"Whatever sympathy for Cagliostro my researches may have evoked it has always been exceeded by contempt of those who, combining an unreasoning prejudice with a slovenly system of compilation, have repeated the old charges against him with parrot-like stupidity. The object of this book is not so much an attempt to vindicate Cagliostro as to correct and revise, if possible, what I believe to be a false judgment of history."

“He is a dangerous man, terrible too, before whom everything bends, snaps and crumbles away. When he is taken to be defenseless he is armed at all points; when believed alone, he stamps his foot and an army springs up; or at a beck of the finger—smiling the while.”

“Thus it was reported that Cagliostro stopped one day before a Descent from the Cross in the Louvre and began to talk of the Crucifixion as if he had witnessed it. Though the story was devoid of foundation it was not without effect, and many declared, and believed too, that the Grand Cophta had lived hundreds, and even thousands of years.”

“The day after his acquittal he was banished from France by order of the king. At St. Denis his carriage was driven between two dense and silent lines of sympathizers; and, as his vessel cleared the port of Boulogne, 5,000 persons knelt down on the shore to receive his blessing.”

“In his own day, with very few exceptions, those whom he charmed or duped—as you will—by acts that in any case should have inspired gratitude rather than contempt observed a profound silence.”

“There is little loss. I let the boiling go on the hundredth of a minute too long. Trifles are enormous in the hermetical art, but anyway, here are two crucibles empty and two ingots cast, and they amount to a hundred weight of fine gold.”

“He taught that the Philosopher's Stone was no fable, and that belief many before and since his time have shared...”