1745, under a name not his own, but that which he later bore at the
Court of France. From the allusion to his jewels (those of a
deserted Mexican bride), it appears that he was already as rich in
these treasures as he was afterwards, when his French acquaintances
marveled at them. (As to his being "mad," Walpole may refer to
Saint-Germain's way of talking as if he had lived in remote ages,
and known famous people of the past).

Having caught this daylight glimpse of Saint-Germain in Walpole,
having learned that in December, 1745, he was arrested and examined
as a possible Jacobite agent, we naturally expect to find our
contemporary official documents about his examination by the
Government. Scores of such records exist, containing the questions
put to, and the answers given by, suspected persons. But we vainly
hunt through the Newcastle MSS., and the State Papers, Domestic, in
the Record Office, for a trace of the examination of Saint-Germain.
I am not aware that he was anywhere left his trail in official
documents; he lives in more or less legendary memoirs, alone.

At what precise date Saint-Germain became an intimate of Louis XV.,
the Duc de Choiseul, Madame de Pompadour, and the Marechal de
Belle-Isle, one cannot ascertain. The writers of memoirs are the
vaguest of mortals about dates; only one discerns that Saint-
Germain was much about the French Court, and high in the favor of
the King, having rooms at Chambord, during the Seven Years' War,
and just before the time of the peace negotiations of 1762-1763.
The art of compiling false or forged memoirs of that period was
widely practiced; but the memoirs of Madame du Hausset, who speaks
of Saint-Germain, are authentic. She was the widow of a poor man
of noble family, and was one of two femmes de chambre of Madame de