Many average, reasonable men can conceive wisdom only under
the boring form of a sermon and think of the sage only in the
semblance of a clergyman. For such men prudery, hypocrisy, and
the most abject enslavement to ritual habit and prejudice must
be the everyday virtues. When therefore it happens that a genuine
sage, by way of amusing himself, mystifies his contemporaries,
follows a woman, or lightheartedly raises his glass, he is condemned
eternally by the army of short-sighted people whose judgment
forms posterity.
That is what happened in the case of the Comte de Saint-Germain.
He had a love of jewels in an extreme form, and he ostentatiously
showed off those he possessed. He kept a great quantity of them
in a casket, which he carried about everywhere with him. The
importance he attached to jewels was so great that in the pictures
painted by him, which were in themselves remarkable, the figures
were covered with jewels; and his colors were so vivid and strange
that faces looked pale and insignificant by contrast. Jewels
cast their reflection on him and threw a distorting light on
the whole of his life.
His contemporaries did not forgive him this weakness. Nor did
they forgive him for keeping for an entire century the physical
appearance of a man of between forty and fifty years old. Apparently
a man cannot be taken seriously if he does not conform strictly
to the laws of nature, and he was called a charlatan because
he possessed a secret which allowed him to prolong his life
beyond known human limits.
His
Lifestyle
Saint-Germain seems also to have been free personally from
the solemnity in which men of religion and philosophers wrap
themselves. He enjoyed and sought the company of the pretty
women of his day. Though he never ate any food in public, he
liked dining out because of the people he met and the conversation
he heard. He was an aristocrat who lived with princes and even
with kings almost on a footing of an equal. He gave recipes
for removing wrinkles and dyeing hair. He had an immense stock
of amusing stories with which he regaled society. It appears
from the memoirs of Baron von Gleichen that when Saint-Germain
was in Paris he became the lover of Mademoiselle Lambert, daughter
of the Chevalier Lambert, who lived in the house in which he
lodged. And it appears from Grosley's memoirs that in Holland
he became the lover of a woman as rich and mysterious as himself.
At first sight all this is incompatible with the high mission
with which he was invested, with the part he played in the Hermetic
societies of Germany and France. But the contradiction is perhaps
only apparent. His outward appearance of a man of the world
was necessary in the first place for the purposes of the secret
diplomacy in which Louis XV often employed him. Moreover, we
often have an erroneous conception of the activities of a master.
The possession of an "opal of monstrous size, of a white
sapphire as big as an egg, of the treasures of Aladdin's lamp,"
is a harmless pleasure if these treasures have been inherited
or have been made through the help of miraculous knowledge.
It is no great eccentricity in a man to pull down his cuffs
in order to show the sparkle of the rubies in his links. And
if Mademoiselle Lambert had the ideas of her time on the subject
of gallantry, the Comte de Saint-Germain can hardly be reproached
for lingering one night in her room in order to open in her
presence the mysterious jewelcasket and invite her to choose
one of those diamonds that were the admiration of Madam de Pompadour.
For pleasure in life drags a man down only when it is carried
to excess. It may be that there exists a way by which a man
may attain the highest spirituality and yet keep this pleasure.
Moreover, on a certain plane, the chain of the senses no longer
exists and kisses cease to burn; a man can no longer harm either
himself or others by virtue of the power that the transformation
has wrought in him.
A
Man Who Never Dies
"A man who knows everything and who never dies," said
Voltaire of the Comte de Saint-Germain. He might have added
that he was a man whose origin was unknown and who disappeared
without leaving a trace. In vain his contemporaries tried to
penetrate the mystery, and in vain the chiefs of police and
the ministers of the various countries whose inhabitants he
puzzled, flattered themselves that they had solved the riddle
of his birth.
Louis XV must have known who he was, for he extended to him
a friendship that aroused the jealousy of his court. He allotted
him rooms in the Chateau of Chambord. He shut himself up with
Saint-Germain and Madam de Pompadour for whole evenings; and
the pleasure he derived from his conversation and the admiration
he no doubt felt for the range of his knowledge cannot explain
the consideration, almost the deference, he had for him. Madam
du Housset says in her memoirs that the king spoke of Saint-Germain
as a personage of illustrious birth. Count Charles of Hesse
Cassel, with whom he lived during the last years in which history
is able to follow his career, must also have possessed the secret
of his birth. He worked at alchemy with him, and Saint-Germain
treated him as an equal. It was to him that Saint-Germain entrusted
his papers just before his supposed death in 1784. However,
neither Louis XV nor the Count of Hesse Cassel ever revealed
anything about the birth of Saint-Germain. The count even went
so far as invariably to withhold the smallest detail bearing
on the life of his mysterious friend. This is a very remarkable
fact, since Saint-Germain was an extremely well known figure.
In those days, when the aristocracy immersed itself in the occult
sciences, secret societies and magic, this man, who was said
to possess the elixir of life and to be able to make gold at
will, was the subject of interminable talk. An inner force that
is irresistibly strong compels men to talk. It makes no difference
whether a man is a king or a count; all alike are subject to
this force, and increasingly subject to it in proportion as
they spend their time with women. For Louis XV and the count
to have held out against the curiosity of beloved mistresses
we must presume in them either a strength of mind that they
certainly did not possess or else some imperious motive which
we cannot determine.
His
Origins
The commonest hypothesis about his birth is that Saint-Germain
was the natural son of the widow of Charles II of Spain and
a certain Comte (Count) Adanero, whom she knew at Bayonne. This
Spanish queen was Marie de Neubourg, whom Victor Hugo took as
the heroine of his Ruy Blas. Those who disliked Saint-Germain
said that he was the son of a Portuguese Jew named Aymar, while
those who hated him said, in the effort to add to his discredit,
that he was the son of an Alsatian Jew named Wolff. Fairly recently
a new genealogy of Saint-Germain has been put forward, which
seems the most probable of all. It is the work of the theosophists
and Annie Besant, who has frequently made the statement that
the Comte de Saint-Germain was one of the sons of Francis Racoczi
II, Prince of Transylvania. The children of Francis Racoczi
were brought up by the Emperor of Austria, but one of them was
withdrawn from his guardianship. The story was put about that
he was dead, but actually he was given into the charge of the
last descendant of the Medici family, who brought him up in
Italy. He took the name of Saint-Germain from the little town
of San Germano, where he had spent some years during his childhood
and where his father had estates. This would give an air of
probability to the memories of southern lands and sunny palaces
which Saint-Germain liked to call up as the setting of his childhood.
And it would help to account for the consideration that Louis
XV showed him. The impenetrable silence kept by him and by those
to whom he entrusted his secret would in this event be due to
fear of the Emperor of Austria and possible vengeance on his
part. The belief that Saint-Germain and the descendant of the
Racoczis are one and the same is firmly held by many people,
who regard him as a genuine adept and even think he may still
be living.
The Comte de Saint-Germain was a man "of middle height,
strongly built, and dressed with superb simplicity." He
spoke with an entire lack of ceremony to the most highly placed
personages and was fully conscious of his superiority. Said
Gleichen of the first time he met Saint-Germain: "He threw
down his hat and sword, sat down in an armchair near the fire
and interrupted the conversation by saying to the man who was
speaking: 'You do not know what you are saying! I am the only
person who is competent to speak on this subject, and I have
exhausted it. It was the same with music, which I gave up when
I found I had no more to learn.'"
Indeed, many people who heard him play the violin said of him
that he equaled or even surpassed the greatest virtuosos of
the period, and he seems to have justified his remark that he
had reached the extreme limit possible in the art of music.
Saint-Germain was also an accomplished artist. One day he took
Gleichen to his house and said to him: " I am pleased with
you, and you have earned my showing you a few paintings of mine."
"And he very effectively kept his word," said Gleichen,
"for the paintings he showed me all bore a stamp of singularity
or perfection which made them more interesting than many works
of art of the highest order."
However, he seems not to have excelled as a poet. There survive
of his an indifferent sonnet and a letter addressed to Marie
Antoinette (quoted by the Comtesse d'Adhemar) that contains
predictions in doggerel verse. At the request of Madam de Pompadour
he also wrote a rather poor outline of a comedy.
The
Alchemist
By far the greatest obvious talents of the Comte de Saint-Germain
were connected with his knowledge of alchemy. Yet if Saint-Germain
he knew how to make gold, he was wise enough to say nothing
about it. Nothing but the possession of this secret could perhaps
account for the enormous wealth at his command, though he was
not known to have money on deposit at any banker's. What he
does seem to have admitted, at least ambiguously, is that he
could make a big diamond out of several small stones. The diamonds
that he wore in his shoes and garters were believed to be worth
more than 200,000 francs. He asserted also that he could increase
the size of pearls at will, and some of the pearls in his possession
certainly were of astonishing size.
If all that he said on this subject was mere bragging, it was
expensive, for he supported it by magnificent gifts. Madam du
Hausset tells us that one day when he was showing the queen
some jewels in her presence, she commented on the beauty of
a cross of white and green stones. Saint-Germain nonchalantly
made her a present of it. Madam du Hausset refused, but the
queen, thinking the stones were false, signed to her that she
might accept. Madam du Hausset subsequently had the stones valued,
and they turned out to be genuine and extremely valuable.
His
Amazing Youthfulness
But the feature in Saint-Germain's personage that is hardest
to believe is his astounding longevity. The musician Rameau
and Madam de Gergy (with the latter of whom, according to the
memoirs of Casanova, he was still dining about 1775) both assert
that they met him at Venice in 1710, under the name of the Marquis
de Montferrat. Both of them agree that he then had the appearance
of a man of between forty and fifty years old. If their recollection
is accurate this evidence destroys the hypotheses according
to which Saint-Germain was the son of Marie de Neubourg or the
son of Francis Racoczi II, for if he had been, he would not
have been more than about twenty in 1710. Later, Madam de Gergy
told Madam de Pompadour that she had received from Saint-Germain
at Venice an elixir that enabled her to preserve, for a long
time and without the smallest change, the appearance of a woman
of twenty-five. A gift as precious as this could not be forgotten!
It is also true, however, that Saint-Germain, when questioned
by Madam de Pompadour on the subject of his meeting with Madam
de Gergy fifty years earlier and of the marvelous elixir he
was supposed to have given to her, replied with a smile: "It
is not impossible; but I confess it is likely that this lady,
for whom I have the greatest respect, is talking nonsense.
We can compare with this the offer he made to Mademoiselle de
Genlis when she was a child: "When you are seventeen or
eighteen will you be happy to remain at that age, at least for
a great many years?' She answered that she should indeed be
charmed. "Very well," he said very gravely; "I
promise you that you shall." And he at once spoke of something
else.
The period of his great celebrity in Paris extended from 1750
to 1760. Everyone agreed then that, in appearance, he was a
man of between forty and fifty. He disappeared for fifteen years,
and when the Comtesse d'Adhemar saw him again in 1775, she declared
that she found him younger than ever. And when she saw him again
twelve years later he still looked the same. While he deliberately
allowed his hearers to believe that his life had lasted inconceivably
long, he never actually said so. He proceeded by veiled allusions.
"He diluted the strength of the marvelous in his stories,"
said his friend Gleichen, "according to the receptivity
of his hearer. When he was telling a fool some event of the
time of Charles V, he informed him quite crudely that he had
been present. But when he spoke to somebody less credulous,
he contented himself with describing the smallest circumstances,
the faces and gestures of the speakers, the room and the part
of it they were in, with such vivacity and in such detail that
his hearers received the impression that he had actually been
present at the scene. 'These fools of Parisians,' he said to
me one day, 'believe that I am five hundred years old. I confirm
them in this idea because I see that it gives them much pleasure
-- not that I am not infinitely older than I appear.'"
Tradition has related that he said he had known Jesus and been
present at the Council of Nicea. But he did not go so far as
this in his contempt for the men with whom he associated and
in his derision of their credulity. This tradition originates
from the fact that Lord Gower, who was a practical joker, gave
imitations at his house of well-known men of his time. When
he came to Saint-Germain, he imitated his manner and voice in
an imaginary conversation that Saint-Germain was supposed to
have had with the founder of Christianity, of whom Lord Gower
made him say: "He was the best man imaginable, but romantic
and thoughtless."
About 1760, an English newspaper, the London Mercury, quite
seriously published the following story: "The Comte de
Saint-Germain presented a lady of his acquaintance, who was
concerned at growing old, with a vial of his famous elixir of
long life. The lady put the vial into a drawer. One of her servants,
a middle-aged woman, thought the vial contained a harmless purge
and drank the contents. When the lady summoned her servant next
day, there appeared before her a young girl, almost a child.
It was the effect of the elixir. A few drops more and I have
no doubt the servant would have answered her mistress with infantile
screams!"
"Has anyone ever seen me eat or drink?" said Saint-Germain,
as he was passing through Vienna, to a Herr Graeffer who offered
him some Tokay. Everyone who knew him agreed in saying that
though he liked sitting down to table with a numerous company,
he never touched the dishes. He was fond of offering his intimate
friends the recipe of a purge made of senna pods. His principal
food, which he prepared himself, was a mixture of oatmeal.
But is it really so surprising that the authors of memoirs depict
Saint-Germain as retaining the same physical appearance during
a whole century? Human life may have a duration infinitely longer
than that ordinarily attributed to it. It is the activity of
our nerves, the flame of our desire, the acid of our fears,
which daily consume our organism. He who succeeds in raising
himself above his emotions, in suppressing in himself anger
and the fear of illness, is capable of overcoming the attrition
of the years and attaining an age at least double that at which
men now die of old age. If the face of a man who is not tormented
by his emotions should retain its youth, it would be no miracle.
Not long ago a London medical periodical reported the case of
a woman who at seventy-four had preserved " the features
and expression of a girl of twenty, without a wrinkle or a white
hair. She had become insane as the result of an unhappy love
affair, and her insanity consisted in the perpetual reliving
of her last separation from her lover." From her conviction
that she was young she had remained young. It may be that a
subjective conception of time, and the suppression of impatience
and expectation, enable a highly developed man to reduce to
a minimum the normal wear and tear of the body. The Comte de
Saint-Germain asserted also that he had the capacity of stopping
the mechanism of the human clock during sleep. He thus almost
entirely stopped the physical wastage that proceeds, without
our knowing it, from breathing and the beating of the heart.
His
Careers
Saint-Germain's activity and the diversity of his occupations
were very great. He was interested in the preparation of dyes
and even started a factory in Germany for the manufacture of
felt hats. But his principal role was that of a secret agent
in international politics in the service of France. He became
Louis XV's confidential and intimate counselor and was entrusted
by him with various secret missions. This drew on him the enmity
of many important men, including, notably, that of the Duke
de Choiseul, the minister for foreign affairs. It was this enmity
which compelled him to leave hurriedly for England in order
to escape imprisonment in the Bastille.
Louis XV did not agree with his minister's policy with regard
to Austria and tried to negotiate peace behind his back by using
Holland as an intermediary. Saint-Germain was sent to The Hague
to negotiate there with Prince Louis of Brunswick. Monsieur
d'Affry, the French minister in Holland, was informed of this
step, and complained bitterly to his minister for foreign affairs
that France was carrying on negotiations that did not pass through
his hands. The Duke de Choiseul seized his opportunity. He sent
d'Affry orders demanding the extradition of Saint-Germain and
have him arrested by the Dutch Government and sent to Paris.
This decision was communicated to the king in the presence of
his ministers in council, and Louis, not daring to admit his
participation in the affair, blamed it all on his emissary.
But Saint-Germain received warning just before his arrest. He
had time to escape and take ship for England. The adventurer
Casanova gives us some details of this escape; he happened to
be in a hotel near that in which Saint-Germain was staying,
and found himself mixed up in a complicated story of jewels,
swindlers, duped fathers and girls madly in love with him --
a story, in fact, that was typical of the ordinary course of
Saint-Germain's life.
According to Horace Walpole's letters, Saint-Germain had been
arrested in London some years previously on account of his mysterious
life. He had been set free because there was nothing against
him. Walpole, a true Englishman, came to the conclusion that
"he was not a gentleman" because he used to say with
a laugh that he was taken for a spy. He was not arrested a second
time in England. Not long after this, he was found in Russia,
where he was to play an important but hidden part in the revolution
of 1762. Count Alexis Orloff met him some years later in Italy
and said of him: "Here is a man who played an important
part in our revolution." Alexis' brother, Gregory Orloff,
handed over to Saint-Germain of his own free will 20,000 sequins,
an uncommon action, seeing that Saint-Germain had not rendered
him any particular service. At that time he wore the uniform
of a Russian general and called himself Soltikov.
His
Prophecies
It was about this period, the beginning of the reign of Louis
XVI, that Saint-Germain returned to France and saw Marie Antoinette.
The Comtesse d'Adhemar has left a detailed account of the interview.
It was to her that he turned to obtain access to the queen.
Since his flight to England, he had not reappeared in France,
but the memory of him had become a legend, and Louis XV's friendship
for him was well known. It was easy, therefore, for the Comtesse
d'Adhemar to arrange a meeting with Marie Antoinette, who immediately
asked Saint-Germain if he was going to settle in Paris again.
"A century will pass," was his reply, "before
I come here again."
In the presence of the queen he spoke in a grave voice and foretold
events that would take place fifteen years later. "The
queen in her wisdom will weigh that which I am about to tell
her in confidence. The Encyclopedist party desires power, which
it will obtain only by the complete fall of the clergy. In order
to bring about this result, it will upset the monarchy. The
Encyclopedists, who are seeking a chief among the members of
the royal family, have cast their eyes on the Duke de Chartres.
The duke will become the instrument of men who will sacrifice
him when he has ceased to be useful to them. He will come to
the scaffold instead of to the throne. Not for long will the
laws remain the protection of the good and the terror of the
wicked. The wicked will seize power with bloodstained hands.
They will do away with the Catholic religion, the nobility,
and the magistracy." "So that only royalty will be
left," the queen interrupted impatiently. "Not even
royalty. There will be a bloodthirsty republic, whose scepter
will be the executioner's knife."
It is quite plain from these words that Saint-Germain's ideas
were entirely different from those ascribed to him by the majority
of historical authors of this period, nearly all of whom see
in him an active instrument of the revolutionary movement. His
terrible and amazing predictions filled Marie Antoinette with
foreboding and agitation. Saint-Germain asked to see the King,
in order to make even more serious revelations, but he asked
to see him without his minister, Maurepas, being told of it.
"He is my enemy," he said, "and I count him among
those who will contribute to the ruin of the kingdom, not from
malice but from incapacity."
The king did not possess sufficient authority to have an interview
with anybody without the presence of his minister. He informed
Maurepas of the interview that Saint-Germain had had with the
queen, and Maurepas thought it would be wisest to imprison in
the Bastille a man who had so gloomy a vision of the future.
Out of courtesy to the Comtesse d'Adhemar, Maurepas visited
her in order to acquaint her with this decision. She received
him in her room. "I know the scoundrel better than you
do," he said. "He will be exposed. Our police officials
have a very keen scent. Only one thing surprises me. The years
have not spared me, whereas the queen declares that the Comte
de Saint-Germain looks like a man of forty." At this moment
the attention of both of them was distracted by the sound of
a door being shut. The comtesse uttered a cry. The expression
on Maurepas' face changed. Saint-Germain stood before them.
"The king has called on you to give him good counsel,"
he said; "and in refusing to allow me to see him you think
only of maintaining your authority. You are destroying the monarchy,
for I have only a limited time to give to France, and when that
time has passed I shall be seen again only after three generations.
I shall not be to blame when anarchy with all its horrors devastates
France. You will not see these calamities, but the fact that
you paved the way for them will be enough to blacken your memory."
Having uttered this in one breath, he walked to the door, shut
it behind him and disappeared. All efforts to find him proved
useless. The keen scent of Maurepas' police officials was not
keen enough, either during the days immediately following or
later. They never discovered what had happened to the Comte
de Saint-Germain.
As had been foretold to him, Maurepas did not see the calamities
for which he had helped to pave the way. He died in 1781. In
1784 a rumor was current in Paris that the Comte de Saint-Germain
had just died in the Duchy of Schleswig, at the castle of the
Count Charles of Hesse Cassel. For biographers and historians
this date seems likely to remain the official date of his death.
From that day forward, the mystery in which the Comte de Saint-Germain
was shrouded grew deeper than ever.
His
"Death"
Secluded at Eckenforn in the count's castle, Saint-Germain announced
that he was tired of fife. He seemed careworn and melancholy.
He said he felt feeble, but he refused to see a doctor and was
tended only by women. No details exist of his death, or rather
of his supposed death. No tombstone at Eckenforn bore his name.
It was known that he had left all his papers and certain documents
relating to Freemasonry to the Count of Hesse Cassel. The count
for his part asserted that he had lost a very dear friend. But
his attitude was highly equivocal. He refused to give any information
about his friend or his last moments, and turned the conversation
if anyone spoke of him. His whole behavior gives color to the
supposition that he was the accomplice of a pretended death.
Although, on the evidence of reliable witnesses, he must have
been at least a hundred years old in 1784, his death in that
year cannot have been genuine. The official documents of Freemasonry
say that in 1785 the French masons chose him as their representative
at the great convention that took place in that year, with Mesmer,
Saint-Martin, and Cagliostro present. In the following year
Saint-Germain was received by the Empress of Russia. Finally,
the Comtesse d'Adhemar reports at great length a conversation
she had with him in 1789 in the Church of the Recollets, after
the taking of the Bastille.
His face looked no older than it had looked thirty years earlier.
He said he had come from China and Japan. "There is nothing
so strange out there," he said, "as that which is
happening here. But I can do nothing. My hands are tied by someone
who is stronger than I. There are times when it is possible
to draw back; others at which the decree must be carried out
as soon as he has pronounced it."
And he told her in broad outlines all the events, not excepting
the death of the queen, that were to take place in the years
that followed. "The French will play with titles and honors
and ribbons like children. They will regard everything as a
plaything, even the equipment of the Garde Nationale. There
is today a deficit of some forty millions, which is the nominal
cause of the Revolution. Well, under the dictatorship of philanthropists
and orators the national debt will reach thousands of millions."
"I have seen Saint-Germain again," wrote Comtesse
d'Adhemar in 1821, "each time to my amazement. I saw him
when the queen was murdered, on the 18th of Brumaire, on the
day following the death of the Duke d'Enghien, in January, 1815,
and on the eve of the murder of the Duke de Berry."
Mademoiselle de Genlis asserts that she met the Comte de Saint-Germain
in 1821 during the negotiations for the Treaty of Vienna; and
the Comte de Chalons, who was ambassador in Venice, said he
spoke to him there soon afterwards in the Piazza di San Marco.
There is other evidence, though less conclusive, of his survival.
The Englishman Grosley said he saw him in 1798 in a revolutionary
prison; and someone else wrote that he was one of the crowd
surrounding the tribunal at which the Princess de Lamballe appeared
before her execution.
It seems quite certain that the Comte de Saint-Germain did not
die at the place and on the date that history has fixed. He
continued an unknown career, of whose end we are ignorant and
whose duration seems so long that one's imagination hesitates
to admit it.
Saint-Germain's Philosophy
With the co-operation of Savalette de Lange, who was the nominal
head, he founded the group of Philalethes, or truth-lovers,
which was recruited from the cream of the Friends Assembled.
The Prince of Hesse, Condorcet, and Cagliostro were all members
of this group. Saint-Germain expounded his philosophy at Ermenonville
and in Paris, in the rue Platriere. It was a Platonic Christianity,
which combined Swedenborg's visions with Martinez de Pasqually's
theory of reintegration. There were to be found in it Plotinus'
emanations and the hierarchy of successive planes described
by Hermeticists and modem theosophists. He taught that man has
in him infinite possibilities and that, from the practical point
of view, he must strive unceasingly to free himself of matter
in order to enter into communication with the world of higher
intelligences.
He was understood by some. In two great successive assemblies,
at which every Masonic lodge in France was represented, the
Philalethes attempted the reform of Freemasonry. If they had
attained their aim, if they had succeeded in directing the great
force of Freemasonry by the prestige of their philosophy, which
was sublime and disinterested, it may be that the course of
events would have been altered, that the old dream of a world
guided by philosopher-initiates would have been realized.
But matters were to turn out differently. Old causes, created
by accumulated injustices had paved the way for terrible effects.
These effects were in their turn to create the causes of future
evil. The chain of evil, linked firmly together by men's egoism
and hatred, was not to be broken. The light kindled by a few
wise visionaries, a few faithful watchers over the well being
of their brothers, was extinguished almost as soon as it was
kindled.
Legend
of the Eternal Master
Napoleon III, puzzled and interested by what he had heard about
the mysterious life of the Comte de Saint-Germain, instructed
one of his librarians to search for and collect all that could
be found about him in archives and documents of the latter part
of the eighteenth century. This was done, and a great number
of papers, forming an enormous dossier, was deposited in the
library of the prefecture of police. Unfortunately, the Franco-Prussian
War and the Commune supervened, and the part of the building
in which the dossier was kept was burnt. Thus once again a synchronous
accident upheld the ancient law that decrees that the life of
the adept must always be surrounded with mystery.
What happened to the Comte de Saint-Germain after 1821, in which
year there is evidence that he was still alive? An Englishman,
Albert Vandam, in his memoirs, which he calls An Englishman
in Paris, speaks of a certain person whom he knew towards the
end of Louis Philippe's reign and whose way of life bore a curious
resemblance to that of the Comte de Saint-Germain. "He
called himself Major Fraser, wrote Vandam, "lived alone
and never alluded to his family. Moreover he was lavish with
money, though the source of his fortune remained a mystery to
everyone. He possessed a marvelous knowledge of all the countries
in Europe at all periods. His memory was absolutely incredible
and, curiously enough, he often gave his hearers to understand
that he had acquired his learning elsewhere than from books.
Many is the time he has told me, with a strange smile, that
he was certain he had known Nero, had spoken with Dante, and
so on."
Like Saint-Germain, Major Fraser had the appearance of a man
of between forty and fifty, of middle height and strongly built.
The rumor was current that he was the illegitimate son of a
Spanish prince. After having been, also like Saint-Germain,
a cause of astonishment to Parisian society for a considerable
time, he disappeared without leaving a trace. Was it the same
Major Fraser who, in 1820, published an account of his journey
in the Himalayas, in which he said he had reached Gangotri,
the source of the most sacred branch of the Ganges River, and
bathed in the source of the Jumna River?
It was at the end of the nineteenth century that the legend
of Saint-Germain grew so inordinately. By reason of his knowledge,
of the integrity of his life, of his wealth and of the mystery
that surrounded him, he might reasonably have been taken for
an heir of the first Rosicrucians, for a possessor of the Philosopher's
Stone. But the theosophists and a great many occultists regarded
him as a master of the great White Lodge of the Himalayas. The
legend of these masters is well known. According to it there
live in inaccessible lamaseries in Tibet certain wise men who
possess the ancient secrets of the lost civilization of Atlantis.
Sometimes they send to their imperfect brothers, who are blinded
by passions and ignorance, sublime messengers to teach and guide
them. Krishna, the Buddha, and Jesus were the greatest of these.
But there were many other more obscure messengers, of whom Saint-Germain
has been considered to be one.
"This pupil of Hindu and Egyptian hierophants, this holder
of the secret knowledge of the East," theosophist Madam
Blavatsky says of him, "was not appreciated for who he
was. The stupid world has always treated in this way men who,
like Saint-Germain, have returned to it after long years of
seclusion devoted to study with their hands full of the treasure
of esoteric wisdom and with the hope of making the world better,
wiser and happier." Between 1880 and 1900 it was admitted
among all theosophists, who at that time had become very numerous,
particularly in England and America, that the Comte de Saint-Germain
was still alive, that he was still engaged in the spiritual
development of the West, and that those who sincerely took part
in this development had the possibility of meeting him.
The brotherhood of Khe-lan was famous throughout Tibet, and
one of their most famous brothers was an Englishman who had
arrived one day during the early part of the twentieth century
from the West. He spoke every language, including the Tibetan,
and knew every art and science, says the tradition. His sanctity
and the phenomena produced by him caused him to be proclaimed
a Shaberon Master after a residence of but a few years. His
memory lives to the present day among the Tibetans, but his
real name is a secret with the Shaberons alone. Might not this
mysterious traveler be the Comte de Saint-Germain?
But even if he has never come back, even if he is no longer
alive and we must relegate to legend the idea that the great
Hermetic nobleman is still wandering about the world with his
sparkling jewels, his senna tea, and his taste for princesses
and queens even so it can be said that he has gained the immortality
he sought. For a great number of imaginative and sincere men
the Comte de Saint-Germain is more alive than he has ever been.
There are men who, when they hear a step on the staircase, think
it may perhaps be he, coming to give them advice, to bring them
some unexpected philosophical idea. They do not jump up to open
the door to their guest, for material barriers do not exist
for him. There are men who, when they go to sleep, are pervaded
by genuine happiness because they are certain that their spirit,
when freed from the body, will be able to hold converse with
the master in the luminous haze of the astral world.
The Comte de Saint-Germain is always present with us. There
will always be, as there were in the eighteenth century, mysterious
doctors, enigmatic travelers, bringers of occult secrets, to
perpetuate him. Some will have bathed in the sources of the
Ganges, and others will show a talisman found in the pyramids.
But they are not necessary. They diminish the range of the mystery
by giving it everyday, material form. The Comte de Saint-Germain
is immortal, as he always dreamed of being.
