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Updated: June 19, 2025
One of the most striking, amusing, and instructive pages in the history of humbug is the life of Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, 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.
Down sat Adam, playing nervously with his hat, and intensely hoping that no other client would come in and trap him. "Mr Balsamo will see you," said the secretary, emerging through a double black portière. "The fee is a guinea." He resumed his chair and drew towards him a book of receipt forms. A guinea! However, Adam paid it.
"Balsamo!" it cried, "thy thoughts are blasphemy; thy lamentations are foolishness; thy mind is darkened by the glooms of a most barren dejection. Away! vain Sceptic, with the syllogisms of infidelity. The glory of the immortal WILL evades thy comprehension in the depths of infinitude. When in its natural brightness, the spiritual being of man reflects that glory as in a mirror.
She is dressed in white, with a gold-and-white sunshade, and yellow gloves and boots, and she has a gold reticule in her hand. Is that she?" Ralph Martin admitted that it was she. On the other hand, Balsamo did not admit that he had seen her an hour earlier and had made an appointment with her. There was a quiet knock on the door. Ralph started.
Balsamo stared calmly at a young dark-browed man who had entered his sanctuary with much the same air as a village bumpkin assumes when he is about to be shown the three-card trick on a race-course. Balsamo did not even ask him to sit down. "Why do you come to me? You don't believe in me," said Balsamo, curtly. "Why waste your half-sovereign?" Ralph Martin, not being talkative, said nothing.
Their passport, dated Rome, called him Balsamo, while she bore the names of Serafina Feliciani, which she still retains. Ten years later we shall hear more of this couple under the name of Cagliostro. "We are going back to Rome," said she, "well pleased with our devotions to St. James of Compostella and to Our Lady del Pilar.
Fashioned in a mould as marvellous as that golden orb, and animated in like manner by a devilish and wily spirit, was Balsamo the Rosicrucian. Between the period of his birth in 1743, and that of his dissolution in 1795, when incarcerated in a dungeon of San Leo, at Rome, Cagliostro, rendered himself in a manner illustrious by practising upon the credulity of his fellow-creatures.
"Since you mention his Christian name, I will mention his surname. It is written here. Martin." "He can't have possibly " Balsamo strode with offended pride to the portière, and pulled it away, revealing Mr Ralph Martin, who for the second time that afternoon knew not what to say or to do. "I tell you " Ralph began, as red as fire. "Silence, sir!
A moment later the sweet thin chords of the guitar quivered in the quiet air, and a tenor, so fine that even Russell stood entranced, sang to Benicia one of the old songs of Monterey: Una mirada un suspiro, Una lagrima querida, Es balsamo
For example, Adam Tellwright found himself ascending the stairs of No. 22 Machin Street at an early hour one morning. He was, I need not say, mounting to the third floor to give an order to the potter's modeller, who had a studio up there. Still he stopped at the first floor, knocked at a door labelled "Balsamo," hesitated, and went in. I need not say that this was only fun on his part.
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