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 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 has
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 favour 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 practised; but the
memoirs of Madame du Hausset, who speaks of Saint-Germain, are
authentic.
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