er intention to reach the capital by
post-coaching.

Of course, the most superb traveling-carriages and teams were placed at
her disposal; but, courteously declining all these offers, she set out
in the night-time with a hired establishment, attended by her retinue.

Days and weeks rolled on, and yet no announcement came of the arrival of
her Highness at London or at any of the intervening cities after the
first two or three towns eastward of Bristol. Inquiry began to be made,
and, after long and patient but unavailing search, it became apparent to
divers and sundry dignitaries in the old town that somebody had been
very particularly "sold."

The landlord at the "White Lion" who had accepted the agent's order for
L1,000 on a Calcutta firm in London; poor Mr. Worrall, who had been
Master of Ceremonies at the town hall affair, and had spent large sums
of money; and the tradespeople and others who sent their finest goods,
all felt that they had "heard something drop." The Princess Cariboo had
disappeared as mysteriously as she came.

For years, the people of Bristol were unmercifully ridiculed throughout
the entire Kingdom on account of this affair, and burlesque songs and
plays immortalized its incidents for successive seasons.

One of these insisted that the Princess was no other than an actress of
more notoriety than note, humbly born in the immediate vicinity of the
old city, where she practiced this gigantic hoax, and that she had been
assisted in it by a set of dissolute young noblemen and actors, who
furnished the money she had spent, got up the oriental dresses,
published the fibs, and fomented the excitement. At all events, the net
profit to her and her confederates in the affair must have been some
L10,000.

Within a few months, and since the first publication of the above
paragraphs, the English newspapers have recorded the death of the
"Princess Cariboo," who it appears afterward married in her own rank in
life and spent a considerable number of years of usefulness in the leech
trade--an occupation not without a metaphorical likeness to her early
and more ambitious exploit.

CHAPTER XL.

COUNT CAGLIOSTRO, ALIAS JOSEPH BALSAMO, KNOWN ALSO AS "CURSED JOE."

One of the most striking, amusing, and instructive pages in the history
of humbug is the life of Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, whose real name
was Joseph or Giuseppe Balsamo. He was born at Palermo, in 1743, and
very early began to manifes