Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/713

Rh   CAGLIARI,. See.  CAGLIOSTRO,, (1743-1795), the arch-impostor of modern times, was born at Palermo in 17-13. Joseph Balsamo—for such was the count s real name—gave early indications of those talents which afterwards gained for him so wide a notoriety. He received the rudiments of his education at the convent of Cartagirone; where, being employed to read to the monks during dinner, he scandalized the good fathers by repeating the names and detailing the adventures of the most notoriously profligate females of his native town. For these and similar misdeeds he was expelled from the convent and disowned by his relations. He now signalized himself by the ingenuity with which he contrived to perpetrate crimes without exposing himself to the risk of detection. He began by forging tickets for the theatres ; then he forged a will ; he next robbed his own uncle, and ultimately committed a murder. For the last offence he was imprisoned and brought to trial; but through a defect in the evidence, he escaped with his life. On his release he engaged a goldsmith, by name Marano, to assist him in searching for a hidden treasure, Marano paying 60 oz. of gold in advance to defray expenses. On arriving at the cave where Joseph declared the treasure to be, six devils, prepared beforehand, rushed out upon the goldsmith, beat him soundly, and left him insensible. Dreading the vengeance of Marano, Balsamo quitted Sicily, and visited in succession Greece, Egypt, Arabia, Persia, Khodes (where he took lessons in alchemy and the cognate sciences from the Greek Althotas), Malta, Naples, Rome, and Venice. At Rome he married a beautiful but unprincipled woman, with whom he travelled, under a variety of names, through the various countries of Europe. It is unnecessary to recount the various infamous means which he employed to support himself during his travels. At Strasburg he reaped an abundant harvest by professing the art of making old people young ; in which pretension he was seconded by his wife Lorenzo Feliciani, who, though only twenty years of age, declared that she was sixty, and that she had a son a veteran in the Dutch service. In Paris he was implicated in the affair of the diamond neck lace ; and though he escaped conviction by the matchless impudence of his defence, he was imprisoned for other reasons in the Bastille. On his liberation he visited England, where he succeeded well at first ; but he was ultimately outwitted by some English lawyers, and was confined for a while in the Fleet. Leaving England, he travelled through Europe till he arrived at Rome, where he was arrested in 1789. He was tried and condemned to death for being a Freemason, but the sentence was afterwards commuted to perpetual imprisonment. He died in the fortress prison of San Leo in 1795. The best account of the life, adventures, and character of Joseph Balsamo is contained in Carlyle s Miscellanies. Dumas s novel, Memoirs of a Physician, is founded on his adventures. See also a series of papers in the Dublin University Magazine, vols. Ixxviii. and Ixxix.  CAGNOLA, (17G2-1 833), a celebrated architect, a native of Milan. He was sent at the age of fourteen to the Clementine College at Rome, and afterwards studied at the university of Pavia. He was intended for the legal profession, but his passion for architecture was too strong, and after holding some Government posts at Milan, he entered as a competitor for the construction of the Porta Orientale. His designs were commended, but were not selected on account of the expense their adoption would have involved. From that time Cagnola devoted himself entirely to architecture. After the death of his father he spent two years in Verona and Venice, studying the architectural structures of these cities. In 1806 he was called upon to erect a triumphal arch on the occasion of Eugene Beauharnais s marriage with the princess of Bavaria. The arch was of wood, but was of such beauty that it was resolved to carry it out in marble. The result was the magnificent Arco della Pace in Milan, one of the grandest erections of modern architecture, surpassed in dimensions only by the Arc de 1 Etoile at Paris. Among other works executed by Cagnola are the Porta di Marengo at Milan, the Campanile at Urgnano, and the chapel of Santa Marcellina in Milan. He died on the 14th of August 1833.  CAGOTS, a people found in the Basque provinces, Beam, and Gascony. During the Middle Ages they were popularly looked upon as cretins, lepers, heretics, and even as cannibals. Entirely excluded from all political and social rights, they were not even allowed to enter a church but by a special door, or to remain except in a part where they were carefully secluded from the rest of the wor shippers. To partake of the mass was never permitted them. They were compelled to wear a distinctive dress, to which, in some places, was attached the foot of a goose or duck (whence they were sometimes called Canards). And so pestilential was their touch considered that it was a crime for them to walk the common road barefooted. The only trades allowed them were those of butcher and carpenter, and their ordinary occupation was wood-cutting. Their language is merely a corrupt form of that spoken around them ; but a Teutonic origin seems to be indicated by their fair complexions and blue eyes. Their crania have a normal development ; their cheek-bones are high ; their noses prominent, with large nostrils; their lips straight; and they are marked by the absence of the auricular lobules. Upon the last peculiarity great stress is laid by anthropolo gists, and it is held to point to a Gothic origin. The common opinion of authorities is that this people are descendants of the Visigoths, and M. Michel derives the name from caas (dog) and Goth. But opposed to this etymology is the fact that the word cagot is first found in the/or of Be arn not earlier than 1551, while the older MSS. call these peoples Chretiens, or Chrestiaas, a term which, on this hypothesis, would have its origin from the fact that these Visigoths, left behind in Aquitaine, were Christians, while the Gascons were still Pagans. On the contrary, M. Marca, in his Histoire de Beam, holds that the word signifies &quot; hunters of the Goths,&quot; and that the Cagots are descendants of the Saracens. Again, some would make them descendants of the Albigenses ; others of crdtins (they are sometimes called Cretins) ; and others of lepers, declaring their name to be connected with the Celtic caccod and the Spanish gafo. In the laws of Navarre (1704) they are indeed styled gaffos, and treated as lepers ; but in those of B^arn, they are clearly distinguished from them. Small communities, believed to be of the same race, and existing in a similar social condition, being classed with them as &quot; les races maudites,&quot; are to be found in Maine, Anjou, Poitou, and Aunis, under the name of Colliberts (a word said by Ducange to be derived from cum and libertus, and signifying &quot;neither free nor slave&quot;); in Brittany, under the names Cahds Caqueux, Cacous, 