intellectual life by means of an elixir. Margrave is not bad, but
he is inferior to the hero, less elaborately designed, of The
Haunters and the Haunted. Thackeray's tale is written in a tone of
mock mysticism, but he confesses that he likes his own story, in
which the strange hero through all his many lives or reappearances,
and through all the countless loves on which he fatuously plumes
himself, retains a slight German-Jewish accent.

It appears to me that the historic original of these romantic
characters is no other than the mysterious Comte de Saint-Germain--
not, of course, the contemporary and normal French soldier and
minister, of 1707-1778, who bore the same name. I have found the
name, with dim allusions, in the unpublished letters and MSS. of
Prince Charles Edward Stuart, and have not always been certain
whether the reference was to the man of action or to the man of
mystery. On the secret of the latter, the deathless one, I have no
new light to throw, and only speak of him for a single reason.
Aristotle assures us, in his Poetics, that the best-known myths
dramatized on the Athenian stage were known to very few of the
Athenian audience. It is not impossible that the story of Saint-
Germain, though it seems as familiar as the myth of Oedipus or
Thyestes, may, after all, not be vividly present to the memory of
every reader. The omniscent Larousse, of the Dictionnaire
Universel, certainly did not know one very accessible fact about
Saint-Germain, nor have I seen it mentioned in other versions of
his legend. We read, in Larousse, "Saint-Germain is not heard of
in France before 1750, when he established himself in Paris. No
adventure had called attention to his existence; it was only known
that he had moved about Europe, lived in Italy, Holland, and in
England, and had borne the names of Marquis de Monteferrat, and of