was not exclusively concerned with stars, the powder of projection, and
the primitive atom. Lorenzo had by that time left the kingdom.

In spite of the incredulity which most persons show in these matters,
the events which followed the scene we have narrated confirmed the
predictions of the Ruggieri.

The king died within three months.

Charles de Gondi followed Charles IX. to the grave, as had been foretold
to him jestingly by his brother the Marechal de Retz, a friend of the
Ruggieri, who believed in their predictions.

Marie Touchet married Charles de Balzac, Marquis d'Entragues, the
governor of Orleans, by whom she had two daughters. The most celebrated
of these daughters, the half-sister of the Comte d'Auvergne, was the
mistress of Henri IV., and it was she who endeavored, at the time
of Biron's conspiracy, to put her brother on the throne of France by
driving out the Bourbons.

The Comte d'Auvergne, who became the Duc d'Angouleme, lived into the
reign of Louis XIV. He coined money on his estates and altered the
inscriptions; but Louis XIV. let him do as he pleased, out of respect
for the blood of the Valois.

Cosmo Ruggiero lived till the middle of the reign of Louis XIII.; he
witnessed the fall of the house of the Medici in France, also that of
the Concini. History has taken pains to record that he died an atheist,
that is, a materialist.

The Marquise d'Entragues was over eighty when she died.

The famous Comte de Saint-Germain, who made so much noise under Louis
XIV., was a pupil of Lorenzo and Cosmo Ruggiero. This celebrated
alchemist lived to be one hundred and thirty years old,--an age which
some biographers give to Marion de Lorme. He must have heard from the
Ruggieri the various incidents of the Saint-Bartholomew and of the
reigns of the Valois kings, which he afterwards recounted in the first
person singular, as though he had played a part in them. The Comte de
Saint-Germain was the last of the alchemists who knew how to clearly
explain their science; but he left no writings. The cabalistic doctrine
presented in this Study is that taught by this mysterious personage.

And here, behold a strange thing! Three lives, that of the old man from
whom I have obtained these facts, that of the Comte de Saint-Germain,
and that of Cosmo Ruggiero, suffice to cover the whole of European
history from Francois I. to Napoleon! Only fifty such lives are needed
to reach back to the first known period of the world