ent; he appeared at Paris suddenly, and disappeared in the same
way, lived in an _hotel garni_, had always plenty of money, and
paid for everything regularly; he talked of events and persons
connected with history, both ancient and modern, with entire
familiarity and a correctness which never was at fault, and
always of the people as if he had lived with them and known them;
as Talleyrand exemplified it, he would say, 'Un jour que je
dinais chez Cesar.'[5] He was supposed to be the Wandering Jew, a
story which has always appeared to me a very sublime fiction,
telling of

That settled ceaseless gloom
The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore,
Which will not look beyond the tomb,
Which cannot hope for rest before.

Then he related Mallet's conspiracy and the strange way in which
he heard it. Early in the morning his tailor came to his house
and insisted on seeing him. He was in bed, but on his _valet de
chambre's_ telling him how pressing the tailor was he ordered him
to be let in. The man said, 'Have you not heard the news? There
is a revolution in Paris.' It had come to the tailor's knowledge
by Mallet's going to him the very first thing to order a new
uniform! Talleyrand said the conspirators ought to have put to
death Cambaceres and the King of Rome. I asked him if they had
done so whether he thought it possible the thing might have
succeeded. He said, 'C'est possible.' To my question whether the
Emperor would not have blown away the whole conspiracy in a
moment he replied, 'Ce n'est pas sur, c'est possible que cela
aurait reussi.'

[5] [This mysterious adventurer died in the arms of Prince
Charles of Hesse, in 1784; and some account of him is
to be found in the 'Memoirs' of that personage, quoted
in the 'Edinburgh Review,' vol. cxxiii. p. 521. The
Count de Saint-Germain was a man of science, especially
versed in chemistry botany, and metallurgy. He is
supposed to have derived his money from an invention in
the art of dyeing. According to his own account of
himself he was a son of Prince Ragozky of Transylvania
and his first wife, a Tekely, and he was Protestant and
educated by the last of the Medicis. He was supposed to
be ninety-two or ninety-three when he died. His
knowledge of the arcana of science and his mysterious
man