A Strange Story.

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1752, 25 September 1875, Page 6 (Supplement)

A Strange Story.

The Count St. Germain, the Hero

of Bulwer's Weird Novel

A writer in All the Tear Bound says : We catch the first glimpses of the Count St. Germain in Paris, a century and a quarter ago, filling the Court and the town with his renown. Amazed Paris saw a man —apparently of middle age—a man who lived in magnificent style, who went to dinner parties, where he ate nothing, but talked incessantly, and with exceeding brilliancy, on every imaginable topic. Bis tone was, perhaps, over trenchant ] —the tone of a man who knows perfectly what he is talking about. Learned, speaking every civilized language admirably, a great musician, an excellent chemist, he played the part of a prodigy, and played it to perfection. Endowed with extraordinary or consumate impudence, he not only laid down the law magisterially concerning the present, but spoke without hesitatiou of events two hundred years old. His anecdotes of remote occurrences were related with extraordinary minuteness. He spoke of scenes at the Court of Francis 1., as if he had seen them, describing exactly the appearance of the king, imitating his voice, manner and language — affecting throughout the character of an eye-witness. In like style he edified his audience with pleasant stories of Louis XIV., and regaled them with vivid descriptions of places and persons. Hardly saying in so many words' that he was actually, present when the events happened, he yet contrived, by his graphic power, to convey that impression. Intending to astonish, he succeeded completely. Wild stories were current concerning him. He was reported to be 300 years old, and to have prolonged his life by the use of a famous elixir. Paris went mad about him. He was questioned constantly about his secret of longevity, and was marvellously adroit in his replies, denying all power to make old folks young again, but quietly asserting his possession of the secret of arresting decay in the human frame. Diet, he protested, was, with his marvellous elixir, the true secret of long life, and he resolutely refused to eat any food but such as had been specially prepared for him—oat meal, groats, and the white meat of chickens. On great occasions he drank a little wine, sat up as late as anybody would listen to him, but took extraordinary precautions against the cold. To ladies he gave mysterious cosmetics,

to preserve their beauty unimpaired ; to- men he talked openly of his method of transmuting metals, and of a certain process for melting down a dozen little diamonds into one large stone. . hese astounding assertions were backed by the possession of apparently unbounded wealth, and a collection of jewels of rare size and beauty. Erom time to time this strange being appeared in various European capitals under various names, as Marquis of Montferrat, Count BeLamare at Venice, Chevalier Schoening at Pisa, Chevalier Weldon at Milan, Count Soltikoff at Genoa, Count Tzarogy at Schwalbach, and finally as Count St. Germain at Paris; but after his disaster at the Hague, he no longer seems so wealthy as before, and has at times the appearance of seeking his fortune. At Tournay he is ' interviewed' by the renowned Chevalier de Seingalt, who finds him in an Armeniau robe and pointed cap, with long beard descending to his waist and ivory wand in hand—the complete make-up of a necromancer. Saint Germain is surrounded by a legion of pottles, and is occupied in devoloping the manufacture of hats upon chemical principles. i-eingalt being indisposed, the Count offers to physic him gratis, and offers to dose him with an elixir which appears to have been ether; but the other refuses with many polite speeches, it is the scene of the two augurs. Not being allowed to act as a physician, Saint Germain determines to show his power as an alchemist; takes a twelve-sous piece from the other augur, puts it on a red-hot charcoal, and works it with the blow-pipe. The piece of money is fused and allowed to cool. 'Now,' says Saint Germain, ' take your money again.' 'But it is gold. 'Of the purest.' Augur No. 2 does not believe in the transmutation, and looks on the whole operation as a trick; but he pockets the piece, nevertheless, and finally presents it to the celebrated Marshal Keith, then Covernor of Neuchatel. Again, in pursuit of dyeing and other manufacturing schemes, Saint (Germain turned up at St. Petersburg, Dresden and Milan. Once he got into trouble, and was arrested in a petty town of Piedmont on a protested bill of exchange; but he pulled out a hundred thousand crowns' worth of jewels, paid on the spot, bullied the Governor of the town, and was released with the most respectful excuses. Very little doubt exists that during one of bis residences in Russia he played an important part in the revolution which placed Catherine I. on the throne. In support of this view, Baron Gleichen cites the extraordinary attention bestowed on '■* aint Germain at Leghorn, in 1770, by Count .Alexis Orloff, and a remark made by Prince Gregory OrlofF to the Margrave of Anspach during his stay at Nuremberg, After all, who was he? —the son of a Portuguese king or of a Portuguese Jew ? or did he, in his old age, tell the truth to his protector and enthusiastic admirer, Prince Charles of Hesse-Cassel ? According to the story told his last friend, he was the I son of a Prince Rakoczy of Transylvania, and his first wife, a Tekely. He was placed, when an infant, under the protection of the last of the Medici. When he grew up and heard that his two brothers, sons' of the Princess Hasse-Kheinfels, or Rothenburg, had received the names of St. C harles aud St. Elizabeth, he determined to take the name of their holy brother, Sanctus Germanus. What was the truth ? One thing alone is certain, that he was a protege of the last Medici. Prince Charles, who appeared to have regretted his death, which happened in 1783, very sincerely tell us that he fell sick, while pursuing his experiments in colours at Eckrenforde, and died shortly after, despite the innumerable medicaments prepared by his own private apothecary. Erelerick the Great, who, despite his scepticism took a queer interest in astrologers, said of him, 'THs is a man who does not die.' Mirabeau adds, epigrammatically,' He was always a careless fellow, and at last, unlike his predecessors, forgot not to die.'