eeded was simply
a son of the _Queen_ of Spain. She had, while Queen, no son, as far as
is ascertained, but she had a favourite, a Count Andanero, whom she
made minister of finance. 'He was not a born Count,' he was a
financier, this favourite of the Queen of Spain. That lady did go to
live in Bayonne in 1706, six years after the death of Charles II., her
husband. The hypothesis is, then, that Saint-Germain was the son of
this ex-Queen of Spain, and of the financial Count, Andanero, a man,
'not born in the sphere of Counts,' and easily transformed by
tradition into a Jewish banker of Bordeaux. The Duc de Choiseul, who
disliked the intimacy of Louis XV. and of the Court with
Saint-Germain, said that the Count was 'the son of a Portuguese Jew,
_who deceives the Court_. It is strange that the King is so often
allowed to be almost alone with this man, though, when he goes out, he
is surrounded by guards, as if he feared assassins everywhere.' This
anecdote is from the 'Memoirs' of Gleichen, who had seen a great deal
of the world. He died in 1807.

It seems a fair inference that the Duc de Choiseul knew what the Dutch
bankers knew, the story of the Count's being a child of a princess
retired to Bayonne--namely, the ex-Queen of Spain--and of a
Portuguese-Hebrew financier. De Choiseul was ready to accept the
Jewish father, but thought that, in the matter of the royal mother,
Saint-Germain 'deceived the Court.'

A queen of Spain might have carried off any quantity of the diamonds
of Brazil. The presents of diamonds from her almost idiotic lord must
have been among the few comforts of her situation in a Court
overridden by etiquette. The reader of Madame d'Aulnoy's contemporary
account of the Court of Spain knows what a dreadful dungeon it was.
Again, if born at Bayonne about 1706, the Count would naturally seem
to be about fifty in 1760. The purity with which he spoke German, and
his familiarity with German princely Courts--where I do not remember
that Barry Lyndon ever met him--are easily accounted for if he had a
royal German to his mother. But, alas! if he was the son of a Hebrew
financier, Portuguese or Alsatian (as some said), he was likely,
whoever his mother may have been, to know German, and to be fond of
precious stones. That Oriental taste notoriously abides in the hearts
of the Chosen People.

Nay, never shague your gory locks at me,
Dou canst not say I did it.

quotes Pinto, the hero of Thackeray's _No