Читать книгу The Old and the New Magic - Henry Ridgely Evans - Страница 19

Speaking of the great charlatan, the Anglo-Indian essayist Greeven in an article published a few years ago in the {47} Calcutta Review writes: “It is not enough to say that Cagliostro posed as a magician, or stood forth as the apostle of a mystic religion. After all, in its mild way, our own generation puts on its evening dress to worship at the feet of mediums, whose familiar spirits enable them to wriggle out of ropes in cupboards, or to project cigarette papers from the ceiling [à la Madame Blavatsky]. We ride our hobby, however, only when the whim seizes us, and, as soon as it wearies, we break it in pieces and fling it aside with a laugh. But Cagliostro impressed himself deeply on the history of his time. He flashed on the world like a meteor. He carried it by storm. Princes and nobles thronged to his ‘magic operations.’ They prostrated themselves before him for hours. His horses and his coaches and his liveries rivaled a king’s in magnificence. He was offered, and refused, a ducal throne. No less illustrious a writer than the Empress of Russia deemed him a worthy subject of her plays. Goethe made him the hero of a famous drama. A French Cardinal and an English Lord were his bosom companions. In an age which arrogated {48} to itself the title of the philosophic, the charm of his eloquence drew thousands to his lodges, in which he preached the mysteries of his Egyptian ritual, as revealed to him by the Grand Kophta under the shadow of the pyramids.”