thin, with sunken, sharp gray eyes, with long, coarse, brown and gray hair, parted in the middle and curling on his shoulders and a long and coarse but well-tended beard and mustache. These, he saw like adornments, attracted much attention in those close-shaving days. He was commonly dressed in a fine-green frock coat, lined with white or pink satin, black or green pantaloons, with polished Wellington boots drawn on outside, fine cambrick ruffles and frill, and a crimson silk sash worked with cold and with twelve tassels for the twelve tribes of Israel. On his head was a steeple crown, patent leather, shining black cap with a shade. Thus bedisoned, this fantastic-looking personage marched gravely up and down, or rode in pomp in the streets. Sometimes he lounged in a bookstore or other place of semi-public resort, and in such places he often preached and exhorted. His preachments were sufficiently horrible. He claimed to be God the Father, and his doctrine was, in substance, this. Quote, The true kingdom of God on earth began in Albany in June 1830, and will be completed in twenty-one years, or by 1851. During this time wars are to stop, and I, Matthias, am to execute the divine judgments and destroy the wicked. The day of grace is to close on December 1st, 1836, and all who do not begin to reform by that time I shall kill. The discourses by which this blasphemous humbug supported his pretensions were a hodgepodge of impiety and utter nonsense, with rants, curses, and cries, and frightful threats against all objectors. Here is a passage from one. All who eat swine's flesh are of the devil, and just as certain as he eats it, he will tell a lie in less than half an hour. If you eat a piece of pork, it will go crooked through you, and the Holy Ghost will not stay in you, but one or the other must leave the house pretty soon. The pork will be as crooked in you as ram's horns." Again he made these pleasant points about the ladies. Quote, They who teach women are of the wicked. All females who lecture their husbands their sentence is, Depart ye wicked, I know you not. Everything that has the smell of woman will be destroyed. Woman is the cap chief of the abomination of desolation, full of all deviltry. There, ladies, is anything further necessary to convince you what a peculiarly wicked and horrible humbug this fellow was? If we had followed this imposter home, we should have found him lodged during most of his stay in New York City with one or the other of his three chief disciples. These were Pearson who commonly attended him abroad, Folger, and, for a time only, Mills. All three of these men were wealthy merchants. In their handsome and luxuriously furnished homes, this noxious humbug occupied the best rooms and controlled the whole establishment, directing the marketing, mealtimes, and all other household matters. Master, Mistress, in Mr. Folger's home, and domestics were disciples, and obeyed this camp with an implicitness and prostrate humility, even more melancholy than absurd, both as to housekeeping and as to the ceremonies, washing of feet, etc., which he enjoined. When he was angry with his female disciples, he frequently whipped them. But, being a monstrous coward, he never tried it on a man. The least opposition or contradiction threw him into a great rage and set him screaming and cursing and gesticulating like any street drab. When he wished more clothes, which was pretty often, one of his dupes furnished the money. When he wanted cash for any purpose indeed, they gave it him. This half-crazy nave, an abominable humbug, was Robert Matthews, who called himself Matthias. He was of Scotch descent and born about 1790 in Washington County, New York, and his blood was tainted with insanity for a brother of his died lunatic. He was a carpenter and joiner of uncommon skill, and up to nearly his fortieth year lived on the whole a useful and respectable life, being industrious, a professing Christian of good standing, and, having married in 1813, a steady family man. In 1828 and 1829, while living at Albany, he gradually became excited about religious subjects, his first morbid symptoms appearing after hearing some sermons by Reverend E. N. Kirk and Mr. Finney, the revivalist. He soon began to exhort his fellow journeymen, instead of minding his work, so uproariously that his employer turned him away. He discovered a text in the Bible that forbid Christians to shave. He let his hair and beard grow, began street preaching in a noisy brawling style, announced that he was going to set about coveting the whole city of Albany, which needed it badly enough if we may believe the political gentleman. Finding, however, that the lobby or the regency, or something or other about the peculiar wickedness of Albany, was altogether too much for him, he began, like Jonah at Nineveh, to announce the destruction of the obstinate town, and at midnight, one night in June 1826, he waked up his household, and saying that Albany was to be destroyed next day, took his three little boys, two, four, and six years old, his wife and oldest child, a daughter refusing to go, and fled to the mountains. He actually walked the poor little fellows forty miles and twenty-four hours to his sisters in Washington County. Here he was reckoned raving crazy, was forcibly turned out of church for one of his brawling interruptions of service, and sent back to Albany, where he resumed his street preaching more noisily than ever. He now began to call himself Matthias, and claimed to be a Jew. Then he went on a long journey to the western and southern states, preaching his doctrines, getting into jail, and sometimes fairly cursing his way out, and returning to New York City, preached up and down the streets in his crazy bawling fashion, sometimes on foot, and sometimes on an old bony horse. His New York City dupes, Elijah Pearson, and Benjamin H. Folger, and their families, together with a Mr. Mills and a few more, figured prominently in the chief chapter of Matthias' career, during two years and a half, from May 1832 to the fall of 1834. Pearson and Folger were the leaders in the folly. These men, merchants of wealth and successful in business, were of that sensitive and impressible religious nature which is peculiarly credulous and liable to enthousiasms and delusions. They had been, with a number of other persons, eagerly engaged in some extravagant religious performances, including excessive fasts and ascetic-sisms, and a plan formed by one of their lady friends to convert all New York by a system of female visitations and preachings. A plan not so very foolish, I may just remark, if the she Apostles are only pretty enough. Pearson, the craziest of the crew, besides other wretched delusions, had already fancied himself, Elijah the test-bite, and when his wife fell ill and died a little while before this time, had first tried to cure her and then to raise her from the dead by anointing with oil and by the prayer of faith as mentioned in the Epistle of Saint James. Curiously enough, a sort of lair or nest, very soft and comfortable, was thus made ready for our religious humbug, just as he wanted it worst, for in these days he was but seedy. He heard something of Pearson, I don't know how, and on the 5th of May 1832 he called on him. Very quickly the poor fellow recognized the long-bearded prophetical humbug as all that he claimed to be, a possessor and teacher of all truth, and as God himself. Mills and Folger easily fell into the same pitable foolery on Pearson's introduction, and the lucky humbug was very soon living in Clover in Mills's house which he chose first, had admitted the happy fools Pearson and Folger as the first two members of his true church. Pearson, believing that from Elijah the test-bite he had become John the Baptist, devoted himself as a kind of servant to his new Messiah, and the deluded men began to supply all the temporal wants of the imposter, believing their estates set apart as the beginning of the material kingdom of God. After three months, some of Mills's friends, on charges of lunacy, caused Mills to be sent to Bloemondale Asylum, and Matthias to be thrust into the insane poor's ward at Bellevue, where his beard was forcibly cut off to his extreme disgust. His brother, however, got him out by a habeas corpus and he went to live with Folger. Mills now disappears from the story. Matthias remained in the full enjoyment of his luxurious establishment until September 1834, it is true, with a few uncomfortable interruptions. He was always both insolent and cowardly, and thus often irritated some strong-minded auditor, and got himself into some pickle where he had to sneak out, which he did with much ease. In his seedy days, the landlord of a hotel in whose bar room he used to preach and curse put him down when he grew too abusive, by Cooley and sternly telling him to go to bed. Mr. Folger himself had one or two brief intervals of sense, in one of which angered at some insolence of Matthias, he seized him by the throat, shook him well, and flung him down upon a sofa. The humbug, knowing that his living was in danger, took this very mildly, and readily accepted the renewed assurances of belief which poor Folger soon gave him. In the village of Sing-Sing where Folger had a county seat, which he called Mount Zion, Matthias was exceedingly obnoxious. His daughter had married a Mr. Lysdale, and the humbug, who claimed that all Christian marriages were void and wicked, by some means induced the young wife to come to Sing-Sing, where he whipped her more than once quite cruelly. Her husband came and took her away after encountering all the difficulty which Matthias dared make, and at a hearing in the matter before a magistrate, he was very near getting tarred and feathered, if not something worse, and the danger frightened him very much. He barely escaped being shaved by violence, and being thrown overboard to test his asserted miraculous powers at the hands of a stout and incredulous farmer on the steamboat between Sing-Sing and New York. While imprisoned at Bellevue before his trial, he was tossed in a blanket by the prisoners to make him give them some money. The unlucky prophet dealt out damnation to them in great quantities, but they told him it wouldn't work, and the poor humbug finally, instead of casting them into hell, paid them a quarter of a dollar apiece to let him off. When he was about to leave Folger's house, some roguish young men of Sing-Sing forged a warrant, and with a counterfeit officer seized the humbug, and a second time shaved him by force. He was one day terribly set back, as the phrase is, by a sharpish answer. He gravely asserted to a certain man that he had been on the earth eighteen hundred years. His hearer, startled and irreverent, exclaimed, The devil you have, do you tell me so? I do, said the prophet. Then rejoined the other. All I have to say is, you are a remarkably good-looking fellow for one of your age. The confounded prophet Grinn scowled and exclaimed indignantly, You are a devil, sir, and marched off. At the beginning of August 1834, the unhappy Pearson died in Folger's house, under circumstances amounting to strong circumstantial evidence that Matthias, with the help of the colored cook, an enthusiastic disciple, had poisoned him with arsenic. The rascal pretended that his own curse had slain Pearson. There was a post mortem, an indictment, and a trial, but the evidence was not strong enough for conviction. Being acquitted, he at once tried again for an assault and battery on his daughter by the aforesaid whippings, and on this charge he was found guilty and sent to the county jail for three months in April 1835. The trial for murder was just before, the prophet having lain in prison since his apprehension for murder in the preceding autumn. Mr. Folger's delusion had pretty much disappeared by the end of the summer of 1834. He had now become ruined, partly in consequence of foolish speculations jointly with Pearson, believed to be conducted under divine guidance, and partly because his strange conduct destroyed his business reputation and standing. The death of Pearson and some other very queer matters about another apparent poisoning trick awakened the suspicions of the Folgers, and after a good deal of scolding and trouble with the impostor, who hung on to his comfortable home like a good fellow, Folger finally turned him out, and then had him taken up for swindling. He had been too foolish himself, however, to maintain this charge, but shortly after the others for murder and assault followed with a little better success. This imprisonment seems to have put a sudden and final period to the prophetical and religious operations of Master Matthias, and to the follies of his victims too. I know of no subsequent developments of either kind. Matthias disappeared from public life and died, it is said, in Arkansas, but when or after what further career I don't know. He was a shallow nave, and undoubtedly also partly crazy and partly the dupe of his own nonsense. If he had not so opportunally found victims of good standing, he would not have been remembered at all, except as George Monday, the hatless prophet, and Angel Gabriel Orr are remembered, as one more obscure, crazy street preacher, and as soon as his accidental supports of other people's money and enthusiasm failed him, he disappeared at once. Many of my readers will remember distinctly, as I do, the remarkable career of this man, and the humiliating position in which his victims were placed. In the face of such an exposition as this, of the weakness and credulity of poor human nature in this enlightened country of common schools and colleges in the boasted wide awake nineteenth century, who shall deny that we can study with interest and profit the history of impositions which have been practiced upon mankind in every possible phase throughout every age of the world, including the age in which we live? There is literally no end to these humbugs, and the reader of these pages, weak as may be my attempts to do the subject justice, will learn that there is no country, no period, and no sphere in life which has not been impiously invaded by the genius of humbug, under more disguises and in more shapes than it has entered into the heart of man to conceive.