Secret_History

Chapter 1: The Nature of the Quest 49
Instead of eating, he talked from the beginning of the meal to the end, and I
followed his example in one respect as I did not eat, but listened to him with the
greatest attention. It may safely be said that as a conversationalist he was
unequalled.
We note that this is another of the many talents attributed to psychopaths. Colin
Wilson, author of The Occult, thought that Saint-Germain must have been a
vegetarian. I think everything he did was designed to create an image, an
impression, and a false one at that. In the end, the real mystery, aside from his
origins, but the two may be connected, is where did Saint-Germain get all his
specialized knowledge? Of course, as we have noted here, not all who met Saint-
Germain were impressed by his talents. Casanova was entertained by him, but
nevertheless thought that he was a fraud and a charlatan. He wrote:
This extraordinary man, intended by nature to be the king of impostors and quacks,
would say in an easy, assured manner that he was three hundred years old, that he
knew the secret of the Universal Medicine, that he possessed a mastery over nature,
that he could melt diamonds, professing himself capable of forming, out of 10 or 12
small diamonds, one of the finest water... All this, he said, was a mere trifle to him.
Notwithstanding his boastings, his bare-faced lies, and his manifold eccentricities, I
cannot say I found him offensive. In spite of my knowledge of what he was and in
spite of my own feelings, I thought him an astonishing man...”
Count Alvensleben, a Prussian Ambassador to the Court at Dresden, wrote in
1777:
He is a highly gifted man with a very alert mind, but completely without
judgement, and he has only gained his singular reputation by the lowest and basest
flattery of which a man is capable, as well as by his outstanding eloquence,
especially if one lets oneself be carried away by the fervour and the enthusiasm
with which he can express himself. Inordinate vanity is the mainspring driving his
whole mechanism.
I don’t know about you, but I have met a few people with all of the above
qualities and have even been deceived by one or two for a short while. Everything
we discover about Saint Germain tends to the theory of the brilliant psychopath. It
sounds like an easy thing to dismiss Saint Germain out of hand. But, in the case of
the Count, we have a little problem: just which of the stories are really about him?
The plot thickens!
It seems that Berthold Volz, in the 1920’s, did some deep research on the subject
and discovered, or so it is claimed, (I have never been able to track down this
purported proof), that the Duc de Choiseul, who was overwhelmingly jealous of
the Count, hired a look-alike imposter to go about as the Count, exaggerating and
playing the fool in order to place the Count in a bad light. Is this just another story,
either wishful thinking or deliberately designed to perpetuate the legend? Are we
getting familiar with this “bait and switch” routine yet?
Supposedly, Saint-Germain foretold the outbreak of the French Revolution to
Marie Antoinette who purportedly wrote in her diary that she regretted that she did
not heed his advice. I haven’t seen it, so I can’t vouch for it. But, in my opinion, it
wouldn’t take a genius to predict that event, considering the social and political
climate of the time!