One of the most mysterious people of his time was the Count Saint-Germain, or rather the one who was hiding under this name, which went down in history and became synonymous with the words "mystery", "mysticism" and "adventure".
Of course, Saint-Germain was an adventurer, but if a lot is known about the other great mystifiers of the same era - Michel Nostradamus, Alessandro Cagliostro, Giacomo Casanova - then almost nothing is known about the Count. No one even knew his name.
The 18th century is an era of great events and dramatic plots, which has remained in the memory of mankind as the "Age of Enlightenment". European society was seized by a powerful desire to learn the secrets of physical and spiritual life.
Of course, the "fermentation of minds" has become a breeding ground for adventurers. Self-styled prophets and healers, political crooks, greedy criminals, cunning swindlers, sexual perverts, mystics, freemasons and revolutionaries … Two false counts, who supposedly knew all the secrets of the Universe, Cagliostro and Saint Germain, have become a kind of trademarks of their century.
During his lifetime, Saint-Germain became a legend, a myth that roamed Europe. Goethe and Byron, Dumas and Victor Hugo remembered about him. Pushkin, in his “The Queen of Spades”, written in 1833, wrote: “You have heard of the Comte Saint-Germain, about whom so many wonderful things are told. You know that he posed as the Eternal Jew, the inventor of the vital elixir and the philosopher's stone … They laughed at him like a charlatan, and Casanova says in his Notes that he was a spy."
He showed up suddenly, with no past, it seemed. To direct questions about his origin, he usually silently and mysteriously smiled. He traveled under different names, but most often called himself Comte de Saint-Germain, although he did not have any legal rights to this title, under which he was known in Berlin, London, The Hague, St. Petersburg and Paris.
Despite his dark origins and mysterious past, he quickly became his man in high society in Paris and at the court of King Louis XV. However, this is not so surprising - traveling incognito was very fashionable in those days.
Similar stories surrounded the name of the count wherever he found himself - and by the time he appeared in Paris, where he was awaited by genuine glory, he had traveled all over Europe. And not only Europe: he assured that he studied with the magicians of Egypt, lived at the court of the Persian Shah, and even visited distant China. There was no evidence for this, but he did speak many living and dead languages, including Sanskrit and Arabic.
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All sorts of fables circulated about him. It was rumored that he was 500 years old, that he had learned the secret of the philosopher's stone. A popular definition has become "the mirror of Saint Germain" - a kind of magical artifact in which you can see the events of the future. In it, the count allegedly showed Louis XV the fate of his offspring, and the king almost fainted from horror when he saw the Dauphin's grandson beheaded.
In the archives of the Inquisition, a story recorded from the words of Cagliostro about his visit to Saint Germain has been preserved. The adventurer met with Saint-Germain in Holstein, where he was allegedly initiated by the count into the highest mystical degrees of the Knights Templar. During the dedication, the guest noticed the notorious mirror. He also claimed to have seen the vessel in which the count kept his elixir of immortality.
Casanova, in his memoirs, describes a meeting with Saint-Germain, whom he attended on the French Tour. According to him, the count looked like a true sorcerer - in a strange oriental dress, with a long, waist-length beard and an ivory wand in his hand, surrounded by a battery of crucibles and vessels of a mysterious appearance. Taking from Casanova a copper coin of 12 sous, Saint-Germain put it in a special hearth and performed some manipulations on it. The coin melted, and after it cooled down, the count returned it to the guest.
"But this is the purest gold!" - Casanova cried in amazement, who, nevertheless, suspected some trick in this action. However, he put the coin in his pocket and subsequently presented it to the Dutch Marshal Keith.
His manners betrayed an aristocratic origin, although he did not hide the fact that Saint-Germain invented the surname, and did not reveal his real name to anyone. He also had other oddities: he never ate in public, did not drink alcohol, did not get to know women. It seemed that everything earthly was alien to him, and he willingly supported this idea, hinting that he was sent on a special mission by mighty secret forces, whom he called the "Great teachers of the East."
He was a rather elegant man of average height and age, somewhere between 40 and 50 years, and for several decades, while he traveled around Europe, his appearance did not change. Swarthy, with regular features, his face bore the imprint of an outstanding intellect. Saint-Germain did not at all resemble the typical adventurer of the time that Cagliostro was.
First, Saint Germain did not need money and led a luxurious lifestyle. He had an obvious weakness for precious stones and, although he dressed very simply, in everything dark, his closet was always adorned with a lot of diamonds. In addition, the count carried with him a small box full of fine jewelry, which he willingly displayed (although it may have been skillfully made rhinestones). The source of his wealth remained unknown.
Secondly, Saint-Germain was distinguished by excellent manners and was impeccably brought up. Cagliostro, posing as an aristocrat, behaved rudely in society and looked like an upstart. And Saint-Germain was clearly a secular man. He behaved with equal dignity with kings, with representatives of the aristocracy, and with people of science, and, finally, with the common people.
Third, Saint-Germain was brilliantly educated and fluent in all major European languages. With the French, English, Italians, Germans, Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch, he spoke in their dialects, and so that they took him for a compatriot. Cagliostro, in all languages that he spoke, spoke equally badly, with a monstrous Sicilian accent. And Saint-Germain, in addition to the aforementioned, also knew Hungarian, Turkish, Arabic, Chinese and Russian.
He was an excellent musician, played excellent violin, harp and guitar, sang very well. He is known to have written several small operas and musical pieces. In general, he was a fan of many arts, especially painting, and painted pretty decently (and his paintings glowed in the dark).
Only in his declining years did Saint-Germain begin to tell more or less truthfully about his life. He recalled how, at the beginning of the 18th century, as a little boy, a nanny hid him in the forest from enemies. Later he ended up in Florence, in the palace of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Gian Gastone Medici, where he was received as a family.
Why? A possible answer sends us back to 1690, when the noble Magyar, the mustachioed handsome Ferenc Rakoczi, was visiting Tuscany. The yearning wife of the duke's brother Violant Beatrice of Bavaria could not resist his charms - her husband did not pay any attention to her, because, according to rumors, he had a penchant for boys. From this adultery supposedly the future count was born, which explains his stay at the ducal court.
There is another opinion - he was the legitimate son of Ferenc Rakoczi and was born in 1696. According to official data, the baby, whose name was Li-pot or Leopold, died three years later, but perhaps he was only declared dead in order to save him from the Austrians who seized the Transylvanian possessions of Rákóczi at that time.
After that, Prince Ferenc led the uprising of the Hungarians against the invaders, failed and died in exile in Turkey. Saint Germain more than once hinted at his closeness to him and made his pseudonym - one of many - the surname Tsarogi, very similar to Rakoczi.
History was Saint-Germain's true hobbyhorse. He narrated about the reign of some Francis I or Louis XIV, scrupulously describing the appearance of kings and courtiers, imitating voices, accents, manners, treating those present with vivid descriptions of actions, places and persons. He never claimed to be an eyewitness to long-standing events, but that was the impression he had on his listeners.
Although the count preferred not to talk about himself, sometimes, as if by chance, he "let slip" that he allegedly had to talk with ancient philosophers or rulers. "I always told Christ that he would end badly," is the most famous of these slips of the tongue. Having said something like that, he then came to his senses as someone who blabbed too much.
Sometimes the appearance of the count confused the elderly aristocrats, who suddenly remembered that they had already met this person - a long time ago, in childhood or adolescence, in the secular salons of the times of the Sun King. And since then, he has not changed at all.
Saint-Germain was said to maintain his longevity with potions obtained by alchemical means. The same alchemy allegedly helped him to make gold and "heal" precious stones, removing stains and cracks from them. He really earned the trust of Louis XV by removing the stain from the huge royal diamond.
True, skeptics believed that the count simply bought a similar stone in order to win the favor of the monarch. In any case, the goal was achieved - Louis made Saint-Germain his "advisor on science" and allowed him to equip an alchemy laboratory in the castle of Chambord.
Shining in the light, Saint-Germain continued to engage in political intrigue. There were persistent rumors that in 1762 he visited St. Petersburg and took part in the coup that put Catherine II on the throne. This has not been proven by anything, but he really was well acquainted with the main conspirators - the Orlov brothers.
In 1775 he made a special trip to the port of Livorno to see Alexei Orlov, who arrived there at the head of the Russian fleet. The count handed over to Orlov, who, according to a number of historians, headed the Masonic lodge, some important relics along with instructions from the European "brothers".
It is more likely, however, that in his visits Saint-Germain was not so much a messenger of the all-powerful secret societies, as a banal spy of the French court. And maybe not only French - by a strange coincidence, during his stay in Livorno, Orlov lured on his ship and arrested an adventuress who pretended to be the heiress of the Russian throne, Princess Tarakanova. It is possible that he was helped by a courteous count, who received the rank of general of the Russian army for this.
With the goodwill of Louis, the count had to part after an ugly story - it turned out that in addition to France, he offered his espionage services to Prussia and Austria. Wandering around Europe began again with intrigues and fantastic projects that no one believed.
The old and lonely "magician" was ready to go even to Turkey or Russia - he asked the playwright Fonvizin, whom he met in Germany, to get a job in the Russian service, promising at the same time to cure his wife of worms. This time the Count's drug did not help, for which Fonvizin in his hearts called him "the first charlatan in the world."
Saint-Germain circled Europe for a long time, and around 1770 again found himself in Paris, but four years later, after the death of Louis XV, the count leaves France and leaves for Germany.
But then he seemed to split in two. One Saint-Germain lives with the Landgrave Karl of Hesse-Kassel, an ardent admirer of alchemy and secret sciences, who has become a devoted admirer of our hero since the time they met in Italy. Then he goes to Eckernforn, in Holstein, where he dies, according to an entry in the church book, on February 27, 1784. The funeral took place on March 2, however, the place of burial is unknown.
And the other Saint-Germain first retired to Schleswig-Holstein, spent several years alone there in the castle that belonged to him, and only then went to Kassel, where he also died, but allegedly already in 1795 (the grave also does not exist). Or maybe he didn't die at all?
The strange death of this curious subject could not but arouse rumors. 1784 is often referred to as the year of Saint-Germain's death. However, there is evidence of people who met Saint-Germain after his official death. True, a significant confusion in the dates of death can play a certain role here: more than 10 years is a considerable period … And if a person who personally knew Saint-Germain, learned from the newspapers about his death, and then met the count healthy, this could not but give rise to new legends …
When no one of the witnesses of Saint-Germain's deeds survived, the mysterious Count was allegedly met in Paris by the Briton Albert Vandam - this time under the name of the English Major Fraser (he, they say, was very similar to the surviving portraits of our hero and was also distinguished by many talents). There is "evidence" of the appearance of Saint-Germain in the French capital in 1934 and 1939. True, these statements are already difficult to take seriously.