ABSTRACT
EARLY LIFE AND ADVENTURES I:T no one do him the injury of supposing that Vannetti regarded the Liber Memorialis with blind complacency: he was extremely critical of his own writings. It is true that, as soon as it was published, his Latin chronicle had completely
put into the shade Gianviglio Giannini's little poem, and Donna Bianca-Laura's predictions had beel! fulfilled in every particular. But such a success, obtained without effort, and even at the price of a scandal, offended his modesty. In his view, those ephemeral sheets, scribbled on the spur of the moment, were no substitute for the big book he was thinking of writing on the Count de Cagliostro. This pamphlet was a mere introduction, a faithful statement by an eye-witness-nothing more. He had not touched upon the essential problem. But he certainly hoped to deal with it at length in his next work, for, to Vannetti as to the rest of the world, the question was whether, as was coolly being maintained by the Courrier de Z'Europe, the Count Alexander de Cagliostro was formerly known as Giuseppe Balsamo.
