Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/103

96 adventurers, one who made a great sensation in his day—and probably the best of the gang—was a person who began to be talked about in 1750, first under the name of the Marquis de Montferrat, then at Venice as the Count de Bellamare, at Pisa as the Chevalier Schœning, at Milan as Chevalier Welldone, at Genoa as Count Soltikoff, and at Paris as Count de St. Germain, which name he retained till the end of his life. His speciality was, that he gave himself out as a practical proof of the possibility of extending the limits of strength and life far beyond the ordinary compass, if not of attaining eternal youth and physical immortality. No one was ever able to discover his real origin, or the country where he was born, and even Frederick the Great speaks of him in his Memoirs as a man whose secret could never be discovered. When St. Germain alluded to his childhood, which he was fond of doing, he represented himself as surrounded by a numerous suite, enjoying a delicious climate on magnificent terraces, just as if he had been heir-presumptive to some king of Granada in the Moorish times. An old Baron de Stosch declared that he had known, during the regency, a Marquis de Montferrat, who passed as the natural son of the widow of Charles II., King of Spain, by a Madrid banker; others took St. Germain for a Portuguese Baron de Betmar; others, again, for a Spanish Jesuit of the name of Aymar; while, on the other hand, many declared that he was an Alsacian Jew, of the name of Wolf, or else the son of a customs-officer at San Germano in Savoy, called Rotondo. One day, when in a violent passion, the Duke de Choiseul declared that he was the son of a Portuguese Jew, which would coincide to a certain extent with the version of Baron de Stosch. He spoke English and German well, Italian admirably, French with a slight Piedmontese accent, and Spanish and Portuguese in perfection.

The Duke de Choiseul had a grievance against St. Germain, because he had served as the instrument in an intrigue which the King, or rather the Marshal de Belle-Isle, had formed without the cognisance of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Duke’s favourite plan—which he regarded to some extent as the glory of his political career—was the reconciliation and intimate alliance he had succeeded in establishing between the Houses of France and Austria. Belle-Isle, the old adversary of Austria since the war of succession, eagerly combated the Minister’s policy; but Louis XV. and the Pompadour were tired of the war, which did not progress as they wished. Choiseul also desired peace, but doubts were entertained whether he sought it as actively as the other party desired. St. Germain was among Belle-Isle’s intimate friends, and often gave him remarkable advice. At this period he told the Marshal that he was on very friendly terms with Prince Louis of Brunswick, who was then at the Hague, and assured him that nothing would be easier than to open negotiations for peace by the intermediation of this prince. The king and the minister of war therefore sent St. Germain to the Hague; but Count d’Affry, the French envoy at that court, discovered the secret of this mission, and immediately sent off a courier to Choiseul, complaining bitterly that peace was being arranged under his very eyes by a perfect stranger. Choiseul sent back the same courier at once to d’Affry, with despatches enjoining him to demand most emphatically from the States General the extradition of St. Germain, who was to be sent in handcuffs to the Bastille. The following day Choiseul communicated d’Affry’s despatch to the council, read the answer he had sent, and then, looking boldly at the king and Belle-Isle in turn, he said:

“If I did not await the king’s orders in this matter, it resulted solely from my conviction that no one here would dare to treat for peace without the cognisance of your majesty’s minister for foreign affairs.”

The king looked down like a culprit, Belle-Isle did not say a word, and Choiseul’s measures were approved. But, for all that, St. Germain was not put in the Bastille. The States General certainly displayed a readiness to consult the king’s wishes in this matter, and at once sent a large body of troops to arrest St. Germain; but as, at the same time, they secretly warned him of what was taking place, he had time to escape and seek shelter in England. Thence he proceeded to St. Petersburg, where, we are told, he played a part in the revolution of 1762, though it is impossible to discover in what character. One thing is certain, that at a later date he became an intimate friend of the Orloffs. When he appeared at Leghorn, in 1770, with a Russian uniform and name, he was treated by Alexis Orloff with a degree of respect that haughty personage showed to few. And Gregory Orloff, who met him, in 1772, at Nuremberg, with the Margrave of Anspach, called him his caro padre, gave him, it was asserted, 20,000 Venetian sequins, and said of him to the Margrave, “That is a man who played a great part in one revolution.” From St. Petersburg he proceeded to Berlin, and then travelled through Germany and Italy. He resided a long time at Schwabach and the court of the Margrave of Anspach, whom he accompanied to Italy. Eventually, he settled at Eckernförde, in the duchy of Schleswig, near the Landgrave Charles of Hesse, who was a great professor of the hermetic sciences, and consequently the prey of a multitude of charlatans. It was at the court of this prince that he died, wearied of life, in 1780. During the latter part of his life he was only attended on by women, who nursed and pampered him, and in their arms he heaved his last sigh, after watching his strength gradually expire. His papers passed into the hands of the Landgrave Charles, from whom no information could ever be drawn as to the enigmas St. Germain’s life offered to his contemporaries, and who, besides, was not competent to appreciate the character of individuals of that class.

Altogether, it may be said of St. Germain, that he seems to have been one of the most inoffensive of the charlatans of the eighteenth century, and that his work had no other object than to allow him to enter the fashionable world and share in its pleasures: to lead a comfortable life at the expense of a few great lords, and amuse himself at the astonishment his eccentricities excited. For