I laughed to myself at finding my offspring thus scattered all over Europe.  At supper Therese gave me news of Tiretta.  He had entered the Dutch East India Company’s service, but having been concerned in a revolt at Batavia, he had only escaped the gallows by flight—­I had my own thoughts as to the similarity between his destiny and mine, but I did not reveal them.  After all it is an easy enough matter for an adventurous man, who does not look where he is going, to get hanged for a mere trifle.

The next day, when I got to Tournay, I saw some grooms walking fine horses up and down, and I asked to whom they belonged.

“’To the Comte de St. Germain, the adept, who has been here a month, and never goes out.  Everybody who passes through the place wants to see him; but he is invisible.”

This was enough to give me the same desire, so I wrote him a letter, expressing my wish to speak to him, and asking him to name an hour.  His reply, which I have preserved, ran as follows: 

“The gravity of my occupation compels me to exclude everyone, but you are an exception.  Come whenever you like, you will be shewn in.  You need not mention my name nor your own.  I do not ask you to share my repast, far my food is not suitable to others—­to you least of all, if your appetite is what it used to be.”

At nine o’clock I paid my call, and found he had grown a beard two inches long.  He had a score of retorts before him, full of liquids in various stages of digestion.  He told me he was experimenting with colours for his own amusement, and that he had established a hat factory for Count Cobenzl, the Austrian ambassador at Brussels.  He added that the count had only given him a hundred and fifty thousand florins, which were insufficient.  Then we spoke of Madame d’Urfe.

“She poisoned herself,” said he, “by taking too strong a dose of the Universal Medicine, and her will shews that she thought herself to be with child.  If she had come to me, I could have really made her so, though it is a difficult process, and science has not advanced far enough for us to be able to guarantee the sex of the child.”

When he heard the nature of my disease, he wanted me to stay three days at Tournay for him to give me fifteen pills, which would effectually cure me, and restore me to perfect health.  Then he shewed me his magistrum, which he called athoeter.  It was a white liquid contained in a well-stoppered phial.  He told me that this liquid was the universal spirit of nature, and that if the wax on the stopper was pricked ever so lightly, the whole of the contents would disappear.  I begged him to make the experiment.  He gave me the phial and a pin, and I pricked the wax, and to lo! the phial was empty.

“It is very fine,” said I, “but what good is all this?”

“I cannot tell you; that is my secret.”

He wanted to astonish me before I went, and asked me if I had any money about me.  I took out several pieces and put them on the table.  He got up, and without saying what he was going to do he took a burning coal and put it on a metal plate, and placed a twelve-sols piece with a small black grain on the coal.  He then blew it, and in two minutes it seemed on fire.