Context Context: Reign of King Louis XV. The Count of Saint Germain, he frequented the court at Versailles on various occasions, drew close to the king around 1757, and undertook diplomatic missions in the service of that country.
1743: He presented Madame de Pompadour with a black‑enamel bonbonnière with an agate lid which, when brought near the fire, changed color and revealed a painting with a pastoral motif.
1743: The Countess d’Adhémar met the Count of Saint‑Germain at the Versailles court. There he was known for his many prodigies, among which the following were recounted: he wrote with a masterly hand; he dispensed perfumes of his own making; he was an accomplished painter; the pigments he prepared possessed vivid hues and their method of manufacture was a secret; he repaired jewels and was said even to be able to create diamonds; he played numerous instruments with consummate skill, a virtuoso on them all; and he devised unique dyes for textiles.
1757: King Louis XV granted him lodgings at the Château de Chambord, where the Count set up his laboratory and gathered with other curious nobles to study physics, chemistry, and alchemy. Among those nobles were the Baron de Gleichen, the Marquis d’Urfé, and the Princess of Anhalt‑Zerbst, mother of Catherine II.
1757: When Madame de Gersy met him again, she took him for the son of the Count of Saint‑Germain she had known in 1710 in Venice. He had not aged a single day, and by her reckoning he ought to have been a hundred years old, as related in a dialogue between the lady and the Count, cited by Touchard‑Lafosse in the Chroniques de l’Œil‑de‑Bœuf: “Countess de Gersy was thunderstruck. By her own account, she recalled having met in Venice, about the year 1710, a foreign aristocrat whose resemblance to the Count of Saint‑Germain was astounding, though he bore another name. She asked him whether he might not be his father or some near relation.”
“No, Madame,” replied the Count with great composure, “I lost my father long ago. Yet I lived in Venice at the end of the last century and the beginning of this one. I certainly had the honor of paying you court, and you may find some popular songs composed by me which we used to sing together.”
""Forgive my frankness, but that cannot be. That Count of Saint‑Germain was then forty‑five, and you are of that age now.”
“Madame,” the Count answered with a smile, “I am very old.” “But by that reckoning you are now a hundred. That is impossible.”
Thereupon the Count enumerated for the Countess an infinity of particulars concerning their sojourn in Venice;
and, should any doubt remain, he proposed to remind her of certain circumstances, observations, and the like.
“No, no!” the aged ambassadress interrupted hastily, “you have fully convinced me; but you are indeed a most extraordinary devil.” [Source: Isabel Cooper‑Oakley, “The Count of St. Germain.”]
[Source: Isabel Cooper‑Oakley, “The Count of St. Germain.”]
1798: He encounters the Countess d’Adhémar; warns against Prime Minister Maurepas; and makes predictions about the fall of the Bourbons and the Great Revolution (concerning the events from 1799 onward).
1804: The Countess d’Adhémar meets the Count of Saint‑Germain again.
1813: Another meeting between the Count of Saint‑Germain and the Countess d’Adhémar, on the eve of the assassination of the Duke of Berry.
1820: The final meeting between the Count of Saint‑Germain and the Countess d’Adhémar.