The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries (84 page)

In 1760 the king apparently sent Saint-Germain on a diplomatic mission to Holland – although this was kept secret from his ministers; Saint-Germain’s mission was to investigate overtures of peace with England – the king was hoping to persuade England to abandon her ally Prussia. Saint-Germain found himself staying in the same hotel as that other amusing adventurer Casanova, who was trying to negotiate a loan for France. They already knew one another, and Casanova was convinced that Saint-Germain was a charlatan. He says of him in his Memoirs:

Nevertheless, Casanova seized the opportunity to destroy Saint-Germain’s credit by producing a bogus “cabalistic” oracle warning against him. Meanwhile the Duc de Choiseul had got wind of the plot – he was against making peace – and sent orders for Saint-Germain to be arrested and conveyed to the Bastille. But the Dutch Ambassador decided to drop a word in Saint-Germain’s ear, and he took the next boat to London. Louis was too embarrassed to admit that he and Belle-Isle had been behind Saint-Germain’s mission.

Saint-Germain’s enemies had succeeded in bringing about his downfall – although there can be no doubt that his own tactlessness and naivety also played their part; he buttonholed the most unsuitable people and told them about his mission. In England he met the German ambassador, and may have hoped to go and join Frederick the Great in
Saxony; the ambassador wrote in haste to the Prussian secretary of state begging him to do his best to hinder Saint-Germain’s journey, on the grounds that he was dangerously impetuous, and might fascinate the king and persuade him to undertake “many disastrous measures”. He seems to have had no doubt of Saint-Germain’s power to fascinate. Saint-Germain was apparently obliged to return secretly to Holland, where he purchased an estate, calling himself Count Surmount – he seems to have been short of cash, for he paid only part of the purchase price. The French ambassador described him as “completely discredited”. But he had found himself a new patron – or dupe – in Cobenzl, minister in the Austrian Netherlands, who wanted to exploit Saint-Germain’s chemical processes in factories at Tournai. Cobenzl told Kaunitz, the Austrian chancellor, of all kinds of “miracles”, such as turning base metals into gold, dyeing silks and other materials all kinds of glorious colours, and tanning skins to produce marvellously soft leather. Cobenzl seemed positively infatuated with Saint-Germain, although he added: “The only thing I can reproach him with is frequent boasting about his talents and origins.” And although Cobenzl later came to take a dim view of the “genius’s” character, he never doubted the tremendous commercial value of his processes. The factories in Tournai were set up, and Saint-Germain managed to pocket a hundred thousand gulden for secrets he had promised to give gratis. Even so, he vanished without parting with all the promised secrets. But the factories in Tournai apparently did well – from which we may infer that Saint-Germain’s “processes” were genuine enough.

Saint-Germain’s movements during the next decade are unknown, but he himself claimed to have been twice to India, and to have been involved in the Russo-Turkish war in the Mediterranean (1768–74). He certainly went to St Petersburg and became a friend of Count Alexei Orlov, commander of the Russian expedition to the Archipelago. His favourite beverage, tea made from sennapods (a mild laxative), became known as Russian tea and was supplied in bulk to the Russian navy. For reasons that are not clear, he was raised to the rank of a Russian general. In 1774 he was living at Schwabach, in Anspach, and found himself a new patron, Charles Alexander, margrave of Brandenburg. The margrave was duly impressed when he went with Saint-Germain to meet Orlov and saw the latter embrace him with great warmth. Soon Saint-Germain was the margrave’s guest in his castle at Triersdorf, living quietly and continuing his experiments. He was now calling himself Count Tzarogy. But one day his desire to impress and astonish led him to tell his host that he was really Prince Rakoczy of Transylvania. But
when the margrave visited Italy in the following year, and began to tell stories about his astonishing guest, he learned that the last three sons of the royal house of Transylvania were dead, and that his guest sounded like the notorious trickster Saint-Germain, who was really the son of a tax-collector of San Germano. Gemmingen, the Anspach minister who was sent to confront Saint-Germain, reported that “Prince Rakoczy” did not deny that he called himself Saint-Germain. He had had occasion to use many aliases to avoid his enemies; but he had never disgraced any of the names he bore. This on the whole was true, and the margrave had to admit that his guest had always behaved quietly and modestly, and never tried to part him from large sums of money. All the same, he was disillusioned, and declined to see Saint-Germain again. So in 1776, in his mid-sixties, Saint-Germain once again took to the road. He visited Leipzig, Dresden, Berlin and Hamburg, then went to Berlin hoping to see Frederick the Great; but the king had no wish to make the acquaintance of a discredited adventurer.

Finally, Saint-Germain found another patron, Prince Charles of Hesse-Cassel, who was cool and uninterested to begin with, but gradually succumbed to Saint-Germain’s charm and enthusiasm. Prince Charles was not disposed to doubt any of Saint-Germain’s stories, including that he was Prince Rakoczy, that he had been brought up in the household of the last of the Medici, and that he was now eighty-eight years old. He set Saint-Germain up in a factory in Eckenforde, in Schleswig-Holstein, and there the adventurer lived out his last years quietly, suffering periodically from depression and rheumatism, and dying in February 1784, to the grief of Prince Charles, who described him as “one of the greatest sages who ever lived”.

No sooner was Saint-Germain dead than rumours that he was still alive began to circulate. A journal published in the following year said he was expected to return soon. Madame de Genlis was convinced she had seen him in Vienna in 1821. In 1836 a volume of
Souvenirs
by the Countess d’Adhémar, who claimed to be familiar with the court at Versailles in the last days of the monarchy, claimed that she had seen Saint-Germain as late as 1793, and that he had warned her about the death of Marie Antoinette. He told her she would see him five times more, “and do not wish for a sixth”, and she claims that she saw him five times between then and 1820. But G.B. Volz, who conducted an investigation of the life of Saint-Germain in the 1920s, asserts that the countess never existed and that the
Souvenirs
are a forgery. In 1845 Franz Graffer declares in his
Memoirs
that he had seen Saint-Germain, and that he had announced that he would appear in the Himalayas
towards the turn of the century – a claim that in due course led Madame Blavatsky to include him among her “Secret Masters” in Tibet, and to quote him with respect in
The Secret Doctrine
. But again, the
Memoirs
of Franz Graffer are thought to be a forgery. On the other hand, Madame Blavatsky went to the trouble of visiting the then Countess d’Adhémar in 1885, and Mrs Cooper-Oakley, whose book on Saint-Germain appeared in 1912, discovered that there were still documents about him in the possession of the d’Adhémar family. As late as January 1972, a young man called Richard Chanfray appeared on French television claiming to be Saint-Germain, and apparently transformed lead into gold, using only a camping stove.

When all the claims and counter-claims have been taken into account, what can we say of the “man of mystery”? First – regretfully – that he cannot be taken seriously as a mage or a secret Master. Whether the Prussian ambassador in Dresden is correct when he says “inordinate vanity is the mainspring of his mechanism”, there can be no doubt that Saint-Germain
was
a vain man who talked too much – too many contemporaries make this comment for it to be untrue. But a man may be vain and talkative, and still possess genius (Bernard Shaw being the example who immediately springs to mind). It is also perfectly clear that Saint-Germain was a genuine enthusiast, with an extraordinary range of talents. He himself never claimed to be a “mage”, or a student of occultism. In fact, he insisted that he was a materialist whose chief desire was to benefit humanity. Diderot and D’Alembert would no doubt have found him an ideal contributor to their
Encyclopedia.

The real mystery about Saint-Germain is that he was a man of genius, and at the same time a charlatan. He had what we would now call a strongly developed sense of publicity, a desire to intrigue and fascinate. And this in itself argues that he was not what he claimed to be. He was undoubtedly
not
the last surviving member of the Transylvanian royal family – precise details are known about its last three surviving members. But this desire to pose as a king in exile suggests that Saint-Germain was born in fairly humble circumstances, and that he spent a great deal of his childhood and youth daydreaming about fame and glory. The annals of charlatanism are full of Walter Mittys and Billy Liars, but it is difficult to recollect a swindler who was really born in a palace or a stately home. We may probably assume, then, that Saint-Germain was not the bastard son of the Queen of Spain. But it seems equally clear that he managed to acquire himself a good education, and that chemistry was the love of his life. In different circumstances he might have become a Lavoisier or Robert Boyle or Michael Faraday.
His natural brilliance made him contemptuous of the intelligence of his fellow-men, and when he claimed to be three hundred years old, or dropped hints about his acquaintance with Francis I, he probably told himself that he was poking fun at human stupidity.

The only real mystery is where he acquired the money to pose as a prince. Since he seems to have been an honest man (if we except the little affair of the Tournai factory), the answer, presumably, is that he was able to turn his chemical researches to commercial use. It is a disappointing conclusion that the Man of Mystery, the Secret Master, was merely a brilliant industrial chemist. But it is the only theory that corresponds to the facts as we know them.

48

The Miracles of Saint-Médard

The strange events that took place in the little Paris churchyard of Saint-Médard between 1727 and 1732 sound so incredible, so preposterous, that the modern reader is tempted to dismiss them as pure invention. This would be a mistake, for an impressive mass of documents, including accounts by doctors, magistrates and other respectable public figures, attests to their genuineness. The miracles undoubtedly took place. But no doctor, philosopher or scientist has even begun to explain them.

They began with the burial of François de Pâris, the Deacon of Paris, in May 1727. François was only thirty-seven years old, yet he was revered as a holy man, with powers of healing. He was a follower of Bishop Cornelius Jansen, who taught that men can be saved only by divine grace, not by their own efforts. The Deacon had no doubt whatever that his own healing powers came from God.

Great crowds followed his coffin, many weeping. It was laid in a tomb behind the high altar of Saint-Médard. Then the congregation filed past, laying their flowers on the corpse. A father supported his son, a cripple, as he leaned over the coffin. Suddenly, the child went into convulsions; he seemed to be having a fit. Several people helped to drag him, writhing, to a quiet corner of the church. Suddenly the convulsions stopped. The boy opened his eyes, looking around in bewilderment, and then slowly stood up. A look of incredulous joy crossed his face; then to the astonishment of the spectators he began to dance up and down, singing and laughing. His father found it impossible to believe, for the boy was using his withered right leg, which had virtually no muscles. Later it was claimed that the leg had become as strong and normal as the other.

The news spread. Within hours cripples, lepers, hunchbacks and blind men were rushing to the church. At first few “respectable” people
believed the stories of miraculous cures – the majority of the Deacon’s followers were poor people. The rich preferred to leave their spiritual affairs in the hands of the Jesuits, who were more cultivated and worldly. But it soon became clear that ignorance and credulity could not be used as a blanket explanation for all the stories of marvels. Deformed limbs, it was said, were being straightened; hideous growths and cancers were disappearing without trace; horrible sores and wounds were healing instantly.

The Jesuits declared that the miracles were either a fraud or the work of the Devil; the result was that most of the better-off people in Paris flatly refused to believe that anything unusual was taking place in the churchyard of Saint-Médard. But a few men of intellect were drawn by curiosity, and they invariably returned from the churchyard profoundly shaken. Sometimes they recorded their testimony in print: some, such as one Philippe Hecquet, attempted to explain the events by natural causes. Others, such as the Benedictine Bernard Louis de la Taste, attacked the people who performed the miracles on theological grounds, but were unable to expose any deception or error by them, or any error on the part of the witnesses. The accumulation of written testimony was such that David Hume, one of the greatest of philosophers, wrote in
An enquiry concerning human understanding
(1758):