Nothing binds people like common sins. Sometimes joint adventures turn out to be stronger than even such a deep feeling as love. It was this fraud that tied the adventurer Count Alessandro Cagliostro and his wife Lorenza Feliciana with a strong thread.
As you know, Count Alessandro Cagliostro was not really any count. And his real name was Giuseppe Balsamo. He was born in 1743 in Palermo. His father was a small shopkeeper. The future "graph" was one of those children who, in childhood, are called nothing less than parental headaches. He categorically did not want to study. But he lied to his parents with inspiration. In the end, the rebellious boy was pushed into a school at a Benedictine monastery. But the monks could not cope with it either.
Career "magician"
The only person who had some power over Giuseppe was the apothecary monk. The boy could spend days and nights in his laboratory cell. But he was quickly kicked out of school - for theft. After leaving the Benedictines, the future great adventurer vowed to refrain from banal thefts. He, like Ostap Bender, familiar to Russians from the books of Ilf and Petrov, learned to come up with more or less honest methods of taking money.
Soon a young man with an extremely lively gaze began to drive around the Italian province. He claimed to be able to guess the numbers of winning lottery tickets. And he presented to the most respectable public a certain gentleman who swore and swore that thanks to Alessandro Cagliostro he became rich: the magician and wizard told him the number of the lucky ticket.
The new sonorous name - Alessandro Cagliostro - Giuseppe took arbitrarily. Naturally, a whole line lined up for the lucky numbers, which the sorcerer called for a modest fee. It is even more natural that no one won anything. The swindler was captured and brought to justice. Only God knows how the newly-minted Cagliostro managed to get out then.
Having somehow fought off the court, Cagliostro fled the province. Soon fate brought him together with the magician Altotas. In the company of a mysterious alchemist, the young adventurer for some time tried to create the Philosopher's Stone and extract gold from mercury. Along the way, Alessandro acquired a lot of valuable knowledge that was later useful to him.
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Now he needed an assistant. Rather, an assistant. For nothing attracts and disarms clients like a beautiful woman who accompanies a magician and wizard.
Crime duo
He chose Lorenza Feliciana. Why did the great and terrible Cagliostro focus on a simple servant? The girl was called the main beauty of Rome. She looked like a typical Italian: tall, black-haired, with a luxurious figure and huge eyes. By the time of his marriage, the fraudster was surrounded by aristocrats eager for his attention. But the cold and soulless man understood perfectly well: he needed a smart lady, but not burdened with unnecessary knowledge that give rise to doubts and whims. So they got married. The beauty of Lorenza immediately "went into action."
The parents of the beauty realized too late who their daughter had connected with. They tried to hide Lorenza from the crook. But it was not there! Cagliostro literally enslaved his wife! The two of them quickly drove away from the dissatisfied relatives.
The falsegraph explained to his wife that marital fidelity is empty words, behind which there is nothing. The main thing is to be with each other in soul and to do everything for joint material well-being. True, not everything went smoothly at first. Somehow Signora Cagliostro drove a wealthy man crazy. She swore to him eternal love and begged him to take her away from her tyrant husband. Literally at the last moment, the enraged Cagliostro burst into the lovers' abode. Lorenza was sent to prison for adultery. Coming out of there a few months later, she discovered that not a rich admirer was waiting for her, but a faithful and forgiving husband.
Cagliostro taught Lorenz the art of seducing wealthy simpletons. In addition, now the almighty Cagliostro sometimes paid with the services of his wife with angry clients.
The resourceful Alessandro came up with a simple trick. He persuaded his wife to seduce precisely married rich people. Then, at the agreed time, Cagliostro burst into the bedroom, where Lorenza indulged in the joys of love with another lover bound by marital ties. The "jealous" husband made a scene and demanded from Lorenza's lover a tidy sum for silence. The rich were afraid of divorce: the dissolution of marriage for many was fraught with ruin. The "magician and wizard" left with a full purse.
But sometimes everything did not go according to plan, and then a couple of swindlers had to carry their feet right out from under the noses of those who were thirsty for fair retribution.
The couple's life has turned into an eternal escape journey. They ran away, of course, with the money of the deceived. Cagliostro grew rich. Gradually he turned into a languid and charming gentleman, whose fingers were decorated with expensive rings. Jewels he coquettishly called "trinkets".
Doll and puppeteer
Lorenza lost her will completely, becoming a toy in the hands of an avid husband. And he, not at all hiding, twisted novels right and left. He justified his behavior by concern for the material well-being of the family. Lorenza got confused: she no longer knew when her husband starts affairs with rich men for money, and when - for her own pleasure.
When he saw fit, the "magician and wizard" presented Lorenza not as a wife, but as an assistant. Actually, she did not understand what role he gave her in this or that situation. She knew only her native Italian well. And her, of course, gifted husband easily learned one language after another, stringing them like beads on a string. Although in all dialects he spoke with an incomprehensible accent, apparently finding a special chic in this.
Cagliostro's knowledge of chemistry and biology helped a lot. He generously supplied his clients with elixirs that were supposed to help them in all cases of life: from migraines to the need to return home a spree husband.
Here is how, for example, Cagliostro himself described the effect of a drug that restores youth: “… after taking two grains of this drug, a person loses consciousness and speechlessness for three whole days, during which he often experiences convulsions, convulsions and sweat appears on his body. After waking up from this state, in which he, however, does not feel the slightest pain, on the thirty-sixth day he takes the third and last grain, after which he falls into a deep and restful sleep. During sleep, his skin peels off, teeth and hair fall out. They all grow back within a few hours. In the morning of the fortieth day, the patient leaves the room, becoming a new person …"
But even more the fraudster in his difficult business was helped by the natural ability to fool and hypnotize people. His main clients were people of the hysterical type, easily amenable to suggestion. Especially women, for whom it was enough to say that they are healthy, and the ladies recovered. And they made Cagliostro honest advertising.
In 1780, the couple arrived in Russia. Lorenza, as usual, started an affair with a rich man - the favorite of Catherine II, Count Potemkin. The queen did not like this - the spouses were expelled from the country. And they ran as usual. However, taking with him a fair amount of jewelry presented to Lorenza by the queen's lover.
Then there were France, Italy, an attempt to organize a mysterious Masonic lodge. The case ended in court. In 1791, the false count was convicted of fraud. Exhausted and recovered, Lorenza testified against her husband.
But this did not save her: Signora Cagliostro was imprisoned for life in a monastery, where she soon died. Her husband died in 1795 in prison. According to rumors, the jailers poisoned him.
Maria Konyukova