ghorn, towards the close of the last century; and copies of it are
still preserved with religious care and the utmost secrecy by certain
noble families in Berlin and Vienna, where the preparation has been used
(as they believe) with perfect success against a host of diseases.

Still another peculiarity of the Count would be highly advantageous to
any of us, particularly at this period of high prices and culinary
scarcity. He never ate nor drank; or, at least, he was never seen to do
so! It is said that boarding house _regime_ in these days is rapidly
accustoming a considerable class of our fellow-citizens to a similar
condition, but I can scarcely believe it.

Again, the Count would fall into cataleptic swoons, which continued
often for hours, and even days; and, during these periods, he declared
that he visited, in spirit, the most remote regions of the earth, and
even the farthest stars, and would relate, with astonishing power, the
scenes he there had witnessed!

He, of course, laid claim to the transmutation of baser metals into
gold, and stated that, in 1755, while on a visit to India, to consult
the erudition of the Hindoo Brahmins, he solved, by their assistance,
the problem of the artificial crystallization of pure carbon--or, in
other words, the production of diamonds! One thing is certain, viz.:
that upon a visit to the French ambassador to the Hague, in 1780, he, in
the presence of that functionary, induced him to believe and testify
that he broke to pieces, with a hammer, a superb diamond, of his own
manufacture, the exact counterpart of another, of similar origin, which
he had just sold for 5,500 louis d'or.

His career and transformations on the Continent were multiform. In 1762,
he was mixed up with the dynastic conspiracies and changes at St.
Petersburg; and his importance there was indicated ten years later, by
the reception given to him at Vienna by the Russian Count Orloff, who
accosted him joyously as "caro padre" (dear father,) and gave him twenty
thousand golden Venetian sequins.

From Petersburg he went to Berlin, where he at once attracted the
attention of Frederick the Great, who questioned Voltaire about him; the
latter replying, as it is said, that he was a man who knew all things,
and would live to the end of the world--a fair statement, in brief, of
the position assumed by more than one of our ward politicians!

In 1774, he took up his abode at Schwabach, in Germany, under the name
of