Count Cagliostro

While we know him for his awesome mnR light, who was Count Cagliostro and why does his character appear in the mini-play set in the dungeon laboratories of the Sieged Castle?

From "Extraordinarily Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds", Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1932.

This famous charlatan, the friend and successor of St. Germain, ran a career still more extraordinary. He was the arch-quack of his age, the last of the great pretenders to the philosopher's stone and the water of life, and during his brief season of prosperity, one of the most conspicuous characters of Europe.

His real name was Joseph Balsamo. He was born at Palermo, about the year 1743, of humble parentage. He had the misfortune to lose his father during his infancy, and his education was left in consequence to some relatives of the mother, the latter being too poor to afford him any instruction beyond mere reading and writing.

He was sent in his fifteenth year to a monastery, to be taught the elements of chemistry and physics; but his temper was so impetuous, his indolence so invincible, and his vicious habits so deeply rooted, that he made no progress. After remaining some years, he left with the character of an uninformed and dissipated young man, with good natural talents but a bad disposition. When he became of age, he abandoned himself to a life of riot and debauchery, and entered himself into that celebrated fraternity, known in France and Italy as the "Knights of Industry."

After some trouble in Italy, Balsamo left for Medina, in Arabia, and there became acquainted with a Greek name Altotas, a man exceeding well versed in all the languages of the East, and an indefatigable student of alchymy. He possessed an invaluable collection of Arabian manuscripts on his favourite science, and studied them with such unremitting industry, that he found he had not sufficient time to attend to his crucibles and furnaces without neglecting his books.

After a successful textile venture in around the basin of the Mediterranean, Balsamo left his associate in Malta. He changed his name from Balsamo on account of the many ugly associations that clung to it; and during his travels had assumed at least half a score of names, with titles annexed to them. He called himself sometimes the Chevalier de Fischio, the Marquis de Melissa, the Baron de Belmonte, de Pelligrini, d'Anna, De Fenix, de Harat, but most commonly the Count de Cagliostro. Under the latter title he entered Rome, and never afterwards changed it.

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Cagliostro and his wife, the countess, travelled to Italy where they were arrested by the Papal government in 1789, and condemned to death. The charges against him were, that he was a freemason, a heretic, and a sorcerer. This unjustifiable sentence was afterwards commuted into one of perpetual impreisonment in the Castle of St. Angelo. His wife was allowed to escape severe punishment by immuring herself in a nunnery. Cagliostro did not long survive. The loss of liberty preyed upon his mind -- accumulated misfortunes had injured his health and broken his spirit, and he died early in 1790.