PREFACE

the Court of France, where he speedily gained the favour of Madame de Pompadour. The Marquise before long presented him to the King, who granted him an apartment at Chambord and, enchanted by his brilliant wit, frequently spent long evenings in conversation with him in the rooms of Madame de Pompadour. Meanwhile his invention of flat-bottomed boats for the invasion of England raised him still higher in the estimation of the Maréchal de Belle-Isle. In 1761 we hear of him as living in great splendour in Holland and giving out that he had reached the age of seventy-four, though appearing to be only fifty; if this were so, he must have been ninety-seven at the time of his death in 1784 at Schleswig. But this feat of longevity is far from satisfying his modern admirers, who declare that Saint-Germain did not die in 1784, but is still alive to-day in some corner of Eastern Europe. This is in accordance with the theory, said to have been circulated by Saint-Germain himself, that by the eighteenth century he had passed through several incarnations and that the last one had continued for 1,500 years. Barruel, however, explains that Saint-Germain in thus referring to his age spoke in masonic language, in which a man who has taken the first degree is said to be three years old, after the second five, or the third seven, so that by means of the huge increase the higher degrees conferred it might be quite possible for an exalted adept to attain the age of 1,500.