XVII
“Monsieur le capitaine,” the Marquis Gaspard began, “you are in a position to ask anything of us here, without its being denied you—anything except one thing—but of this we shall speak later. For the moment you have been good enough to question me in reference to Madame de X.... and I should consider myself rude indeed, were I not to answer. The explanation may be longer than you expect, I dare say. That matters little! I am completely at your service; I am ready to satisfy your every desire! Forgive me this preamble, which may seem long extended. And forgive me also if I chance to bore you with a narrative which also may seem irrelevant, but the necessity of which I am sure you will recognize as we proceed.”
He thought a moment. Then he drew his snuff-box, opened it, offered a pinch to the man on his right and another to the man on his left, took one himself, and finally continued:
“Monsieur, I was born very far from here, in a little town in Germany. It was in the year of Our Lord....”
The old man stopped. Count François had leapt from his armchair and extended a broad flat hand before his father as though begging that latter to reveal no more. The Marquis Gaspard fell silent, in fact, for as long as three seconds, in the meantime looking steadily at his son, his lips perked into an expression of indulgent irony.
“I declare!” said he, eventually, in his queer falsetto voice, “that from you, Monsieur François, at your age! Will you never grow up, Sir? Imagine! Do you not suppose that Monsieur le capitaine is already well initiated, too well initiated, into the Secret? What matters it whether he stop where he is now, or go on to learn the rest of it?”
He turned toward me again and repeated:
“Monsieur, I was born in a little town in Germany, as I had the honor of informing you. It was at Eckernfoerde, not far from Schleswig, in the year of Our Lord, One Thousand, Seven Hundred and Thirty Three! 1733! Yes, Monsieur!
“Today is the twenty-second of December, 1908. Figure it up yourself. I am one hundred and seventy-five years old! Don’t be too much surprised, Monsieur. Such is the simple fact, and it will seem simpler still, as I progress with my explanation. If we were more at leisure and your curiosity should extend that far, it would be a great pleasure for me to give you a detailed story of my life; not, of course, of my whole life—that you would find a rambling, disconnected narrative, I am sure—but the more interesting moments, my first fifty years, let us say. That, however, would take us far afield, and the night, though a winter’s one, would scarcely suffice for such a tale. Let us keep to essentials, therefore.
“My father was a gentleman, a soldier in the service of His Majesty King Christian VI of Denmark. He had played a distinguished rôle in the wars of the preceding reign; but his position was not brilliant at the court of this Prince, who was so wholly engrossed with the gentler arts of letters, science and society. All Europe, for that matter, was enjoying a period of quiet; and my father had to make the best of the situation, however hard it bore on him, a professional soldier. But the peace was of short duration, as the event proved; and I was just turning my seventh year when a new conflict broke out, with Austria, Prussia, and France leading scores of those little kingdoms which were forever fishing in the troubled waters of Continental politics. However, Denmark was one of the few small states to keep her weapons sheathed.
“Under this disappointment my father chafed—refused to put up with it, in fact. He decided to go abroad to live.
“We moved first to Paris, then to Versailles, where Louis XV welcomed us cordially. A brilliant career was opening before my father, whose bravery in action soon attracted royal attention, when, on the tenth of May, 1745, just as the famous battle of Fontenoy was developing into a French triumph, an English bullet laid him low. To the victory my parent’s gallantry had contributed not a little, and that, too, under the very eyes of the King himself. The latter, anxious that such distinguished service should not pass unrecognized, called me to his presence, and there, on the battle field, elevated me to the rank of royal page.
“This, Monsieur, was the beginning of my real life as a man—a life, I may add, that was for long carefree and joyous. I can still remember the placid delights of those years which all France enjoyed under the Treaty of 1747. At Court, especially, there was one round of festivals, revelries and intrigues of love, wherein I played my part as well as the next one; and I may even say that if today you see before you in my person a hermit, a man, at least, inclined to solitude, the fact must be attributed to the immense, the delicate felicity in which I passed my early days, a happiness whose sheer perfection has disgusted me forever with the banal pleasures which you people of this modern age could offer me if I cared for them. But why arouse in you the melancholy yearning for those golden days, which I feel? I will pass on, and pray forgive me if I have dwelt too much upon them as it is. I come, then, and tardily enough, to the main point.
“I said, Monsieur, that after 1745, from the date, that is, of my father’s death on the field of honor, I was a page at the Court of Louis XV. In that capacity I was still serving five years later, in the year 1750. Indeed, it was my honor and my pleasure as a royal page, to escort the Maréchal de Belle Isle one day into the presence of His Majesty; the marshall, in turn, leading by the hand a rather handsome gentleman whose name was quite unknown to me.
“‘Sire,’ the marshall began—(How his silky wig shone, as he made obeissance! And to me how glorious his purple coat seemed, thrown up in back by the studded scabbard of his sword!)—‘Sire, I have the honor to present to your Majesty, as your Majesty deigned to command, Monsieur le Comte de Saint Germain, who, beyond all dispute, is the most aged gentleman of your kingdom.’
“My eyes, I remember, turned upon the count in question. And, quite to the contrary of his introduction, he seemed to me a man in the flower of youth. If he were a day older than thirty, there was not the slightest reason in the world to suspect so.
“It is surely not my place, Monsieur le capitaine, to play the school-master for a man of your evident education. I am certain you are familiar with all that our historians have said about that extraordinary, that superhuman individual, known to successive generations, as the Count of Saint Germain, the Marquis of Monferrat, Count Bellamye, Signor Rotondo, Count Tzarogy, the Reverend Father Aymar, and so on. No, it was rather out of a sense of filial regard than out of any desire to enlighten you, that I forgot myself so far as to recount the detailed story of my first and fortunate encounter with this personage whom I was later to revere as father, mother, master and friend, all in one. To be sure, the intimacy between him and me was not the outcome of this first meeting only. In the ten years following, between 1750 and 1760, that is, the Count of Saint Germain was one of the most frequent guests at the Court of Versailles, and I continued as gentleman-in-waiting to the King.
“Thereafter intrigues and jealousies had their play, and the Count was no longer welcome. Unable by that time to live apart from the company of that distinguished genius, I determined to seek him out in his banishment. For long my search was vain. Free Masonry, of which he was the secret General and Grand Master, was keeping him in hiding—as I later learned, in Moscow, where he was plotting a sort of revolution. In despair at last of ever finding him, I abandoned my quest; and, since now the thought of life in France had become intolerable to me, I decided to return to my old Danish home, establish a peaceful hearthfire there, and cultivate the memory of the prodigious friend whom I had lost.
“This I did. I went back to Eckernfoerde, to my ancestral mansion which had not been occupied for fully twenty-four years.
“It was now the year 1764. Denmark was still at peace, or virtually so. One single army indeed was campaigning in the Duchy of Mecklenburg, under the command of a young fellow, some twenty years of age, who gave promise of a most brilliant career in arms—the Landgrave Charles of Hesse-Cassel, I mean, whom King Christian VII was soon to nominate as his Lieutenant-General.
“The circumstance arose eventually whereby I was called upon to pay homage to His Highness, during a visit which he made, in the interval between two seasons in the field, to a palace of his at Eckernfoerde. Imagine my delight, Monsieur, imagine my boundless joy, when I discovered, seated on his Highness’s right hand and in the place of honor and confidence, the man whom I had everywhere been looking for and had given up for lost. The landgrave himself wept at sight of my emotion. Saint Germain was then living under the name of Tzarogy, dividing his time between the general, whom he was advising as privy councilor, and divers other lords and gentlemen to whom he was lending the assistance of his marvelous science. Prince Orlof, was among these, I may mention, and His Highness, the Margrave Charles Alexander of Anspach....
“My own disappointments, alas, were not yet at an end, however; for, many times, I was still to be deprived of the society of this being who was growing from hour to hour more precious and more necessary to me. But finally my master ceased his wanderings. Prince Charles became, as I said, lieutenant-general to the new king, Christian VII; but, though war now broke out between Norway (a vassal state of ours) and Sweden, the new marshall was frequently at leisure; and this he spent in secret labors at which my master and I often assisted him. Fifteen years thus passed, years as solemnly and earnestly happy as the days I had spent in France had been wildly joyous. Then a horrible catastrophe came to destroy this long and perfect bliss. I referred casually, some moments ago, to the extreme youth my master had succeeded in preserving despite his unmeasurable age. That youth now suddenly began to depart from him.
“I noticed the change, without daring for a time to make mention of it to him. But his health soon broke down to such a remarkable extent that I could not endure my silence. One day I threw myself at the count’s feet and begged him to be more attentive to his well-being, indeed to make use of his own science in his own behalf. To my relief he took no offense at my presumptuousness, and lifting me tenderly to my feet, he said—in a deep sepulchral voice that froze my blood:
“‘Gaspard, there are diseases against which the science to which you advise appeal is of no avail. My wisdom is helpless, for example, against a secret cancer of which my heart is bleeding: against a will I have—a determination on my part—not to be well again.’
“So speaking, he opened before my eyes a bejewelled medallion which he was wearing about his neck; and in it, fastened to the gold, I perceived a ring of braided hair.
“‘Gaspard,’ he continued, ‘I am dying! My mistake was in trying to immortalize, not my maturer manhood, but my frivolous youth. Had I been a wiser man I should have assured—by a wrinkle or two, at least, and a few white hairs—this mortal envelop of mine against the shafts of love; in which case it might surely have become eternal. Now, when you have wholly acquired my Secret, profit by this mistake of mine, and, as my heir and continuator, show yourself worthy of the inheritance!’
“A week later he passed away. To his friend, the landgrave, he bequeathed his note-books, manuscripts, and talismans (all of which were so much Greek to that well-meaning warrior). To me he left what he called his ‘Secret.’
“Monsieur le capitaine, when I began this account of my life, it was to the subject of this Secret, my legitimate heritage, that I intended eventually to come. I have arrived at last. Again I crave your pardon for my great prolixity. But without this long preamble I feared you would not really understand. Now, however, there is no reason in the world why I should not satisfy your curiosity, and, without falsehood, reticence or evasion, answer your query as to what I, my son, and my grandson here are doing with the girl you love, with Madame Madeleine de X....”