'Moreover, our master, the
King, is obstinate; he sometimes speaks of Saint-Germain as a person
of illustrious birth.'
The age was sceptical, unscientific, and, by reaction, credulous. The
_philosophes_, Hume, Voltaire, and others, were exposing, like an
ingenious American gentleman, 'the mistakes of Moses.' The Earl
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.
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