QI The Book of the Dead

fourteen-year-old Roman girl called Lorenza Serafina Feliciani from a poor family. She was both heart-stoppingly beautiful and more than a match for her husband in cunning. Without her, Giuseppe Balsamo might never have promoted himself to the giddy heights of Count Alessandro di Cagliostro. They were a brilliant team – he was handsome, charismatic and ruthless; she was prepared to do anything to achieve a life of luxury and privilege. Giuseppe used her charms to entrap wealthy men whom he could then blackmail. On meeting the consummate con man, the Marquis of Agliata, he went even further, trading his wife’s sexual favours in return for instruction in how to forge official documents. Soon he could produce letters of credit, wills, army commissions, even titles. A string of new identities followed. Styling themselves ‘the Colonel and Mrs Pelligrini’, they met Casanova. He was captivated by them but warned them to be careful: forgery was a risky business and carried the death penalty. He needn’t have worried: Rome was already becoming too small and the Inquisition too suspicious. The Pelligrinis disappeared and the Count and Countess di Cagliostro took Europe by storm.
    Over the next two decades, they lived and worked in France, England, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Russia and Poland. In Germany they met another great impostor, the Count de Saint Germain, who made a decent living by claiming to be 2,000 years old. As ever, Cagliostro listened and learned. In Strasbourg, he encountered the fashionable theory of animal magnetism and incorporated it into his act. In London, the chance discovery of an old manuscript inspired him to revive the ancient Egyptian Order of Masons, publicising it as a return to the authentic roots of freemasonry. Renting a house in Sloane Street, he billed himself as the ‘Grand Coptha’. Serafina was the Grand Priestess, able to transfer the eternal spirit simply by breathing on a person’s cheek. The Order not only admitted women to the Lodge, it held elaborate ceremonies in which participants of both sexes wore nothing but diaphanous robes. Acolytes were taught the names of seven secret angels to ease their path to earthly riches and immortality. Polite London society was mesmerised and subscriptions poured in.
    The basic business plan was the same wherever they went. Arriving in a city, they rented grand and luxurious rooms and announced the establishment of a brand new school of medicine and philosophy. The services they offered wove together Masonry, alchemy, animal magnetism and Giuseppe’s trusty elixir of life – with an unmistakeable background throb of sex. Cagliostro led the healing and the rituals; the Countess sat looking ravishing and offering a direct connection to the spirit world, like some elegant piece of mystical wireless technology. As one Parisian chronicler remarked:
    There was hardly a fine lady in Paris who would not sup with the shade of Lucretius; a military officer who would not discuss war with Caesar, Hannibal or Alexander; or an advocate or counsellor who would not argue legal points with Cicero .
     
    Premium services such as the elixir and the spirit consultations had to be paid for, but the healing was free and open to all. This was a brilliant marketing ploy: once the news spread, the sick and the poor queued up at the premises, adding philanthropy to the Cagliostros’ burgeoning reputation. What’s more, the treatments seemed to work. In Strasbourg more than 15,000 people claimed they had been cured; in Bordeaux thecrowd greeting their arrival was so vast the local militia had to be deployed; and in Lyon Cagliostro-fever led to the building of a vast new Masonic temple to house his ‘Egyptian Rite’.
    As is the way with fads, the excitement soon faded. Most of the cures came from the placebo effect, from people’s own belief in the magical powers on offer. Once that started to waver, the success rate dwindled and Cagliostro was forced to make even more extreme claims: that he could travel in time; he had been with Christ at the wedding at Cana; he could make himself invisible. When business started to fall off, it was time to move on.
    This served them well for several years and they amassed quite a fortune. Then things started to go seriously awry. Cagliostro’s attempt to seduce Catherine the Great with a love potion was a hopeless failure. She declared him a fraud and a menace and had him thrown out of Russia. In London a team of