'He was not a born Count,' he was a
financier, this favourite 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.
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