"'What you ask is not a trifle,' said our count, 'yet, I think I can satisfy you, provided that you swear by all that is holy and terrible, not to speak to the person I shall evoke, to make no motion nor gesture, to utter no sound, while the apparition stands before you.'
"Porporina promised to do so, and went boldly into the dark closet.
"I need not tell you, gentlemen, that this young woman is one of the most intellectual and correct persons to be met with. She is well educated, thinks well about all matters, and I have reason to know no narrow or restricted idea makes any impression upon her.
"She remained in the ghost-room long enough to make her companions very uneasy. All was silent as possible and finally she came out very pale, and with tears streaming from her eyes. She immediately said to her companions, 'If Cagliostro be a sorcerer, he is a deceiving one. Have faith in nothing that he shows you. She would say no more. Conciolini, however, told me a few days after, at one of my concerts, of this wonderful entertainment. I promised myself to question Porporina about it, the first time she sang at _Sans Souci._ I had much difficulty in making her speak of it, but thus she told me:
"'Cagliostro has beyond a doubt the strange power of producing spectres so like truth that it is impossible for the calmest minds to be unmoved by them. He is no magician and his affectation of reading my thoughts was based on some knowledge, I know not how acquired, of my past life. His knowledge, however, is incomplete, and I would not advise you, sire, to make him your Minister of Police, for he would perpetrate strange mistakes. Thus, when I asked him to show me the absent person I wished to see, I thought of my music-master, Porpora, who is now at Vienna. Instead of him, I saw in the magic-room a very dear friend I lost during the current year.'"
"_Peste!_" said D'Argens, "that is more wonderful even than the apparition of a living person."
"Wait a moment, gentlemen. Cagliostro, badly informed, had no doubt but what he had shown was the phantom of a living person, and, when it had disappeared, asked Porporina if what she had seen was satisfactory. 'In the first place, monsieur,' said she, 'I wish to understand it. Will you explain?' 'That surpasses my power. Be assured that your friend is well, and usefully employed.' To this the signora replied, 'Alas! sir, you have done me much wrong; you showed me a person of whom I did not think, and who is, you say, now living. I closed his eyes six months ago.' Thus, gentlemen, in deceiving others, sorcerers deceive themselves, and thus their plans are foiled, by something which is wanting in their secret police. To a certain point they penetrate into family mysteries and secret intimacies. All human histories are more or less alike, and as people inclined to the wonderful are not close examiners, they fall twenty times out of thirty. Ten times, however, out of thirty, they are wrong. They care nothing about that, though they are very loud about those of their revelations which succeed. This is the case, too, with horoscopes, in which they predict a series of common-place events, which must happen to everybody, such as voyages, diseases, the loss of a friend, an inheritance, a meeting, an interesting letter, and the thousand other casualties of human life. Look at the catastrophes and domestic chagrins, to which the revelations of a Cagliostro expose weak and passionate minds. The husband who confides in them, kills an innocent wife; a mother goes mad with grief at the death of an absent son. This pretended magic art causes countless other disasters. All this is infamous; and none can say that I was wrong in exiling from my states this Cagliostro, who guesses so exactly, and has such a perfect understanding with the dead and buried."