in, though it seems as familiar as the myth of Oedipus or
Thyestes, may, after all, not be vividly present to the memory of
every reader. The omniscient Larousse, of the _Dictionnaire Universel_,
certainly did not know one very accessible fact about Saint-Germain,
nor have I seen it mentioned in other versions of his legend. We read,
in Larousse, 'Saint-Germain is not heard of in France before 1750, when
he established himself in Paris. No adventure had called attention to
his existence; it was only known that he had moved about Europe, lived
in Italy, Holland, and in England, and had borne the names of Marquis
de Montferrat and of Comte de Bellamye, which he used at Venice.'

Lascelles Wraxall, again, in _Remarkable Adventures_ (1863), says:
'Whatever truth there may be in Saint-Germain's travels in England and
the East Indies, it is indubitable that, for from 1745 to 1755, he was
a man of high position in Vienna,' while in Paris he does not appear,
according to Wraxall, till 1757, having been brought from Germany by
the Marechal de Belle-Isle, whose 'old boots,' says Macallester the
spy, Prince Charles freely damned, 'because they were always stuffed
with projects.' Now we hear of Saint-Germain, by that name, as
resident, not in Vienna, but in London, at the very moment when Prince
Charles, evading Cumberland, who lay with his army at Stone, in
Staffordshire, marched to Derby. Horace Walpole writes to Mann in
Florence (December 9, 1745):

'We begin to take up people ... the other day they seized an odd man
who goes by the name of Count Saint-Germain. He has been here these
two years, and will not tell who he is, or whence, but professes that
he does not go by his right name. He sings, plays on the violin
wonderfully, composes, is mad, and not very sensible. He is called an
Italian, a Spaniard, a Pole; a somebody that married a great fortune
in Mexico, and ran away with her jewels to Constantinople; a priest, a
fiddler, a vast nobleman. The Prince of Wales has had unsatiated
curiosity about him, but in vain. However, nothing has been made out
against him; he is released, and, what convinces me he is not a
gentleman, stays here, and talks of his being taken up for a spy.'

Here is our earliest authentic note on Saint-Germain; a note omitted
by his French students. He was in London from 1743 to 1745, under a
name not his own, but that which he later bore at the Court of France.
From the allusion to his jewels (those of