This
colour, which lasted for some time, was attributed to a picture which
hung at the foot of his, mother's bed, and which she often looked at. It
represented a Moor bringing to Cleopatra a basket of flowers, containing
the asp by whose bite she destroyed herself. He said that she also told
him, "You have a great deal of money about you, but it does not belong to
you;" and that he had actually in his pocket two hundred Louis for the
Duc de La Valliere. Lastly, he informed us that she said, looking in the
cup, "I see one of your friends--the best--a distinguished lady,
threatened with an accident;" that he confessed that, in spite of all his
philosophy, he turned pale; that she remarked this, looked again into the
cup, and continued, "Her head will be slightly in danger, but of this no
appearance will remain half an hour afterwards." It was impossible to
doubt the facts. They appeared so surprising to the King, that he
desired some inquiry to be made concerning the fortune-teller. Madame,
however, protected her from the pursuit of the Police.

A man, who was quite as astonishing as this fortune-teller, often visited
Madame de Pompadour. This was the Comte de St. Germain, who wished to
have it believed that he had lived several centuries.

[St. Germain was an adept--a worthy predecessor of Cagliostro, who
expected to live five hundred years. The Count de St. Germain pretended
to have already lived two thousand, and, according to him, the account
was still running. He went so far as to claim the power of transmitting
the gift of long life. One day, calling upon his servant to, bear
witness to a fact that went pretty far back, the man replied, "I have no
recollection of it, sir; you forget that I have only had the honour of
serving you for five hundred years."

St. Germain, like all other charlatans of this sort, assumed a theatrical
magnificence, and an air of science calculated to deceive the vulgar.
His best instrument of deception was the phantasmagoria; and as, by means
of this abuse of the science of optics, he called up shades which were
asked for, and almost always recognised, his correspondence with the
other world was a thing proved by the concurrent testimony of numerous
witnesses.

He played the same game in London, Venice, and Holland, but he constantly
regretted Paris, where his miracles were never questioned.

St. Germain passed his latter days at the Court of the Prince of Hesse
Cassel, and