The Old and the New Magic. Henry Ridgely Evans
assistance, if required. De Grisy at last gave reluctant consent. Fortune seemed to favor him, moreover, for the King signified his intention to attend in company with his entire court.
August 20, 1798, this extraordinary exhibition took place. The house was packed. The royal family received the young French emigrant with tokens of favor and sympathy. De Grisy, confident of success, was in the happiest mood, but in his very first experiment a bitter disillusion awaited him. A secret confederate, posted by Pinetti, had loaned a ring to carry out the already-described trick, “The Recovered Ring,” which was properly found in the mouth of the great fish. Conscious of the success of this loudly-applauded feat, De Grisy bowed his thanks, when an angry remonstrance was heard from the person who had loaned the ring. This man declared that in lieu of his costly gold ring, set with diamonds, there had been returned to him a trumpery imitation set with ordinary glass stones. A long and painful discussion ensued, and De Grisy owed it only to his tact that he finally extricated himself from the affair. He was not clear himself as to whether the ring had somehow been changed, or whether the assistant played a role from some secret motive.
He proceeded to the performance of his next experiment with less concern, in that no secret confederate was needed. He approached the King’s box and asked him to do him the honor of drawing a card from a pack he tendered. The King complied with much graciousness; but scarcely had he looked at it than {39} he flung it to the ground with every mark of his displeasure. De Grisy, confounded, picked up the card, and read on it a scandalous insult to the king, in Pinetti’s handwriting! An attempt to explain and clear himself was checked by an imperative gesture from the King. The betrayed man, who now understood the situation, distracted with rage, rushed behind the scenes with the intent to kill his deceitful friend. Like a maniac he traversed every portion of the house, but the Chevalier Pinetti had disappeared, as though the earth had swallowed him! Wherever De Grisy now showed himself, he was received with jeers, hisses and insults from his audience, until he fell senseless and was borne by servants to his house. After his rival’s removal, Pinetti appeared as though by chance; whereupon several persons in the secret called on him to continue the performance, to which he courteously acceded, and gained enthusiastic plaudits.
During a violent fever which ensued, De Grisy constantly called in his delirium for revenge on Pinetti; but the latter quitted Naples soon after the occurrence. Poor De Grisy was socially and professionally tabooed by the aristocracy of Naples. Pinetti’s revenge seemed complete.
Though De Grisy thoroughly comprehended the contemptible ruse of his opponent, he was long in uncertainty how to punish him. His first impulse was to challenge the magician to fight a duel, but that idea he rejected. Pinetti was not worthy of such an honor. For the purpose of completing his restoration to health, De Grisy passed some time in the quiet of the country, and here the thought occurred to him to fight his betrayer with his own weapons, and, in this contest, to either conquer or wholly abandon all ideas of revenge. He set himself for half a year to the most assiduous study, in order to attain perfection in the art of magic, not merely equal to Pinetti’s, but superior to it. He improved on many of his rival’s experiments, invented new ones, and expended his entire fortune in providing apparatus and decorations which should cast into the shade Pinetti’s superb appointments.
And now issued De Grisy forth to a duel, bloodless, it is true, but none the less a struggle to the death. {40}
He learned that Pinetti had, in the meantime, visited the principal cities of central Italy, and had just left Lucca with the view of visiting Bologna next; later Modena, Parma, Piacenza, etc. Without loss of time, De Grisy took his way to Modena, in order to forestall his rival there, and debar him from any further performances. The latter had already caused the announcement of his forthcoming entertainments to be spread over the city, and the Modena journals had widely advertised the speedy coming of the wonder worker, when suddenly the exhibitions of the “Count de Grisy, the French escamoteur,” were announced. The people crowded the house from top to bottom. De Grisy’s success was unparalleled. Then, as the date for Pinetti’s appearance drew near, he left the town and went to Parma. Pinetti had no faith in De Grisy’s success, and installed himself in the same theatre which the latter had lately quitted, in reliance on his own celebrity. But here began that humiliating experience which was henceforth to be his lot. The town was sated with this species of entertainment, and the Chevalier’s house was empty. Still, accustomed to take the highest place, he would not yield to a “novice.” Accordingly, he directed his steps to Parma immediately, and established himself in a theatre just opposite to De Grisy’s. In vain! He had the mortification of seeing his house deserted, while his rival’s was constantly filled. Nevertheless, Pinetti would not yield, but wheresoever De Grisy went he followed.
Thus were visited, one after another, Piacenza, Cremona, Mantua, Vicenza, Padua, and Venice, whose walls witnessed the embittered strife of the two rivals, until Pinetti, whose most zealous supporters were turning recreant, could blind himself no longer to the fact that he had lost the game which he and De Grisy had been playing. He closed his theatre and betook himself to Russia.
For a short time it seemed as though Fortune would indemnify him for his ill luck. But, after having for so long showered her favors on him, it now appeared that she had finally and definitely turned her back upon him. Long and severe illness exhausted not only his vigor, but the slender means he had saved from shipwreck. Pinetti fell into the most abject want. A {41} nobleman in the village of Bartitschoff in Volhynien took him in from pity. And thus, at the turn of the century, ended the life of this richly gifted artist, who was so wanting in nobility of spirit.
The extraordinary story of Pinetti’s downfall was told to Robert-Houdin by De Grisy himself, and is given at length in Houdin’s memoirs. Pinetti had married a Russian girl, the daughter of a carriage-maker. By her he had two children. He was hardly fifty when he died. Etienne-Gaspard Robertson when traveling in Russia met the widow Pinetti at Bialistock. She showed him her husband’s cabinet of physics and endeavored to sell it to him, but he did not purchase it. However, he bought a medallion, set with diamonds, and a ring which the Czar had presented to Pinetti. Says Robertson, in his memoirs: “Pinetti had the audacity to ask the Russian Emperor to stand god-father for his children at the baptismal font, and the Emperor actually consented.”
To me this seems nothing wonderful.
Why should not the greatest conjurer of the age ask a favor of the greatest autocrat? Both were sovereigns in their particular domain.
CAGLIOSTRO—A STUDY IN CHARLATANISM.
“Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.”—Latin Proverb.
“The pseudo-mystic, who deceives the world because he knows that the world wishes to be deceived, becomes an attractive subject for psychological analysis.”—HUGO MÜNSTERBERG: Psychology and Life.
“Unparalleled Cagliostro! Looking at thy so attractively decorated private theatre, wherein thou actedst and livedst, what hand but itches to draw aside thy curtain; overhaul thy pasteboards, paint-pots, paper-mantles, stage-lamps, and turning the whole inside out, find thee in the middle thereof!”—CARLYLE: Miscellaneous Essays.
I.
In the summer of 1893, I was in Paris, partly on business, partly on pleasure. In the Figaro one day, shortly after my arrival, I read about the marvelous exhibitions of magic of M. Caroly, who was attracting crowds to his séances diaboliques at the Capucine Theatre of the Isola Brothers. I went to see the nineteenth-century necromancer exhibit his marvels. I saw some very clever illusions performed during the evening, but nothing that excited my especial interest as a devotee of the weird and wonderful, until the prestidigitateur came to his pièce de résistance—the Mask of Balsamo.