s Cagliostro, Mesmer, and the mysterious Saint Germain the
deathless. Cagliostro and Saint Germain both came on the world with an
appearance of great wealth and display. The source of the opulence of
Saint Germain is as obscure as was the source of the sudden enrichment
of Beau Wilson, whom Law, the financier, killed in a duel. Cagliostro,
like Law, may have acquired his diamonds by gambling or swindling. But
neither these two men nor Mesmer, though much in the society of
princes, could have hoped, openly and with the approval of Louis XV.
or Louis XVI., to wed a noble lady. Yet Home did so twice, though he
had no wealth at all.

Cagliostro was a low-born Neapolitan ruffian. But he had a presence!
In the Memoirs of Madame d'Oberkirch she tells us how much she
disliked and distrusted Cagliostro, always avoiding him, and warning
Cardinal Rohan against him--in vain. But she admits that the man
dominated her, or would have dominated her, by something inexplicable
in his eyes, his bearing, and his unaccountable knowledge, as when he
publicly announced, on a certain day, the death of the great Empress,
Maria Theresa, of which the news did not arrive till five days later.
Now Home had none of this dominating personality. He has been
described to me, by a lady who knew him in his later years, when he
had ceased to work drawing-room miracles in society, as a gentle,
kindly, quiet person, with no obvious fault, unless a harmless and
childlike vanity be a fault. Thus he struck an observer not of his
intimate circle. He liked to give readings and recitations, and he
played the piano with a good deal of feeling. He was a fair linguist,
he had been a Catholic, he was of the middle order of intelligence, he
had no 'mission' except to prove that disembodied spirits exist, if
that were a legitimate inference from the marvels which attended him.

Mr. Robert Bell in _The Cornhill Magazine_, Vol. II., 1860, described
Home's miracles in an article called 'Stranger than Fiction.' His
account of the man's personality is exactly like what I have already
given. Home was 'a very mild specimen of familiar humanity.' His
health was bad. 'The expression of his face in repose' (he was only
twenty-seven) 'is that of physical suffering.... There is more
kindliness and gentleness than vigour in the character of his
features.... He is yet so young that the playfulness of boyhood has
not passed away, and he never seems so thoroughly at ease with himself