“I made him sleep with me,” she said, “but I shall be obliged to deprive myself of this privilege for the future, unless he promises to be more discreet.”

I thought the idea a grand one, and the little fellow, in spite of his blushes, begged her to say how he had offended.

“We shall have the Comte de St. Germain,” said Madame d’Urfe, “to dinner.  I know he amuses you, and I like you to enjoy yourself in my house.”

“For that, madam, your presence is all I need; nevertheless, I thank you for considering me.”

In due course St. Germain arrived, and in his usual manner sat himself down, not to eat but to talk.  With a face of imperturbable gravity he told the most incredible stories, which one had to pretend to believe, as he was always either the hero of the tale or an eye witness of the event.  All the same, I could not help bursting into laughter when he told us of something that happened as he was dining with the Fathers of the Council of Trent.

Madame d’Urfe wore on her neck a large magnet.  She said that it would one day happen that this magnet would attract the lightning, and that she would consequently soar into the sun.  I longed to tell her that when, she got there she could be no higher up than on the earth, but I restrained myself; and the great charlatan hastened to say that there could be no doubt about it, and that he, and he only, could increase the force of the magnet a thousand times.  I said, dryly, that I would wager twenty thousand crowns he would not so much as double its force, but Madame d’Urfe would not let us bet, and after dinner she told me in private that I should have lost, as St. Germain was a magician.  Of course I agreed with her.

A few days later, the magician set out for Chambord, where the king had given him a suite of rooms and a hundred thousand francs, that he might be at liberty to work on the dyes which were to assure the superiority of French materials over those of any other country.  St. Germain had got over the king by arranging a laboratory where he occasionally tried to amuse himself, though he knew little about chemistry, but the king was the victim of an almost universal weariness.  To enjoy a harem recruited from amongst the most ravishing beauties, and often from the ranks of neophytes, with whom pleasure had its difficulties, one would have needed to be a god, and Louis XV. was only a man after all.

It was the famous marquise who had introduced the adept to the king in the hope of his distracting the monarch’s weariness, by giving him a taste for chemistry.  Indeed Madame de Pompadour was under the impression that St. Germain had given her the water of perpetual youth, and therefore felt obliged to make the chemist a good return.  This wondrous water, taken according to the charlatan’s directions, could not indeed make old age retire and give way to youth, but according to the marquise it would preserve one in statu quo for several centuries.