of being, so that we can discover its dark, and its radiant, treasures.
Thomas will have his third birthday, soon, and he will forget bamohee. But he has been there, and I was there.
I shall make certain he has something beside socks and underwear for his third birthday.
You know how grandfathers are, and grandmothers.
Bamohee!
The Bed of Cagliostro
All this took place some time ago, but I think it would not be inappropriate to put at least something about it down on paper.
I would feel better about it, at any rate.
As a police matter, of course, the case is closed, and has been, for years.
Nonetheless I think it would not be amiss to record, for any it might interest, certain details associated with, if not actually germane to, the case.
I am supposing there would be no objection to this.
Also, this is scarcely the sort of thing to which one would draw the attention of the police.
It would seem clearly to lie beyond the compass of their interest, jurisdiction, or expertise.
He was a magician, of course. That must not be lost sight of.
Indeed, this was perhaps intended to be his greatest illusion.
I think it would be a mistake to lose sight of that possibility.
He had taken the stage name of Cagliostro, perhaps you remember him, this doubtless constituting a nod, or perhaps in its way a tribute, however ironic, to a somewhat notorious predecessor, the fabled 18th-century alchemist, charlatan, and magician, from whom he claimed descent. The latter claim seems implausible, and, at the least, has never been verified.
He had purchased, at considerable cost, some months before the incident, what was alleged to have been the bed of the original Cagliostro. I had thought the provenance of the purchase suspect, but it is difficult to know about such things. Certainly the bed did date from the late 18th Century; it was a large, massive, ornate, late-Baroque device, the high bedposts surmounted with the massive carved heads of two fearsome, maned, leonine beasts. The feet of the bed were carved in the likeness of paws, with the claws extended. The sideboards were carved in what I suppose was intended to be the likeness of thick, curling vines, though, rather, looked at in a certain way, they seemed rather like multiply jointed, spined, tentacles, apparently emanating from, or somehow connected with, the leonine figures surmounting the bedposts. The bed, clearly, was an authentic period piece, but there seems, as far as I can tell, no particular reason to associate it with the historical Cagliostro. To be sure, not even the provenance claims he actually slept in the bed, merely that he owned it. Indeed, the provenance suggests that it may have actually been purchased, and then given to a friend, or former patron. Little, if anything, is known, however, of this alleged friend, or patron. History is silent with respect to this. The name was something like Le Comte du Nouy, but I may be misremembering this, and, in any event, I do not now have access to either the provenance or its attendant documents. One gathers they were lost, after the incident. It seems there may have been some sort of falling out between the Signor Cagliostro and the count, and the threat of some legal action or other. But his life seems to have been filled with such alarms, as well as flights, pursuits, apprehensions, imprisonments, and such. Indeed, he seems to have eventually died in prison. The history of the bed seems better documented from 1840 on, when it first appears on the records of a dealer in London, who apparently received it from a merchant in Palermo, Sicily, over a year earlier. Supposedly it had accompanied Cagliostro long before that, a generation or so earlier, in his extensive travels, which he undertook commonly, for some reason, under a number of assumed names, travels to various European capitals, resorts, spas, and centers of status and affluence. He was famous, allegedly, for ingratiating himself with, and then deluding and
Thomas will have his third birthday, soon, and he will forget bamohee. But he has been there, and I was there.
I shall make certain he has something beside socks and underwear for his third birthday.
You know how grandfathers are, and grandmothers.
Bamohee!
The Bed of Cagliostro
All this took place some time ago, but I think it would not be inappropriate to put at least something about it down on paper.
I would feel better about it, at any rate.
As a police matter, of course, the case is closed, and has been, for years.
Nonetheless I think it would not be amiss to record, for any it might interest, certain details associated with, if not actually germane to, the case.
I am supposing there would be no objection to this.
Also, this is scarcely the sort of thing to which one would draw the attention of the police.
It would seem clearly to lie beyond the compass of their interest, jurisdiction, or expertise.
He was a magician, of course. That must not be lost sight of.
Indeed, this was perhaps intended to be his greatest illusion.
I think it would be a mistake to lose sight of that possibility.
He had taken the stage name of Cagliostro, perhaps you remember him, this doubtless constituting a nod, or perhaps in its way a tribute, however ironic, to a somewhat notorious predecessor, the fabled 18th-century alchemist, charlatan, and magician, from whom he claimed descent. The latter claim seems implausible, and, at the least, has never been verified.
He had purchased, at considerable cost, some months before the incident, what was alleged to have been the bed of the original Cagliostro. I had thought the provenance of the purchase suspect, but it is difficult to know about such things. Certainly the bed did date from the late 18th Century; it was a large, massive, ornate, late-Baroque device, the high bedposts surmounted with the massive carved heads of two fearsome, maned, leonine beasts. The feet of the bed were carved in the likeness of paws, with the claws extended. The sideboards were carved in what I suppose was intended to be the likeness of thick, curling vines, though, rather, looked at in a certain way, they seemed rather like multiply jointed, spined, tentacles, apparently emanating from, or somehow connected with, the leonine figures surmounting the bedposts. The bed, clearly, was an authentic period piece, but there seems, as far as I can tell, no particular reason to associate it with the historical Cagliostro. To be sure, not even the provenance claims he actually slept in the bed, merely that he owned it. Indeed, the provenance suggests that it may have actually been purchased, and then given to a friend, or former patron. Little, if anything, is known, however, of this alleged friend, or patron. History is silent with respect to this. The name was something like Le Comte du Nouy, but I may be misremembering this, and, in any event, I do not now have access to either the provenance or its attendant documents. One gathers they were lost, after the incident. It seems there may have been some sort of falling out between the Signor Cagliostro and the count, and the threat of some legal action or other. But his life seems to have been filled with such alarms, as well as flights, pursuits, apprehensions, imprisonments, and such. Indeed, he seems to have eventually died in prison. The history of the bed seems better documented from 1840 on, when it first appears on the records of a dealer in London, who apparently received it from a merchant in Palermo, Sicily, over a year earlier. Supposedly it had accompanied Cagliostro long before that, a generation or so earlier, in his extensive travels, which he undertook commonly, for some reason, under a number of assumed names, travels to various European capitals, resorts, spas, and centers of status and affluence. He was famous, allegedly, for ingratiating himself with, and then deluding and
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