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 dishonourable. 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
recognised 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.
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