In later times, some of those who pretended to have the secret and to perform great wonders by the use of it, became rich and celebrated, and were much sought after.  The most distinguished of these pseudo-alchemists was he who passed under the name of Cagliostro.  His life bears witness to the eagerness of human beings to be deceived.

Joseph Balsamo was born in 1743 at Palermo, where his parents were tradespeople in a good way of business.[5] In the memoir of himself, which he wrote in prison, Balsamo seeks to surround his birth and parentage with mystery; he says, “I am ignorant, not only of my birthplace, but even of the parents who bore me....  My earliest infancy was passed in the town of Medina, in Arabia, where I was brought up under the name of Acharat.”

   [5] The account of the life of Cagliostro is much condensed
   from Mr A.E.  Waite’s Lives of the Alchemystical Philosophers.

When he was thirteen years of age, Balsamo’s parents determined he should be trained for the priesthood, but he ran away from his school.  He was then confined in a Benedictine monastery.  He showed a remarkable taste for natural history, and acquired considerable knowledge of the use of drugs; but he soon tired of the discipline and escaped.  For some years he wandered about in different parts of Italy, living by his wits and by cheating.  A goldsmith consulted him about a hidden treasure; he pretended to invoke the aid of spirits, frightened the goldsmith, got sixty ounces of gold from him to carry on his incantations, left him in the lurch, and fled to Messina.  In that town he discovered an aged aunt who was sick; the aunt died, and left her money to the Church.  Balsamo assumed her family name, added a title of nobility, and was known henceforward as the Count Alessandro Cagliostro.

In Messina he met a mysterious person whom he calls Altotas, and from whom, he says in his Memoir, he learnt much.  The following account of the meeting of Balsamo and the stranger is taken from Waite’s book:  “As he was promenading one day near the jetty at the extremity of the port he encountered an individual singularly habited and possessed of a most remarkable countenance.  This person, aged apparently about fifty years, seemed to be an Armenian, though, according to other accounts, he was a Spaniard or Greek.  He wore a species of caftan, a silk bonnet, and the extremities of his breeches were concealed in a pair of wide boots.  In his left hand he held a parasol, and in his right the end of a cord, to which was attached a graceful Albanian greyhound....  Cagliostro saluted this grotesque being, who bowed slightly, but with satisfied dignity.  ’You do not reside in Messina, signor?’ he said in Sicilian, but with a marked foreign accent.  Cagliostro replied that he was tarrying for a few days, and they began to converse on the beauty of the town and on its advantageous situation, a kind of Oriental imagery individualising the eloquence of the stranger, whose remarks were, moreover, adroitly adorned with a few appropriate compliments.”