of Pesaro’s chere amie, the Marchese Vivaldi, when Cagliostro was arrested and sent to the Castello Santo Angelo at Rome, was obliged to fly his country, and went to Venice, where he was kept secreted and maintained by the Marquis Solari, and it was only through his means and those of the Cardinal Consalvi, then known only as the musical Abbe Consalvi, from his great attachment to the immortal Cimarosa, that Vivaldi was ever allowed to return to his native country; but Consalvi, who was the friend of Vivaldi, feeling with the Marquis Solari much interested for his situation, they together contrived to convince Pius VI. that he was more to be pitied than blamed, and thus obtained his recall.  I have merely given this note as a further warning to be drawn from the connections of the Cardinal de Rohan, to deter hunters after novelty from forming ties with innovators and impostors.  Cagliostro was ultimately condemned, by the Roman laws under Pope Pius VI., for life, to the galleys, where he died.

Proverbs ought to be respected; for it is said that no phrase becomes a proverb until after a century’s experience of its truth.  In England it is proverbial to judge of men by the company they keep.  Judge of the Cardinal de Rohan from his most intimate friend, the galley-slave.]

“Eight or ten years had elapsed from the time Her Majesty had last seen the Cardinal to speak to him, with the exception of the casual glance as she drove by when he furtively introduced himself into the garden at the fete at Trianon, till he was brought to the King’s cabinet when arrested, and interrogated, and confronted with her face to face.  The Prince started when he saw her.  The comparison of her features with those of the guilty wretch who had dared to personate her in the garden at Versailles completely destroyed his self-possession.  Her Majesty’s person was become fuller, and her face was much longer than that of the infamous D’Oliva.  He could neither speak nor write an intelligible reply to the questions put to him.  All he could utter, and that only in broken accents, was, ‘I’ll pay!  I’ll pay Messieurs Bassange.’

“Had he not speedily recovered himself, all the mystery in which this affair has been left, so injuriously to the Queen, might have been prevented.  His papers would have declared the history of every particular, and distinctly established the extent of his crime and the thorough innocence of Marie Antoinette of any connivance at the fraud, or any knowledge of the necklace.  But when the Cardinal was ordered by the King’s Council to be put under arrest, his self-possession returned.  He was given in charge to an officer totally unacquainted with the nature of the accusation.  Considering only the character of his prisoner as one of the highest dignitaries of the Church, from ignorance and inexperience, he left the Cardinal an opportunity to write a German note to his factotum, the Abbe Georgel.  In this note the trusty secretary was ordered to destroy all the letters of Cagliostro, Madame de Lamotte, and the other wretched associates of the infamous conspiracy; and the traitor was scarcely in custody when every evidence of his treason had disappeared.  The note to Georgel saved his master from expiating his offence at the Place de Grave.