Alessandro Cagliostro Quotes

The kinder, more patient and attentive you are, the more of your bars I will remove, so that in some months—who knows how soon?—you will become perhaps more free than I am, in the sense that you will not want to curtail my liberty.

Mark this, my child, that I have tried to have this place fit for a queen, with nothing lacking for your comfort. So calm your folly. Live here as you would do in your convent cell.

Heaven forgets, or tolerates—waiting for you to reform

What are you saying—and you a Christian woman? Is your creed which bids you return good for evil but a hypocrisy, that you pretend to follow it, and you boast of revenge—evil for good?

Alas, is it your fault, or that of the Creator? Why were you made the angel with the infallible gaze, by whose aid I should make the universe submit? Why is it that you are the one to read a soul through its bodily envelope as one may read a book through a glass! Because you are an angel of purity, Lorenza, and nothing throws a shadow upon your soul. In your radiant and immaculate bosom the divine spark may be enshrined, a place without sullying where it may fitly nestle. You are a seer because you are blameless, Lorenza.

Perchance your prayers will earn your grace, but then you will see nothing of what comes to pass, as you will rest in the arms of the angels. Pray, lady; continue to pray!

Is it fault of mine, I say, if this future, revealed to you as a holy woman, should be shown to me as a precursor; and if the dauphiness, alarmed at the fate personally threatening her, swooned when it loomed upon her? For her reign is doomed as the most fatal and unfortunate of the entire monarchy.

She saw it in the gap which I tore in the veil over the future. That future which has appeared so awful to your royal highness that you have fled into a cloister to wrestle against it at the altar with tears and prayers.

Is it fault of mine that truth is so awful as to produce such effects? Did I seek out the princess, and beg to be presented to her? No, I was avoiding her, when they almost dragged me before her, and she ordered me to answer her interrogation.

Do not try to irritate me. I am but the instrument of a higher Power, used to enlighten you. Insult fate and it will revenge itself, well knowing how. I merely interpret its moves. Do not fling at me the wrath which will recoil on yourself, for you can not visit on me the woes of which I am the sinister herald.

Your highness shall know your fate, since your blindness drives you to it... Let her hear, for since she wanted to know, know she shall!

I cannot speak. Some things must not be told to princes... My wizard is worn out... Nothing is to follow but the gold turning into dry leaves, as in the Arabian tale.