ss Elizabeth, a gift to the diplomatist of 1756, fetched 2_l._
13_s._ 6_d._! The poor old boy was badly hurt at a fencing match in
his sixty-eighth year, and henceforth lived retired from arms in the
house of a Mrs. Cole, an object of charity. He might have risen to the
highest places if discretion had been among his gifts, and his career
proves the _quantula sapientia_ of the French Government before the
Revolution. In no other time or country could 'the King's Secret' have
run a course far more incredible than even the story of the Chevalier
d'Eon.

XII

_SAINT-GERMAIN THE DEATHLESS_

Among the best brief masterpieces of fiction are Lytton's _The
Haunters and the Haunted_, and Thackeray's _Notch on the Axe_ in
_Roundabout Papers_. Both deal with a mysterious being who passes
through the ages, rich, powerful, always behind the scenes, coming no
man knows whence, and dying, or pretending to die, obscurely--you
never find authentic evidence of his decease. In other later times, at
other courts, such an one reappears and runs the same course of
luxury, marvel, and hidden potency.

Lytton returned to and elaborated his idea in the Margrave of _A
Strange Story_, who has no 'soul,' and prolongs his physical and
intellectual life by means of an elixir. Margrave is not bad, but he
is inferior to the hero, less elaborately designed, of _The Haunters
and the Haunted_. Thackeray's tale is written in a tone of mock
mysticism, but he confesses that he likes his own story, in which the
strange hero, through all his many lives or reappearances, and through
all the countless loves on which he fatuously plumes himself, retains
a slight German-Jewish accent.

It appears to me that the historic original of these romantic characters
is no other than the mysterious Comte de Saint-Germain--not, of course,
the contemporary and normal French soldier and minister, of 1707-1778,
who bore the same name. I have found the name, with dim allusions, in
the unpublished letters and MSS. of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, and
have not always been certain whether the reference was to the man of
action or to the man of mystery. On the secret of the latter, the
deathless one, I have no new light to throw, and only speak of him for
a single reason. Aristotle assures us, in his _Poetics_, that the
best known myths dramatised on the Athenian stage were known to very
few of the Athenian audience. It is not impossible that the story of
Saint-Germa