er frightful scolding. Before her death she put forth one or
two memoirs,--false, scandalous things.

The unfortunate Queen never entirely escaped some shadow of disrepute
from the necklace business. For to the very last, both on the trial and
afterwards, Jeanne de Lamotte impudently stuck to it that at least the
Queen had known about the trick played on the Cardinal at the Trianon,
and had in fact been hidden close by and saw and laughed heartily at the
whole interview. So sore and morbid was the condition of the public mind
in France in those days, when symptoms of the coming Revolution were
breaking out on every side, that this odious story found many and
willing believers.

CHAPTER LXII.

THE COUNT DE ST. GERMAIN, SAGE, PROPHET, AND MAGICIAN.

Superior to Cagliostro, even in accomplishments, and second to him in
notoriety only, was that human nondescript, the so-called Count de St.
Germain, whom Fredrick the Great called, "a man no one has ever been
able to make out."

The Marquis de Crequy declares that St. Germain was an Alsatian Jew,
Simon Wolff by name, and born at Strasburg about the close of the
seventeenth or the beginning of the eighteenth century; others insist
that he was a Spanish Jesuit named Aymar; and others again intimate that
his true title was the Marquis de Betmar, and that he was a native of
Portugal. The most plausible theory, however, makes him the natural son
of an Italian princess, and fixes his birth at San Germano, in Savoy,
about the year 1710; his ostensible father being one Rotondo, a
tax-collector of that district.

This supposition is borne out by the fact that he spoke all his many
languages with an Italian accent. It was about the year 1750 that he
first began to be heard of in Europe as the Count St. Germain, and put
forth the astounding pretensions that soon gave him celebrity over the
whole continent. The celebrated Marquis de Belleisle made his
acquaintance about that time in Germany, and brought him to Paris, where
he was introduced to Madame de Pompadour, whose favor he very quickly
gained. The influence of that famous beauty was just then paramount with
Louis XV, and the Count was soon one of the most eminent men at court.
He was remarkably handsome--as an old portrait at Friersdorf, in Saxony,
in the rooms he once occupied, sufficiently indicated; and his musical
accomplishments, added to the ineffable charm of his manners and
conversation, and the miracles he p