a deserted Mexican bride?),
it appears that he was already as rich in these treasures as he was
afterwards, when his French acquaintances marvelled at them. As to his
being 'mad,' Walpole may refer to Saint-Germain's way of talking as if
he had lived in remote ages, and known famous people of the past.

Having caught this daylight glimpse of Saint-Germain in Walpole,
having learned that in December 1745 he was arrested and examined as a
possible Jacobite agent, we naturally expect to find contemporary
official documents about his examination by the Government. Scores of
such records exist, containing the questions put to, and the answers
given by, suspected persons. But we vainly hunt through the Newcastle
MSS. and the State Papers, Domestic, in the Record Office, for a trace
of the examination of Saint-Germain. I am not aware that he has
anywhere left his trail in official documents; he lives in more or
less legendary memoirs, alone.

At what precise date Saint-Germain became an intimate of Louis XV.,
the Duc de Choiseul, Madame de Pompadour, and the Marechal de
Belle-Isle, one cannot ascertain. The writers of memoirs are the
vaguest of mortals about dates; only one discerns that Saint-Germain
was much about the French Court, and high in the favour of the King,
having rooms at Chambord, during the Seven Years' War, and just before
the time of the peace negotiations of 1762-1763. The art of compiling
false or forged memoirs of that period was widely practised; but the
memoirs of Madame du Hausset, who speaks of Saint-Germain, are
authentic. She was the widow of a poor man of noble family, and was
one of two _femmes de chambre_ of Madame de Pompadour. Her manuscript
was written, she explains, by aid of a brief diary which she kept
during her term of service. One day M. Senac de Meilhan found Madame
de Pompadour's brother, M. de Marigny, about to burn a packet of
papers. 'It is the journal,' he said, 'of a _femme de chambre_ of my
sister, a good kind woman.' De Meilhan asked for the manuscript, which
he later gave to Mr. Crawford, one of the Kilwinning family, in
Ayrshire, who later helped in the escape of Louis XVI. and Marie
Antoinette to Varennes, where they were captured. With the journal of
Madame du Hausset were several letters to Marigny on points of
historical anecdote.[45]

[Footnote 45: One of these gives Madame de Vieux-Maison as the author
of a _roman a clef_, _Secret Memoirs of the Court of Persia_, which