"About what will his holiness be witty?" said the king, entering the dining-room unexpectedly.
"About the amours of Frederick the Great and the Venetian La Porporina," said La Mettrie, boldly.
The king grew pale, and cast a terrible glance at his guests, all of whom grew white as sheets, except La Mettrie, who said,—
"Well, what of it? M. de Saint Germain predicted this evening, at the opera, that at the time when Saturn was passing between Regulus and the Virgin, his majesty, with a single page——"
"Who on earth is this Count of St. Germain?" said the king, seating himself calmly as possible, and holding out his glass to La Mettrie to be filled with champagne.
They then talked of St Germain, and the storm passed off without an explosion. At first the impertinence of Poelnitz, who had betrayed him, and the audacity of La Mettrie, who had dared to taunt him, filled the king with rage. While, however, the latter was speaking a single phrase, Frederick remembered that he had advised Poelnitz to gossip on a certain matter and induce others also to do so. He then restrained himself with that facility which was so peculiar to him, and nothing was said of the king's nocturnal visit. La Mettrie, had he thought of it, would have returned to the charge; but his volatile mind readily followed the new thread of conversation. Frederick in this way often restrained La Mettrie, whom he treated as we would treat a child on the point of breaking a mirror or springing out of a window, to distract the attention of whom a toy is shown. Each one made his commentary about the famous Count of St Germain. Each had an anecdote. Poelnitz pretended to have seen him twenty years before in France. He added—
"I saw him this morning, and in all the time that has passed he does not seem to have grown older than those I saw yesterday. I remember once, in France, hearing him say of the passion of Jesus Christ, with inconceivable seriousness—'I said that he could not but have trouble with those wicked Jews. I told him what would happen, but he would not hear me. His zeal made him despise all dangers. His tragical death, however, distressed me as I had never been before, and I cannot think of it without tears.' As he spoke, this queer count wept so naturally, that I could scarcely refrain from following his example."
"You are," said the king, "so good a Christian, that it does not amaze me." Poelnitz had changed his religion three or four times to obtain benefices and places with which, for joke's sake, the king had tempted him.
"Your anecdote," said D'Argens, "is but a fancy sketch. I have heard many better.—What makes this Count de Saint Germain an interesting and remarkable personage, in my opinion, is the number of new and ingenious claims, by which he unravels the doubtful points of the obscurer history of States. Question him about any subject or epoch of history, and you will be surprised to hear him unfold or invent an infinity of probable and interesting things, which throw a new light on what has been doubtful and mysterious."
"If what he says is probable," observed Algarotti, "he must be wonderfully learned, and gifted with a prodigious memory."