"Comte de Saint-Germain"--"The Master" of our modern
co-masonic lodges. The identity of this mysterious personage has never
been established[443]; by some contemporaries he was said to be a
natural son of the King of Portugal, by others the son of a Jew and a
Polish Princess. The Duc de Choiseul on being asked whether he knew the
origin of Saint-Germain replied: "No doubt we know it, he is the son of
a Portuguese Jew who exploits the credulity of the town and Court."[444]
In 1780 a rumour went round that his father was a Jew of Bordeaux,
but according to the _Souvenirs of the Marquise de Crequy_ the Baron de
Breteuil discovered from the archives of his Ministry that the pretended
Comte de Saint-Germain was the son of a Jewish doctor of Strasburg, that
his real name was Daniel Wolf, and that he was born in 1704.[445] The
general opinion thus appears to have been in favour of his Jewish
ancestry.

Saint-German seems first to have been heard of in Germany about 1740,
where his marvellous powers attracted the attention of the Marechal de
Belle-Isle, who, always the ready dupe of charlatans, brought him back
with him to 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 Marechal 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