Saint-germain The Deathless
Among the best brief masterpieces of fiction are Lytton's The
Haunters and the Haunted, and Thackeray's Notch on the Axe in
Roundabout Papers.* Both deal with a mysterious being who passes
through the ages, rich, powerful, always behind the scenes, coming
no man knows whence, and dying, or pretending to die, obscurely--
you never find authentic evidence of his disease. In other later
times, at other courts, such an o
course of luxury, marvel, and hidden potency.
* Both given in the accompanying volume containing "Old Time
English" Stories. See also the first story in the "North Europe"
volume.--Editor.
Lytton returned to and elaborated his idea in the Margrave of A
Strange Story, who has no "soul," and prolongs his physical and
intellectual life by means of an elixir. Margrave is not bad, but
he is inferior to the hero, less elaborately designed, of The
Haunters and the Haunted. Thackeray's tale is written in a tone of
mock mysticism, but he confesses that he likes his own story, in
which the strange hero through all his many lives or reappearances,
and through all the countless loves on which he fatuously plumes
himself, retains a slight German-Jewish accent.
It appears to me that the historic original of these romantic
characters is no other than the mysterious Comte de Saint-Germain--
not, of course, the contemporary and normal French soldier and
minister, of 1707-1778, who bore the same name. I have found the
name, with dim allusions, in the unpublished letters and MSS. of
Prince Charles Edward Stuart, and have not always been certain
whether the reference was to the man of action or to the man of
mystery. On the secret of the latter, the deathless one, I have no
new light to throw, and only speak of him for a single reason.
Aristotle assures us, in his Poetics, that the best-known myths
dramatized on the Athenian stage were known to very few of the
Athenian audience. It is not impossible that the story of Saint-
Germain, though it seems as familiar as the myth of Oedipus or
Thyestes, may, after all, not be vividly present to the memory of
every reader. The omniscent Larousse, of the Dictionnaire
Universel, certainly did not know one very accessible fact about
Saint-Germain, nor have I seen it mentioned in other versions of
his legend. We read, in Larousse, "Saint-Germain is not heard of
in France before 1750, when he established himself in Paris. No
adventure had called attention to his existence; it was only known
that he had moved about Europe, lived in Italy, Holland, and in
England, and had borne the names of Marquis de Monteferrat, and of
Comte de Bellamye, which he used at Venice."
Lascelles Wraxall, again, in Remarkable Adventures (1863), says:
"Whatever truth there may be in Saint-Germain's travels in England
and the East Indies, it is undubitable that, for from 1745 to 1755,
he was a man of high position in Vienna," while in Paris he does
not appear, according to Wraxall, till 1757, having been brought
from Germany by the Marechal de Belle-Isle, whose "old boots," says
Macallester the spy, Prince Charles freely damned, "because they
were always stuffed with projects." Now we hear of Saint-Germain,
by that name, as resident, not in Vienna, but in London, at the
very moment when Prince Charles, evading Cumberland, who lay with
his army at Stone, in Staffordshire, marched to Derby. Horace
Walpole writes to Mann in Florence (December 9, 1745):
"We begin to take up people . . . the other day they seized an odd
man who goes by the name of Count Saint-Germain. He has been here
these two years, and will not tell who he is, or whence, but
professes that he does not go by his right name. He sings, plays
on the violin wonderfully, composes, is mad, and not very sensible.
He is called an Italian, a Spaniard, a Pole; a somebody that
married a great fortune in Mexico, and ran away with her jewels to
Constantinople; a priest, a fiddler, a vast nobleman. The Prince
of Wales has had unsatiated curiosity about him, but in vain.
However, nothing has been made out against him; he is released,
and, what convinces me he is not a gentleman, stays here, and talks
of his being taken up for a spy."
Here is our earliest authentic note on Saint-Germain; a note
omitted by his French students. He was in London from 1743 to
1745, under a name not his own, but that which he later bore at the
Court of France. From the allusion to his jewels (those of a
deserted Mexican bride), it appears that he was already as rich in
these treasures as he was afterwards, when his French acquaintances
marveled at them. (As to his being "mad," Walpole may refer to
Saint-Germain's way of talking as if he had lived in remote ages,
and known famous people of the past).
Having caught this daylight glimpse of Saint-Germain in Walpole,
having learned that in December, 1745, he was arrested and examined
as a possible Jacobite agent, we naturally expect to find our
contemporary official documents about his examination by the
Government. Scores of such records exist, containing the questions
put to, and the answers given by, suspected persons. But we vainly
hunt through the Newcastle MSS., and the State Papers, Domestic, in
the Record Office, for a trace of the examination of Saint-Germain.
I am not aware that he was anywhere left his trail in official
documents; he lives in more or less legendary memoirs, alone.
At what precise date Saint-Germain became an intimate of Louis XV.,
the Duc de Choiseul, Madame de Pompadour, and the Marechal de
Belle-Isle, one cannot ascertain. The writers of memoirs are the
vaguest of mortals about dates; only one discerns that Saint-
Germain was much about the French Court, and high in the favor of
the King, having rooms at Chambord, during the Seven Years' War,
and just before the time of the peace negotiations of 1762-1763.
The art of compiling false or forged memoirs of that period was
widely practiced; but the memoirs of Madame du Hausset, who speaks
of Saint-Germain, are authentic. She was the widow of a poor man
of noble family, and was one of two femmes de chambre of Madame de
Pompadour. Her manuscript was written, she explains, by aid of a
brief diary which she kept during her term of service. One day M.
Senac de Meilhan found Madame de Pompadour's brother, M. de
Marigny, about to burn a packet of papers. "It is the journal," he
said, "of a femme de chambre of my sister, a good, kind woman." De
Meilhan asked for the manuscript, which he later gave to Mr.
Crawford, one of the Kilwinning family, in Ayrshire, who later
helped in the escape of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette to
Varennes, where they were captured. With the journal of Madame du
Hausset were several letters to Marigny on points of historical
anecdote.[1]
[1] One of these gives Madame de Vieux-Maison as the author of a
roman a clef, Secret Memoirs of the Court of Persia, which contains
an early reference to the Man in the Iron Mask (died 1703). The
letter-writer avers that D'Argenson, the famous minister of Louis
XV., said that the Man in the Iron Mask was really a person fort
peu de chose, 'of very little account,' and that the Regent
d'Orleans was of the same opinion. This corroborates my theory,
that the Mask was merely the valet of a Huguenot conspirator, Roux
de Marsilly, captured in England, and imprisoned because he was
supposed to know some terrible secret--which he knew nothing about.
See The Valet's Tragedy, Longmans, 1903.
Crawford published the manuscript of Madame du Hausset, which he
was given by de Meilhan, and the memoirs are thus from an authentic
source. The author says that Louis XV. was always kind to her, but
spoke little to her, whereas Madame de Pompadour remarked, "The
King and I trust you so much that we treat you like a cat or a dog,
and talk freely before you."
As to Saint-Germain, Madame du Hausset writes: "A man who was as
amazing as a witch came often to see Madame de Pompadour. This was
the Comte de Saint-Germain, who wished to make people believe that
he had lived for several centuries. One day Madame said to him,
while at her toilet, "What sort of man was Francis I., a king whom
I could have loved?" "A good sort of fellow," said Saint-Germain;
"too fiery--I could have given him a useful piece of advice, but he
would not have listened." He then described, in very general
terms, the beauty of Mary Stuart and La Reine Margot. "You seem to
have seen them all," said Madame de Pompadour, laughing.
"Sometimes," said Saint-Germain, "I amuse myself, not by making
people believe, but by letting them believe, that I have lived from
time immemorial." "But you do not tell us your age, and you give
yourself out as very old. Madame de Gergy, who was wife of the
French ambassador at Venice fifty years ago, I think, says that she
knew you there, and that you are not changed in the least." "It is
true, Madame, that I knew Madame de Gergy long ago." "But
according to her story you must now be over a century old." "It
may be so, but I admit that even more possibly the respected lady
is in her dotage."
At this time Saint-Germain, says Madame du Hausset, looked about
fifty, was neither thin nor stout, seemed clever, and dressed
simply, as a rule, but in good taste. Say that the date was 1760,
Saint-Germain looked fifty; but he had looked the same age,
according to Madame de Gergy, at Venice, fifty years earlier, in
1710. We see how pleasantly he left Madame de Pompadour in doubt
on that point.
He pretended to have the secret of removing flaws from diamonds.
The King showed him a stone valued at 6,000 francs--without a flaw
it would have been worth 10,000. Saint-Germain said that he could
remove the flaw in a month, and in a month he brought back the
diamond--flawless. The King sent it, without any comment, to his
jeweler, who gave 9,600 francs for the stone, but the King returned
the money, and kept the gem as a curiosity. Probably it was not
the original stone, but another cut in the same fashion, Saint-
Germain sacrificing 3,000 or 4,000 francs to his practical joke.
He also said that he could increase the size of pearls, which he
could have proved very easily--in the same manner. He would not
oblige Madame de Pompadour by giving the King an elixir of life: "I
should be mad if I gave the King a drug." There seems to be a
reference to this desire of Madame de Pompadour in an unlikely
place, a letter of Pickle the Spy to Mr. Vaughan (1754)! This
conversation Madame du Hausset wrote down on the day of its
occurrence.
Both Louis XV. and Madame de Pompadour treated Saint-Germain as a
person of consequence. "He is a quack, for he says he has an
elixir," said Dr. Quesnay, with medical skepticism. "Moreover, our
master, the King, is obstinate; he sometimes speaks of Saint-
Germain as a person of illustrious birth."
The age was skeptical, unscientific, and, by reaction, credulous.
The philosophes, Hume, Voltaire, and others, were exposing, like an
ingenious American gentleman, "the mistakes of Moses." The Earl of
Marischal told Hume that life had been chemically produced in a
laboratory, so what becomes of Creation? Prince Charles, hidden in
a convent, was being tutored by Mlle. Luci in the sensational
philosophy of Locke, "nothing in the intellect which does not come
through the senses"--a queer theme for a man of the sword to study.
But, thirty years earlier, the Regent d'Orleans had made crystal-
gazing fashionable, and stories of ghosts and second-sight in the
highest circles were popular. Mesmer had not yet appeared, to give
a fresh start to the old savage practice of hypnotism; Cagliostro
was not yet on the scene with his free-masonry of the ancient
Egyptian school. But people were already in extremes of doubt and
of belief; there might be something in the elixir of life and in
the philosopher's stone; it might be possible to make precious
stones chemically, and Saint-Germain, who seemed to be over a
century old at least, might have all these secrets.
Whence came his wealth in precious stones, people asked, unless
from some mysterious knowledge, or some equally mysterious and
illustrious birth?
He showed Madame de Pompadour a little box full of rubies, topazes,
and diamonds. Madame de Pompadour called Madame du Hausset to look
at them; she was dazzled, but skeptical, and made a sign to show
that she thought them paste. The Count then exhibited a superb
ruby, tossing aside contemptuously a cross covered with gems.
"That is not so contemptible," said Madame du Hausset, hanging it
round her neck. The Count begged her to keep the jewel; she
refused, and Madame de Pompadour backed her refusal. But Saint-
Germain insisted, and Madame de Pompadour, thinking that the cross
might be worth forty louis, made a sign to Madame du Hausset that
she accept. She did, and the jewel was valued at 1,500 francs--
which hardly proves that the other large jewels were genuine,
though Von Gleichen believed they were, and thought the Count's
cabinet of old masters very valuable.
The fingers, the watch, the snuffbox, the shoe-buckles, the garter
studs, the solitaires of the Count, on high days, all burned with
diamonds and rubies, which were estimated, one day, at 200,000
francs. His wealth did not come from cards or swindling--no such
charges are ever hinted at; he did not sell elixirs, nor
prophecies, nor initiations. His habits do not seem to have been
extravagant. One might regard him as a clever eccentric person,
the unacknowledged child, perhaps, of some noble, who had put his
capital mainly into precious stones. But Louis XV. treated him as
a serious personage, and probably knew, or thought he knew, the
secret of his birth. People held that he was a bastard of a king
of Portugal, says Madame du Hausset. Perhaps the most ingenious
and plausible theory of the birth of Saint-Germain makes him the
natural son, not of a king of Portugal, but of a queen of Spain.
The evidence is not evidence, but a series of surmises. Saint-
Germain, on this theory, 'wrop his buth up in a mistry' (like that
of Charles James Fitzjames de la Pluche), out of regard for the
character of his royal mamma. I believe this about as much as I
believe that a certain Rev. Mr. Douglas, an obstreperous
Covenanting minister, was a descendant of the captive Mary Stuart.
However, Saint-Germain is said, like Kaspar Hauser, to have
murmured of dim memories of his infancy, of diversions on
magnificent terraces, and of palaces glowing beneath an azure sky.
This is reported by Von Gleichen, who knew him very well, but
thought him rather a quack. Possibly he meant to convey the idea
that he was Moses, and that he had dwelt in the palaces of the
Ramessids. The grave of the prophet was never known, and Saint-
Germain may have insinuated that he began a new avatar in a cleft
of Mount Pisgah; he was capable of it.
However, a less wild surmise avers that, in 1763, the secrets of
his birth and the source of his opulence were known in Holland.
The authority is the Memoirs of Grosley (1813). Grosley was an
archaeologist of Troyes; he had traveled in Italy, and written an
account of his travels; he also visited Holland and England, and
later, from a Dutchman, he picked up his information about Saint-
Germain. Grosley was a Fellow of our Royal Society, and I greatly
revere the authority of a F.R.S. His later years were occupied in
the compilation of his Memoirs, including an account of what he did
and heard in Holland, and he died in 1785. According to Grosley's
account of what the Dutchman knew, Saint-Germain was the son of a
princess who fled (obviously from Spain) to Bayonne, and of a
Portuguese Jew dwelling in Bordeaux.
What fairy and fugitive princess can this be, whom not in vain the
ardent Hebrew wooed? She was, she must have been, as Grosley saw,
the heroine of Victor Hugo's Ruy Blas. The unhappy Charles II. of
Spain, a kind of "mammet" (as the English called the Richard II.
who appeared up in Islay, having escaped from Pomfret Castle), had
for his first wife a daughter of Henrietta, the favorite sister of
our Charles II. This childless bride, after some ghostly years of
matrimony, after being exorcised in disgusting circumstances, died
in February, 1689. In May, 1690 a new bride, Marie de Neuborg, was
brought to the grisly side of the crowned mammet of Spain. She,
too, failed to prevent the wars of the Spanish Succession by giving
an heir to the Crown of Spain. Scandalous chronicles aver that
Marie was chosen as Queen of Spain for the levity of her character,
and that the Crown was expected, as in the Pictish monarchy, to
descend on the female side; the father of the prince might be
anybody. What was needed was simply a son of the QUEEN of Spain.
She had, while Queen, no son, as far as is ascertained, but she had
a favorite, a Count Andanero, whom she made minister of finance.
"He was not a born Count," he was a financier, this favorite of the
Queen of Spain. That lady did go to live in Bayonne in 1706, six
years after the death of Charles II., her husband. The hypothesis
is, then, that Saint-Germain was the son of this ex-Queen of Spain,
and of the financial Count, Andanero, a man, "not born in the
sphere of Counts," and easily transformed by tradition into a
Jewish banker of Bordeaux. The Duc de Choiseul, who disliked the
intimacy of Louis XV. and of the Court with Saint-Germain, said
that the Count was "the son of a Portuguese Jew, WHO DECEIVES THE
COURT. It is strange that the King is so often allowed to be
almost alone with this man, though, when he goes out, he is
surrounded by guards, as if he feared assassins everywhere." This
anecdote is from the Memoirs of Gleichen, who had seen a great deal
of the world. He died in 1807.
It seems a fair inference that the Duc de Choiseul knew what the
Dutch bankers knew, the story of the Count's being a child of a
princess retired to Bayonne--namely, the ex-Queen of Spain--and of
a Portuguese-Hebrew financier. De Choiseul was ready to accept the
Jewish father, but thought that, in the matter of the royal mother,
Saint-Germain "deceived the Court."
A queen of Spain might have carried off any quantity of the
diamonds of Brazil. The presents of diamonds from her almost
idiotic lord must have been among the few comforts of her situation
in a Court overridden by etiquette. The reader of Madame
d'Aulnoy's contemporary account of the Court of Spain knows what a
dreadful dungeon it was. Again, if born at Bayonne about 1706, the
Count would naturally seem to be about fifty in 1760. The purity
with which he spoke German, and his familiarity with German
princely Courts--where I do not remember that Barry Lyndon ever met
him--are easily accounted for if he had a royal German to his
mother. But, alas! if he was the son of a Hebrew financier,
Portuguese or Alsatian (as some said), he was likely, whoever his
mother may have been, to know German, and to be fond of precious
stones. That Oriental taste notoriously abides in the hearts of
the Chosen People.[1]
[1] Voyage en Angleterre, 1770.
"Nay, nefer shague your gory locks at me,
Dou canst not say I did it,"
quotes Pinto, the hero of Thackeray's Notch on the Axe. "He
pronounced it, by the way, I DIT it, by which I KNOW that Pinto was
a German," says Thackeray. I make little doubt but that Saint-
Germain, too, was a German, whether by the mother's side, and of
princely blood, or quite the reverse.
Grosley mixes Saint-Germain up with a lady as mysterious as
himself, who also lived in Holland, on wealth of an unknown source,
and Grosley inclines to think that the Count found his way into a
French prison, where he was treated with extraordinary respect.
Von Gleichen, on the other hand, shows the Count making love to a
daughter of Madame Lambert, and lodging in the house of the mother.
Here Von Gleichen met the man of mystery and became rather intimate
with him. Von Gleichen deemed him very much older than he looked,
but did not believe in his elixir.
In any case, he was not a cardsharper, a swindler, a professional
medium, or a spy. He passed many evenings almost alone with Louis
XV., who, where men were concerned, liked them to be of good family
(about ladies he was much less exclusive). The Count had a grand
manner; he treated some great personages in a cavalier way, as if
he were at least their equal. On the whole, if not really the son
of a princess, he probably persuaded Louis XV. that he did come of
that blue blood, and the King would have every access to authentic
information. Horace Walpole's reasons for thinking Saint-Germain
"not a gentleman" scarcely seem convincing.
The Duc de Choiseul did not like the fashionable Saint-Germain. He
thought him a humbug, even when the doings of the deathless one
were perfectly harmless. As far as is known, his recipe for health
consisted in drinking a horrible mixture called "senna tea"--which
was administered to small boys when I was a small boy--and in not
drinking anything at his meals. Many people still observe this
regimen, in the interest, it is said, of their figures. Saint-
Germain used to come to the house of de Choiseul, but one day, when
Von Gleichen was present, the minister lost his temper with his
wife. He observed that she took no wine at dinner, and told her
that she had learned that habit of abstinence from Saint-Germain;
that HE might do as he pleased, "but you, madame, whose health is
precious to me, I forbid to imitate the regimen of such a dubious
character." Gleichen, who tells the anecdote, says that he was
present when de Choiseul thus lost his temper with his wife. The
dislike of de Choiseul had a mournful effect on the career of
Saint-Germain.
In discussing the strange story of the Chevalier d'Eon, one has
seen that Louis XV. amused himself by carrying on a secret scheme
of fantastic diplomacy through subordinate agents, behind the backs
and without the knowledge of his responsible ministers. The Duc de
Choiseul, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, was excluded, it seems,
from all knowledge of these double intrigues, and the Marechal de
Belle-Isle, Minister of War, was obviously kept in the dark, as was
Madame de Pompadour. Now it is stated by Von Gleichen that the
Marechal de Belle-Isle, from the War Office, started a NEW secret
diplomacy behind the back of de Choiseul, at the Foreign Office.
The King and Madame de Pompadour (who was not initiated into the
general scheme of the King's secret) were both acquainted with what
de Choiseul was not to know--namely, Belle-Isle's plan for secretly
making peace through the mediation, or management, at all events,
of Holland. All this must have been prior to the death of the
Marechal de Belle-Isle in 1761; and probably de Broglie, who
managed the regular old secret policy of Louis XV., knew nothing
about this new clandestine adventure; at all events, the late Duc
de Broglie says nothing about it in his book The King's Secret.[1]
[1] The Duc de Broglie, I am privately informed, could find no clue
to the mystery of Saint-Germain.
The story, as given by Von Gleichen, goes on to say that Saint-
Germain offered to conduct the intrigue at the Hague. As Louis XV.
certainly allowed that maidenly captain of dragoons, d'Eon, to
manage his hidden policy in London, it is not at all improbable
that he really intrusted this fresh cabal in Holland to Saint-
Germain, whom he admitted to great intimacy. To The Hague went
Saint-Germain, diamonds, rubies, senna tea, and all, and began to
diplomatize with the Dutch. But the regular French minister at The
Hague, d'Affry, found out what was going on behind his back--found
it out either because he was sharper than other ambassadors, or
because a personage so extraordinary as Saint-Germain was certain
to be very closely watched, or because the Dutch did not take to
the Undying One, and told d'Affry what he was doing. D'Affry wrote
to de Choiseul. An immortal but dubious personage, he said, was
treating in the interests of France, for peace, which it was
d'Affry's business to do if the thing was to be done at all.
Choiseul replied in a rage by the same courier. Saint-Germain, he
said, must be extradited, bound hand and foot, and sent to the
Bastille. Choiseul thought that he might practice his regimen and
drink his senna tea, to the advantage of public affairs, within
those venerable walls. Then the angry minister went to the King,
told him what orders he had given, and said that, of course, in a
case of this kind it was superfluous to inquire as to the royal
pleasure. Louis XV. was caught; so was the Marechal de Belle-Isle.
They blushed and were silent.
It must be remembered that this report of a private incident could
only come to the narrator, Von Gleichen, from de Choiseul, with
whom he professes to have been intimate. The King and the Marechal
de Belle-Isle would not tell the story of their own discomfiture.
It is not very likely that de Choiseul himself would blab.
However, the anecdote avers that the King and the Minister for War
thought it best to say nothing, and the demand for Saint-Germain's
extradition was presented at The Hague. But the Dutch were not
fond of giving up political offenders. They let Saint-Germain have
a hint; he slipped over to London, and a London paper published a
kind of veiled interview with him in June 1760.
His name, we read, when announced after his death, will astonish
the world more than all the marvels of his life. He has been in
England already (1743-17--?); he is a great unknown. Nobody can
accuse him of anything dishonest or dishonorable. When he was here
before we were all mad about music, and so he enchanted us with his
violin. But Italy knows him as an expert in the plastic arts, and
Germany admires in him a master in chemical science. In France,
where he was supposed to possess the secret of the transmutation of
metals, the police for two years sought and failed to find any
normal source of his opulence. A lady of forty-five once swallowed
a whole bottle of his elixir. Nobody recognized her, for she had
become a girl of sixteen without observing the transformation!
Saint-Germain is said to have remained in London but for a short
period. Horace Walpole does not speak of him again, which is odd,
but probably the Count did not again go into society. Our
information, mainly from Von Gleichen, becomes very misty, a thing
of surmises, really worthless. The Count is credited with a great
part in the palace conspiracies of St. Petersburg; he lived at
Berlin, and, under the name of Tzarogy, at the Court of the
Margrave of Anspach. Then he went, they say, to Italy, and then
north to the Landgrave Charles of Hesse, who dabbled in alchemy.
Here he is said to have died about 1780-85, leaving his papers to
the Landgrave but all is very vague after he disappeared from Paris
in 1760. When next I meet Saint-Germain he is again at Paris,
again mysteriously rich, again he rather disappears than dies, he
calls himself Major Fraser, and the date is in the last years of
Louis Philippe. My authority may be caviled at; it is that of the
late ingenious Mr. Van Damme, who describes Major Fraser in a book
on the characters of the Second Empire. He does not seem to have
heard of Saint-Germain, whom he does not mention.
Major Fraser, "in spite of his English (sic) name, was decidedly
not English, though he spoke the language." He was (like Saint-
Germain) "one of the best dressed men of the period. . . . He
lived alone, and never alluded to his parentage. He was always
flush of money, though the sources of his income were a mystery to
everyone." The French police vainly sought to detect the origin of
Saint-Germain's supplies, opening his letters at the post-office.
Major Fraser's knowledge of every civilized country at every period
was marvelous, though he had very few books. "His memory was
something prodigious. . . . Strange to say, he used often to hint
that his was no mere book knowledge. "'Of course, it is perfectly
ridiculous,'" he remarked, with a strange smile, "'but every now
and then I feel as if this did not come to me from reading, but
from personal experience. At times I become almost convinced that
I lived with Nero, that I knew Dante personally, and so forth.'"[1]
At the major's death not a letter was found giving a clew to his
antecedents, and no money was discovered. DID he die? As in the
case of Saint-Germain, no date is given. The author had an idea
that the major was "an illegitimate son of some exalted person" of
the period of Charles IV. and Ferdinand VII. of Spain.
[1] An Englishman in Paris, vol. i., pp. 130-133. London, 1892.
The author does not mention Saint-Germain, and may never have heard
of him. If his account of Major Fraser is not mere romance, in
that warrior we have the undying friend of Louis XV. and Madame de
Pompadour. He had drunk at Medmenham with Jack Wilkes; as Riccio
he had sung duets with the fairest of unhappy queens; he had
extracted from Blanche de Bechamel the secret of Goby de Mouchy.
As Pinto, he told much of his secret history to Mr. Thackeray, who
says: "I am rather sorry to lose him after three little bits of
Roundabout Papers."
Did Saint-Germain really die in a palace of Prince Charles of Hesse
about 1780-85? Did he, on the other hand, escape from the French
prison where Grosley thought he saw him, during the French
Revolution? Was he known to Lord Lytton about 1860? Was he then
Major Fraser? Is he the mysterious Muscovite adviser of the Dalai
Lama? Who knows? He is a will-o'-the-wisp of the memoir-writers
of the eighteenth century. Whenever you think you have a chance of
finding him in good authentic State papers, he gives you the slip;
and if his existence were not vouched for by Horace Walpole, I
should incline to deem him as Betsy Prig thought of Mrs. Harris.
More
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Chan Tow The Highrob
Before me sits the Chinese--my friend who, when the hurlyburly's done, spins me out the hours with narratives of ancient Yellowland. His name is Fuey Fong, and he speaks to me thus: "Missa Gordon, whatta is Chrisinjin Indevil Shoshiety?" I... Deception Explained By The Science Of Psychology
The object [of this passage] is to enable the reader to see, more easily, how it is that the watchful observer is deceived into believing that a thing is so, when in reality it is not, and vice versa; and also to give an idea of the various method... Facing The Arab's Pistol
[The severest trial of all was unexpectedly encountered during a visit paid by the conjurer and his wife to Bou-Allem-ben-Sherifa, Bash-Aga of the Djendel, a tribe of the desert interior.] We entered a small room very elegantly decorated, in w... Fact And Fable In Psychology
"He (the conjurer) must dissociate the natural factors of his habits, actually attending to one thing while seemingly attending to another; at the same time his eyes and his gestures and his 'patter' misdirect the attention to what is apparently t... Fear
We went up on deck after dinner. Before us the Mediterranean lay without a ripple and shimmering in the moonlight. The great ship glided on, casting upward to the star-studded sky a long serpent of black smoke. Behind us the dazzling white water, ... Fraudulent Spiritualism Unveiled[1]
[1] As to whether communication with the departed is possible, no discussion is here attempted. The episodes following, from experiences well authenticated, merely illustrate what sleight-of- hand experts have long known--that most "mediums," "as... From The Loom Of The Dead
WHEN Urda Bjarnason tells a tale all the men stop their talking to lis- ten, for they know her to be wise with the wisdom of the old people, and that she has more learning than can be got even from the great schools at Reykjavik. She is especia... Ghosts
Just at the time when the _Concordat_ was in its most flourishing condition, a young man belonging to a wealthy and highly respected middle-class family went to the office of the head of the police at P----, and begged for his help and advice, whi... His Last Bow
It was nine o'clock at night upon the second of August--the most terrible August in the history of the world. One might have thought already that God's curse hung heavy over a degenerate world, for there was an awesome hush and a feeling of vag... His Wedded Wife
Cry "Murder!" in the market-place, and each Will turn upon his neighbor anxious eyes That ask:--"Art thou the man?" We hunted Cain Some centuries ago, across the world, That bred the fear our own misdeeds maintain To-day. ... Horror: A True Tale
I was but nineteen years of age when the incident occurred which has thrown a shadow over my life; and, ah me! how many and many a weary year has dragged by since then! Young, happy, and beloved I was in those long-departed days. They said that ... How Spirits Materialize
From "The Revelations of a Spirit Medium"--a book out of existence now, since the plates and all copies were bought up by "spiritualists" and destroyed. The following is given by courtesy of Mr. Hereward Carrington: Reader, have you ever att... How The Tricks Succeeded
When the medium picked up the envelope in which to place my paper, there was within it a duplicate piece of paper folded the same, and of the same size (one inch and a quarter by two inches) as the one I had folded. He kept the face of this envel... Hunted Down
Most of us see some romances in life. In my capacity as Chief Manager of a Life Assurance Office, I think I have within the last thirty years seen more romances than the generality of men, however unpromising the opportunity may, at first... In The House Of Suddhoo
A stone's throw out on either hand From that well-ordered road we tread, And all the world is wild and strange; Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite Shall bear us company to-night, For we have reached the Oldest Land ... Introduction To A Mystery With A Moral
The next Mystery Story is like no other in these volumes. The editor's defense lies in the plea that Laurence Sterne is not like other writers of English. He is certainly one of the very greatest. Yet nowadays he is generally unknown. His roll... Introduction To Melmoth The Wanderer
Balzac likens the hero of one of his short stories to "Moliere's Don Juan, Goethe's Faust, Byron's Manfred, Maturin's Melmoth--great allegorical figures drawn by the greatest men of genius in Europe." "But what is 'Melmoth'? Why is HE classed a... Introduction To The Corpus Delicti
The high ground of the field of crime has not been explored; it has not even been entered. The book stalls have been filled to weariness with tales based upon plans whereby the DETECTIVE, or FERRETING power of the State might be baffled. But, prod... Introduction To Zadig The Babylonian
_A work (says the author) which performs more than it promises._ Voltaire never heard of a "detective story"; and yet he wrote the first in modern literature, so clever as to be a model for all the others that followed. He describes his h... Jealousy
Zadig's calamities sprung even from his happiness and especially from his merit. He every day conversed with the king and Astarte, his august comfort. The charms of his conversation were greatly heightened by that desire of pleasing, which is to t... Matter Through Matter
There is one very clever "test" that is sometimes performed which would seem to show that something of this sort IS accomplished. It is, however, nothing more than an ingenious trick, and this might be a good time to explain its modus operandi. ... May Day Eve
It was in the spring when I at last found time from the hospital work to visit my friend, the old folk-lorist, in his country isolation, and I rather chuckled to myself, because in my bag I was taking down a book that utterly refuted all his... Melmoth Reconciled
There is a special variety of human nature obtained in the Social Kingdom by a process analogous to that of the gardener's craft in the Vegetable Kingdom, to wit, by the forcing-house--a species of hybrid which can be raised neither from seed nor ... Melmoth The Wanderer
John Melmoth, student at Trinity College, Dublin, having journeyed to County Wicklow for attendance at the deathbed of his miserly uncle, finds the old man, even in his last moments, tortured by avarice, and by suspicion of all around him. He whi... Mind Reading In Public
Not long ago I received a letter from an old-time friend, in which he urgently requested me to make a journey to his city. In bygone days he and I had spent many hours together, discussing the mysteries of existence, the hidden powers which natur... Missing: Page Thirteen
"One more! just one more well paying affair, and I promise to stop; really and truly to stop." "But, Puss, why one more? You have earned the amount you set for yourself,--or very nearly,--and though my help is not great, in three months I can add... Mr Bloke's Item
Our esteemed friend, Mr. John William Bloke, of Virginia City, walked into the office where we are sub-editor at a late hour last night, with an expression of profound and heartfelt suffering upon his countenance, and, sighing heavily, ... My Fascinating Friend
William Archer I Nature has cursed me with a retiring disposition. I have gone round the world without making a single friend by the way. Coming out of my own shell is as difficult to me as drawing others out of theirs. There are some ... My Friend The Murderer
"Number 481 is no better, doctor," said the head-warder, in a slightly reproachful accent, looking in round the corner of my door. "Confound 481" I responded from behind the pages of the Australian Sketcher. "And 61 says his tubes are pai... My Own True Ghost Story
As I came through the Desert thus it was-- As I came through the Desert. The City of Dreadful Night. Somewhere in the Other World, where there are books and pictures and plays and shop windows to look at, and thousands of me... My Wife's Tempter
I A PREDESTINED MARRIAGE Elsie and I were to be married in less than a week. It was rather a strange match, and I knew that some of our neighbors shook their heads over it and said that no good would come. The way it came to pass was thus. ... No 1 Branch Line: The Signal-man
"Halloa! Below there!" When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole. One would have thought, considering the nature of the ground, that he could not ha... On Being Found Out
At the close (let us say) of Queen Anne's reign, when I was a boy at a private and preparatory school for young gentlemen, I remember the wiseacre of a master ordering us all, one night, to march into a little garden at the back of the house, and ... On The Northern Ice
THE winter nights up at Sault Ste. Marie are as white and luminous as the Milky Way. The silence which rests upon the solitude appears to be white also. Even sound has been included in Nature's arrestment, for, indeed, save the still white fros... Pliny The Younger
_Letter to Sura_ Our leisure furnishes me with the opportunity of learning from you, and you with that of instructing me. Accordingly, I particularly wish to know whether you think there exist such things as phantoms, possessing an appearance p... Problem Ix Violet's Own
"It has been too much for you?" "I am afraid so." It was Roger Upjohn who had asked the question; it was Violet who answered. They had withdrawn from a crowd of dancers to a balcony, half-shaded, half open to the moon,--a balcony made, it woul... Saint-germain The Deathless
Among the best brief masterpieces of fiction are Lytton's The Haunters and the Haunted, and Thackeray's Notch on the Axe in Roundabout Papers.* Both deal with a mysterious being who passes through the ages, rich, powerful, always behind the scene... Satire Of The Sea
"What was the mystery about St. Alban?" I asked. The Baronet did not at once reply. He looked out over the English country through the ancient oak-trees, above the sweep of meadow across the dark, creeping river, to the white shaft rising beyond... Second Sight
[A thousand more trials of patience and perseverance finally brought to the conjurer a Parisian theater and an appreciative clientele. But he never ceased to labor and improve the quality of his marvelous effects.] The experiment, however, t... Shall He Wed Her?
When I met Taylor at the Club the other night, he looked so cheerful I scarcely knew him. "What is it?" cried I, advancing with outstretched hand. "I am going to be married," was his gay reply. "This is my last night at the Club." I was gl... Silver Blaze
"I am afraid, Watson, that I shall have to go," said Holmes, as we sat down together to our breakfast one morning. "Go! Where to?" "To Dartmoor; to King's Pyland." I was not surprised. Indeed, my only wonder was that he had not already bee... Some Famous Exposures
Probably the greatest swindle ever perpetrated in the name of spiritualism was recently brought to light in Stockton, California. The medium and his confederates materialized everything from frogs and small fish to a huge bowlder of gold quartz we... Story Of An Obstinate Corpse
VIRGIL HOYT is a photographer's assistant up at St. Paul, and enjoys his work without being consumed by it. He has been in search of the picturesque all over the West and hundreds of miles to the north, in Canada, and can speak three or four In... Story Of The Vanishing Patient
THERE had always been strange stories about the house, but it was a sensible, comfortable sort of a neighborhood, and people took pains to say to one another that there was nothing in these tales -- of course not! Absolutely nothing! How could ... The Adventure Of Black Peter
I have never known my friend to be in better form, both mental and physical, than in the year '95. His increasing fame had brought with it an immense practice, and I should be guilty of an indiscretion if I were even to hint at the identity of som... The Adventure Of Charles Augustus Milverton
It is years since the incidents of which I speak took place, and yet it is with diffidence that I allude to them. For a long time, even with the utmost discretion and reticence, it would have been impossible to make the facts public, but now the p... The Adventure Of The Abbey Grange
It was on a bitterly cold and frosty morning, towards the end of the winter of '97, that I was awakened by a tugging at my shoulder. It was Holmes. The candle in his hand shone upon his eager, stooping face, and told me at a glance that something ... The Adventure Of The Beryl Coronet
"Holmes," said I as I stood one morning in our bow-window looking down the street, "here is a madman coming along. It seems rather sad that his relatives should allow him to come out alone." My friend rose lazily from his armchair and stood with h... The Adventure Of The Blue Carbuncle
I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season. He was lounging upon the sofa in a purple dressing-gown, a pipe-rack within his reach upon the rig... The Adventure Of The Bruce-partington Plans
In the third week of November, in the year 1895, a dense yellow fog settled down upon London. From the Monday to the Thursday I doubt whether it was ever possible from our windows in Baker Street to see the loom of the opposite houses. The fir... The Adventure Of The Cardboard Box
In choosing a few typical cases which illustrate the remarkable mental qualities of my friend, Sherlock Holmes, I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to select those which presented the minimum of sensationalism, while offering a fair field ... The Adventure Of The Copper Beeches
"To the man who loves art for its own sake," remarked Sherlock Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of the Daily Telegraph, "it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. It ... The Adventure Of The Dancing Men
Holmes had been seated for some hours in silence with his long, thin back curved over a chemical vessel in which he was brewing a particularly malodorous product. His head was sunk upon his breast, and he looked from my point of view like a stra... The Adventure Of The Devil's Foot
In recording from time to time some of the curious experiences and interesting recollections which I associate with my long and intimate friendship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I have continually been faced by difficulties caused by his own aversion to... The Adventure Of The Dying Detective
Mrs. Hudson, the landlady of Sherlock Holmes, was a long- suffering woman. Not only was her first-floor flat invaded at all hours by throngs of singular and often undesirable characters but her remarkable lodger showed an eccentricity and irreg... The Adventure Of The Empty House
It was in the spring of the year 1894 that all London was interested, and the fashionable world dismayed, by the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair under most unusual and inexplicable circumstances. The public has already learned those particul... The Adventure Of The Engineer's Thumb
Of all the problems which have been submitted to my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, for solution during the years of our intimacy, there were only two which I was the means of introducing to his notice--that of Mr. Hatherley's thumb, and that of Colone... The Adventure Of The Golden Pince-nez
When I look at the three massive manuscript volumes which contain our work for the year 1894, I confess that it is very difficult for me, out of such a wealth of material, to select the cases which are most interesting in themselves, and at the sa... The Adventure Of The Missing Three-quarter
We were fairly accustomed to receive weird telegrams at Baker Street, but I have a particular recollection of one which reached us on a gloomy February morning, some seven or eight years ago, and gave Mr. Sherlock Holmes a puzzled quarter of an ho... The Adventure Of The Noble Bachelor
The Lord St. Simon marriage, and its curious termination, have long ceased to be a subject of interest in those exalted circles in which the unfortunate bridegroom moves. Fresh scandals have eclipsed it, and their more piquant details have drawn the... The Adventure Of The Norwood Builder
"From the point of view of the criminal expert," said Mr. Sherlock Holmes, "London has become a singularly uninteresting city since the death of the late lamented Professor Moriarty." "I can hardly think that you would find many decent citizens ... The Adventure Of The Priory School
We have had some dramatic entrances and exits upon our small stage at Baker Street, but I cannot recollect anything more sudden and startling than the first appearance of Thorneycroft Huxtable, M.A., Ph.D., etc. His card, which seemed too small ... The Adventure Of The Red Circle
"Well, Mrs. Warren, I cannot see that you have any particular cause for uneasiness, nor do I understand why I, whose time is of some value, should interfere in the matter. I really have other things to engage me." So spoke Sherlock Holmes and ... The Adventure Of The Second Stain
I had intended "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange" to be the last of those exploits of my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, which I should ever communicate to the public. This resolution of mine was not due to any lack of material, since I have notes o... The Adventure Of The Six Napoleons
It was no very unusual thing for Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, to look in upon us of an evening, and his visits were welcome to Sherlock Holmes, for they enabled him to keep in touch with all that was going on at the police headquarters. In retu... The Adventure Of The Solitary Cyclist
From the years 1894 to 1901 inclusive, Mr. Sherlock Holmes was a very busy man. It is safe to say that there was no public case of any difficulty in which he was not consulted during those eight years, and there were hundreds of private cases, s... The Adventure Of The Speckled Band
On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he ... The Adventure Of The Three Robbers
The great satire of Lucius Apuleius, the work through which his name lives after the lapse of nearly eighteen centuries, is "The Golden Ass," a romance from which the following passage has been selected and translated for these Myste... The Adventure Of The Three Students
It was in the year '95 that a combination of events, into which I need not enter, caused Mr. Sherlock Holmes and myself to spend some weeks in one of our great university towns, and it was during this time that the small but instructive adventure ... The Adventure Of Wisteria Lodge
1. The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles I find it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day towards the end of March in the year 1892. Holmes had received a telegram while we sat at our lunch, and he had scribb... The Affair Of The Tortoise
Very often Hewitt was tempted, by the fascination of some particularly odd case, to neglect his other affairs to follow up a matter that from a business point of view was of little or no value to him. As a rule, he had a sufficient regard for his ow... The Avenger
"Why callest thou me murderer, and not rather the wrath of God burning after the steps of the oppressor, and cleansing the earth when it is wet with blood?" That series of terrific events by which our quiet city and university in the northeas...