 Chapter 11 of Historical Mysteries This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Historical Mysteries by Andrew Lang Chapter 11. The Chevalier d'Ian The mystery of the Chevalier d'Ian, 1728-1810. The question of his sex, on which so many thousand pounds were betted, is no mystery at all. The Chevalier was a man, and a man of extraordinary courage, audacity, resource, physical, activity, industry, and wit. The real mystery is the problem why, at a mature age, 42, did d'Ian take upon him and endure for forty years the travesty of feminine array, which could only serve him as a source of notoriety. In short, as an advertisement, the answer probably is that, having early seized opportunity by the forlorn, and having been obliged, after an extraordinary struggle, to leave his hold. He was obliged to clutch at some mode of keeping himself perpetually in the public eye, hence, probably, his persistent assumption of feminine costume. If he could be distinguished in no other way, he could shine as a mystery. There was even Luca in the pose. Charles d'Ian was born on October 7, 1728, knit on air. His family was of satire, no bless, but well protected, and provided for by patent places. He was highly educated, took the degree of Doctor of Law, and wrote with acceptance on finance and literature. His was a studious youth, for he was as indifferent to female beauty as was Frederick the Great, and his chief amusements were fencing of which art he was a perfect master, and society in which his wit and gaiety made the girlish-looking lad equally welcome to men and women. All were fond of le petit d'Ian, so audacious, so ambitious, and so amusing. The Prince de Conte was his chief early patron, and it was originally in support of Conte's ambition to be king of Poland that Louis XV began his incredibly foolish secret, a system of foreign policy conducted by hidden agents behind the backs of his responsible ministers at Versailles. And in the courts of Europe, the results naturally tend to recall a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera of diplomacy. We find magnificent ambassadors gravely trying to carry out the royal orders, and thwarted by the king's secret agents. The king seems to have been too lazy to face his ministers and compel them to take his own line, while he was energetic enough to work like Tiberius or Philip II of Spain at his secret Penelope's task of undoing by night the warp and woof which his ministers wove by day. In these mysterious labours of his, the comp de Broglie, later a firm friend of D'Ian, was, with Tercière, one of his main assistants. The king thus enjoyed all the pleasures and excitements of a conspirator in his own kingdom, dealing in cyphered dispatches with the usual cant names, carried in the false bottoms of snuff boxes, precisely as if he had been a jack-o-bike plotter. It was entertaining, but it was not diplomacy, and, sooner or later, Louis was certain to be blackmailed by some underling in his service. That underling was to be D'Ian. In 1755, Louis wished to renew relations, long interrupted, with Elizabeth, Empress of Russia, the lady whom Prince Charlie wanted to marry, and from whose offered hand the brave James Keith fled as fast as horses could carry him. Elizabeth, in 1755, was an ally of England, but was known to be French in her personal sympathies, though she was difficult of access. As a messenger, Louis chose a scott, described by Captain Bucken Telfer as a Mackenzie, a Jesuit, calling himself the Chevalier Douglas, and a jack-o-bike exile. He is not to be found in the dictionary of national biography. As Sir James and Sir John Douglas, if both were not the same man, were employed as political agents between the English and Scottish jack-o-bikes in 1746, and in 1749, between the Prince and the Langrave of Hesse. Whatever the true name of the Douglas of Louis XV, I suspect that he was one or the other of these dim jack-o-bikes of the Douglas clan. In June 1755, this Chevalier Douglas was sent by Louis to deal with Elizabeth. He was certainly understood by Louis to be a real Douglas, a fugitive jack-o-bike, and he was to use in cypher dispatchers, precisely the same silly sort of veiled language about the fur trade as Prince Charles's envoys had just been using about the timber trade with Sweden. Douglas set forth, disguised as an intellectual British tourist, in the summer of 1755, and it is Captain Buck and Telford's view that Dayon joined him, also as a political agent, in female apparel on the road, and that, while Douglas failed and left Russia by October 1755, Dayon remained at St Petersburg, attired as a girl. Douglas is niece, and acting as the lectrice of the Empress, whom he converted to the French Alliance. This is the traditional theory, but it's almost certainly erroneous. Sometimes, in his vast MSS, Dayon declares that he went to Russia disguised in 1755, but he represents himself as then aged 20, whereas he was really 27, and this he does in 1773, before he made up his mind to pose for life as a woman. He had a running claim against the French government for the expanses of his first journey to Russia. This voyage, in 1776, he dates in 1755, but in 1763, in an official letter, he dates his journey to Russia, of which the expanses were not repaid in 1756. That is the true chronology. Nobody denies that he did visit Russia in 1756, attired as a male diplomatist, but few now believe that in 1755, he accompanied Douglas as that gentleman's pleasing young niece. Mademoiselle Holmberg and Jocelyne, in their recent work, declared that among Dayon's papers, which lay for a century in the back shop of London Bookseller, they find letters from him from June 1756, written by Tertier, who managed the secret of Louis XV. There are no known proofs of Dayon's earlier presence in Russia, and in petticoats in 1755. He did talk later of a private letter of Louis XV of October 4, 1763, in which the king wrote that he had served him usefully in the guise of a female, and must now resume it. And that letter is published, but all the evidence, to which we shall return, tends to prove that this paper is an ingenious, deceptive interpolation. If the king did write it, then he was deceiving the manager of his secret police, Tertier, for in the note, he bids Dayon remain in England, while he was at the same time telling Tertier that he was uneasy as to what Dayon might do in France, when he obeyed his public orders to return. If then, the royal letter of October 4, 1763, testifying to Dayon's feminine disguise in Russia, be genuine. Louis XV had three strings to his bow. He had his public orders to ministers, he had his private conspiracy worked through Tertier, and he had his secret intrigue with Dayon, of which Tertier was allowed to know nothing. This hypothesis is difficult, if not impossible, and the result is that Dayon was not current in Russia as Douglas's pretty French niece, and as reader to the Empress Elizabeth in 1755. In 1756, in his own character as a man and a secretary, he did work under Douglas, then on his second visit, public and successful to gain Russia to the French Alliance. For dismissed in October 1755, Douglas came back and publicly represented France at the Russian court in July 1756. This was, to the highest degree of probability, Dayon's first entrance into diplomacy, and he triumphed in his mission. He certainly made the acquaintance of Princess Dashkoff, and she has certainly, in 1769 to 1771, when on a visit to England, gave out that Dayon was received by Elizabeth in a manner more appropriate to a woman than a man. It is not easy to ascertain precisely what the title of the princess really amounted to, but Dayon represents it so as to corroborate his tale about his residence at Elizabeth's court as lectrice in 1755. The evidence is of no value, being a biased third-hand report of the Russian Lady's gossip. There is a mezzotin, published in 1788, from what professes to be a copy by Angelica Calvin of a portrait of Dayon in female costume at the age of 25. If these attributions are correct, Dayon was masquerading as a girl three years before he went to Russia, and if the portrait is exact, was wearing the order of St. Louis ten years before it was conferred on him. The evidence as to this copy of an alleged portrait of Dayon is full of confusions and anachronisms, and does not even prove that he thus travestied his sex in early life. In Russia, when he joined Douglas there in the summer of 1756, Dayon was a busy secretary obligation. In April 1757, he went back to Versailles, bearing rich diplomatic sheaves with him, and one of those huge presents of money in gold to Voltaire, which no longer come in the way of men of letters. While he was at Vienna, on his way back to St. Petersburg, tidings came of the Battle of Prague, Dayon hurried to Versailles with the news, and though he broke his leg in a carriage accident, he beat the messenger whom Count Townitz officially dispatched by 36 hours. This un-ladylike proof of energy and endurance procured for Dayon a gold snuffbox. Elizabeth only gave him a Trumpry snuffbox in tortoiseshell, with the king's miniature, a good deal of money and a commission in the dragoons, for the little man's heart was really set on a military rather than a diplomatic career. However, as diplomat, he ferreted out an important secret of Russian internal treachery, and rejected a bribe of a diamond of great value. The money's worth of the diamond was to be paid to him by his own government, but he no more got that than he got the ten thousand livers for his traveling expenses. Thus early was he accommodated with the grievances, and because Dayon had not the wisdom to see that a man with grievances is a ruined man, he overthrew, later, a promising career in the violence of his attempts to obtain redress. This was Dayon's bane, and the cause of the ruinous eccentricities for which he is remembered. In 1759, he ably seconded the egregious Louis XV in upsetting the policy which Dishwasel was carrying on by the king's orders. Dishwasel's duty was to make the empress mediate for peace in the Seven Years' War. The duty of Dayon was to secure the failure of Dishwasel, without the knowledge of the French ambassador, the Marquis de la Hospital, of whom he was the secretary. Possessed of this pretty secret, Dayon was a man whom Louis could not safely offend and snub, and Dayon must therefore have thought that they could scarcely be a limit to his success in life. But he disliked Russia, and left it for good in August 1760. He received a life pension of two thousand livers, and was appointed aid to camp to the Marachel de Broglie, commanding on the Upper Rhine. He distinguished himself in August 1761 by a very gallant piece of service in which, he says, truly or not, he incurred the ill will of the Comte de Gershey. The pair were destined to ruin each other a few years later. They aren't also declares that he led a force which dislodged the Highland Mountaineers in a gorge of the Mounting-art Einbeck. I know not what Highland regiment is intended, but Dayon's orders bear that he was to withdraw troops opposed to the Highlanders, and to certificate in his favour from the Duke and the Comte de Broglie does not allude to the circumstances that, instead of retreating before the plagues, he drove them back to the English camp. It may therefore be surmised that, though Dayon often distinguished himself and was wounded in the thigh at Altrop, his claim of victory over a Highland regiment is an interpolation. De Broglie writes, we purpose retreating. I send Monsieur Dayon to withdraw the Swiss and Grenadiers of Champagne, who are holding in check the Scottish Highlanders lining the wood on the crest of the mountain, whence they have caused as much annoyance. The English outposts were driven in, but after that was done, the French advance was checked by the Played Gale. Dayon did not kill the Mountaineer, as their tincture kills the game. Not a word is said about his triumph, even in the certificate of the two de Broglie's, which Dayon published in 1764. In 1762, France and England, weary of war, began the preliminaries of peace, and Dayon was attached a secretary of legation to the French negotiator in London, the Ducte Nivenet, who was on term so intimate with Madame de Pompadour, that she addressed him in writing as Petit Apu. In the language of the affections as employed by the black natives of Australia, this would have meant that de Nivenet was the recognised rival of Louis XV in the favour of the lady, but the inference must not be carried to that length. There are different versions of a trick which Dayon, a secretary, played on Mr Robert Wood, author of an interesting work on Homer, and with the Jacobites have on, Jemmy Dawkins, the explorer of Palmyra. The story as given by Nivenet is the most intelligible account. Mr Wood, as undersecretary of state, bought to Nivenet and read to him a diplomatic document, but gave him no copy. Dayon, however, opened Wood's portfolio while he dined with Nivenet and had the paper transcribed. To this Dayon himself adds that he had given Wood more than his whack during dinner of a heavy wine grown in the vineyards of his native Tonnere. In short, the little man was so serviceable that, in the autumn of 1762, de Nivenet proposed to leave him in England as interim minister after the Dukes' own return to France. Little Dayon is very active, very discreet, never curious or officious, neither distrustful nor a cause of distrust in others. de Nivenet was so pleased with him and so anxious for his promotion that he induced the British ministers, contrary to all precedent, to send Dayon, instead of a British subject, to Paris with the treaty for ratification. He then received from Louis XV the orders in Louis and, as de Nivenet was weary of England, where he had an eternal cold and resigned, Dayon was made minister plenty potentially in London to the arrival of the new ambassador, de Gershey. Now de Gershey, if we believe Dayon had shown the better part of Valais in a dangerous military task. The removal of ammunition under fire, whereas Dayon had certainly conducted the operation with courage and success. The two men were thus on terms of jealousy. If the story is true, well de Nivenet did not conceal from Dayon that he was to be the brain of the embassy and that de Gershey was only a dull figurehead. Dayon possessed letters of de Broglie and de Prasland in which de Gershey was spoken of with pity and contempt. In short, his dispatch boxes were magazines of dangerous diplomatic combustibles. He also succeeded in irritating de Prasland, the French minister, before returning to his new post in London, for Dayon was a partisan of the two de Broglie's. Now in the disgrace of Madame de Pompadour and of Louis XV, though de Comte de Broglie, disgraced as he was, still managed the secret police of the French King. Dayon's position was thus full of traps. He was at odds with the future ambassador de Gershey and with the minister de Prasland. And would not have been promoted at all had it been known to the minister that he was in correspondence with and was taking orders from the disgraced Comte de Broglie. But by the fatuous system of the King, Dayon in fact was doing nothing else. De Broglie exiled from court was Dayon's real master. He did not serve de Gershey or de Prasland and Madame de Pompadour who was not in the secret of her royal lover. The King's secret now, 1763, included a scheme for the invasion of England which Dayon and a military agent were to organise at the very moment when peace had been concluded. There is fairly good evidence that Prince Charles visited London in this year, no doubt with night of mischief, in short, the new minister plenty potentially to St James's and known to the French government and to the future ambassador de Gershey was to manage a scheme for the ruin of the country to which he was accredited. If ever this came out, the result would be, if not war with England, at least war between Louis XV, his minister and Madame de Pompadour. A result which frightened Louis XV more than any other disaster. The importance of his position now turned Dayon's head in the opinion of Horace Walpole who, of course, had not a guess at the true nature of the situation. Dayon, in London, entertained French visitors of eminence and the best English society it appears with the splendour of a full-blown ambassador and at whose expense, certainly not at his own and neither the late ambassador de Nivenay nor the coming ambassador de Gershey, a man far from wealthy, had the faintest desire to pay the bills. Angry and tactless letters, therefore, passed between Dayon in London and de Gershey, de Nivenay and de Plaslin in Paris. De Gershey was dull and clumsy. Dayon used him as the whetstone of his wick with a reckless abandonment which proved that he was, as they say, rather above himself. Like Napoleon before March to Moscow, London, in short, was the Moscow of little Dayon. When de Gershey arrived, and Dayon was reduced to secretarissa and, indeed, was ordered to return to France and not to show himself outcourt, he lost all self-control. The recall came from the minister de Plaslin, but Dayon, as we know, though de Plaslin did not, was secretly representing the king himself. He declares that, at this juncture, October 11, 1763, Louis XV sent him the extraordinary private autograph letter speaking of his previous services in female attire and bidding him remain with his papers in England, disguised as a woman. The improbability of this action by the king has already been exposed, but when we consider the predicament of Louis, obliged to recall de On publicly, while all his ruinous secrets remained in the hands of that disgraced and infuriated little man, it seems not quite impossible that he may have committed the folly of writing this letter, for the public recall says nothing about the secret papers of which de On had quantities. What was to become of them if he returned to France in disgrace? If they reached the hands of de Gershey, they meant an explosion between Louis XV and his mistress and his ministers. To parry the danger, then, according to de On, Louis privately bade him flee disguised with his cargo of papers and hide in female costume. If Louis really did this, and de On told the story to the father of Madame de Gompon, he had three strings to his bow, as we have shown, and one string was concealed, a secret within a secret, even from Tercier. Yet what folly was so great as to be on the capacity of Louis? Meanwhile de On simply refused to obey the king's public orders and denied their authenticity. They were only signed with a grift or stamp, not by the king's pen and hand. He would not leave London. He fought de Gershey with every kind of arm, accused him of suborning an assassin, published private letters and his own versions of the affair, fled from the charge of libel, could not be extradited by virtue of what Mademoiselle Homburg and Juselin Kohl, the law of home rule, fortified his house and went on. Probably there really were designs to kidnap him, just as a regular plot was laid for the kidnapping of De La Motte at Newcastle after the affair of the diamond necklace. In 1752, a Marquis de Fratolle was collared by a sham martial court officer, put on board a boat at Graves End and carried to the Bastille. De On, under the charge of libel, lived a fugitive and cloistered existence till the man who, he says, was to have assassinated him, de Vergi, sought his alliance and accused de Gershey of having suborned him to murder the little daredevil. A grand jury brought in a true bill against the French ambassador and the ambassador's butler accused of having druged De On, fled. But the English government, by aid of what the duke de Broglet calls a no-li-price-de-quet, no-li being usual, tidied over a difficulty of the gravist kind. The granting of no-li-price-de-quet is denied. The ambassador was mobbed and took leave of absence and Louis XV, through de Broglet, offered to De On terms humiliating to a king. The chivalier finally gave up the warrant for his secret mission in exchange for a pension of 12,000 libras. But he retained all other secret correspondence and plans of invasion. As for de Gershey, he resigned 1767 and presently died of sheer annoyance, while his enemy, the chivalier, stayed in England as London correspondent Louis XV. He reported in 1766 that Lord Butte was a Jacobite and de Broglet actually took seriously the chance of restoring, by his aid, Charles III, who had just succeeded by the death of the old chivalier to a kingdom not of this world. The death of Louis XV in 1774 brought the folly of the secret policy to an end. But in the same year, rumours about De On's dubious sex appeared in the English newspapers on the occasion of his book Les Glass words de chivalier de On, published at Amsterdam. Bets on his sex were made, and De On beat some bookmakers with his stick. But he persuaded Druet, an on-rife in France, that the current stories were true and this can only be explained, if explained at all. By his perception of the fact that his secret employment being gone, he felt the need of an advertisement. Overdures for the return of the secret papers were again made to De On, but he insisted on the restoration of his diplomatic rank and on receiving 14,000 liras on account of expenses. He had aimed too high, however, and was glad to come to compromise with the famous Burmache. The extraordinary bargain was struck by De On for a consideration should yield the secret papers, and to avoid a duel with the son of de Gershey and the consequent scandal should pretend to be a woman and wear the dress of that sex. In his new capacity he might return to France and wear the cross of the Order of St Louis. Burmache was as thoroughly taken in as any dupe in his own comedies. In De On he saw a blushing spinster, a kind of gendarmes of the 18th century, pining for the weapons and uniform of the martial sex, but yielding her secret and forsaking her arms in the interest of her king. On the other side the blushless captain of de Gershey listened with downcast eyes to the sentimental complements of Burmache and suffered himself without a smile to be compared to the maid of Orleans, says the dupe de Broglie. Our manners are obviously softened, wrote Voltaire. De On is a pure-celled Duylines who has not been burned. To de Broglie De On described himself as the most unfortunate of unfortunate females. De On turned to France where he found himself at a nine days wonder. It was observed that this pure-cell was obviously shaved, that in the matter of muscular development she was a little Hercules, that she ran upstairs taking four steps at a stride, that her hair, like that of Jean Dark, was coupé en rose of a military shortness, and that she wore the shoes of men with low heels while she spoke like a grenadier. At first De On had all the social advertisement, which was now his one desire, but he became a nuisance and, by his quarrels with Burmache, a scandal. In drawing-ring plays he acted his English adventures with the great playwriter, whose part was highly ridiculous. Now De On pretended to desire to take the veil as a nun. Now to join the troops being sent to America. He was consigned to retreat in a castle of Dijon, 1779. He had become a weariness to official mankind. He withdrew 1781 to 85 to join the privacy at Tonnere, and then returned to London in the semblance of a bediment old dame, who, after dinner, did not depart with the ladies. He took part in fencing matches with great success, and in 1791 his library was sold at Christie's with his swords and jewels. The catalogue bears the motto from Giovanna, cheldecus ryrum, civergenus octio fiat, no doubt selected by the lonely little man. The snuff box of the Empress Elizabeth, a gift to the diplomatist of 1756, fetched two pounds, 13 shillings and sixpence. The poor old boy was badly hurt at a fencing match in his 68th year, and henceforth lived retired from arms in the house of a Mrs. Cole, an object of charity. He might have risen to the highest places if discretion had been among his gifts, and his career proved the quantilose apientre of the French government before the revolution. In no other time or country could the king's secret have run a course far more incredible than even the story of Chevalier Dian. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Avayee in February 2020. Among the best brief masterpieces of fiction are the titans, the haunters and the haunted, and thequerays notch on the axe in roundabout papers. Both deal with a mysterious being who passes through the ages, rich, powerful, always behind the scenes, coming no man knows whence, and dying, or pretending to die, obscurely you never find authentic evidence of his disease. In other later times at other courts, such one reappears and runs the same course of luxury, marvel and hidden potency. Lytton returned to and elaborated his idea in the Margrave of a strange story who has no soul and prolongs his physical and 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. Thequeray'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 Count de Saint-Germain, not, of course, the contemporary and normal French soldier and minister of 1777 to 1778, who bore the same name. I have found the name, with dim illusions, in the unpublished letters and manuscripts 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 Thaestes, may, after all, not be vividly present to the memory of every reader. The omniscient La Rose of the Dictionnaire universelle 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 La Rose, 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 name of Marquis de Montferrat and of Comte de Bellamy which he used at Venice. La Selle Rexel, again in Remarkable Adventures, 1863, says, Whatever truth there may be in Saint-Germain's travels in England and the East Indies, it is indubitable that, from 1745 to 1755 he was a man of high position in Vienna. While in Paris he does not appear, according to Rexel, till 1757, having been brought from Germany by the Marachal de Belle-Île Old Boots, says Marquis Lester the Spy, Prince Charles freely damned because they were always stuffed with projects. Now we hear of Saint-Germain by that name as resident not in Vienna, but in London, at the very moment when Prince Charles, evading Cumberland, who lay with his army at Stone in Staffordshire, marched to Derby. Horace Walpole writes to man in Florence, December 9, 1745, we begin to take up people. The other day they seized an odd man who goes by the name of Count Saint-Germain. He has been here these two years and will not tell who he is, or whence, but professes that he does not go by his right name. He sings, plays on the violin wonderfully, composes, is mad and not very sensible. He is called an Italian, a Spaniard, a pole, a somebody that married a great fortune in Mexico and ran away with her jewels to Constantinople, a priest, a fiddler, a vast nobleman. The Prince of Wales has had unsatiated curiosity about him, but in vain. However, nothing has been made out against him. He is released and, what convinces me, he is not a gentleman, stays here in talks of his being taken up for a spy. Here is our earliest authentic note on Saint-Germain, a note omitted by his French students. He was in London from 1743 to 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 marvelled 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 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 manuscript and the state papers domestic in the record office for a trace of the examination of Saint-Germain. I am not aware that he has 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 Duke de Choisseux, Madame de Pompadour and the Maréchal de Belle-Hille, one cannot ascertain. The writers of memoirs are the vaguest of motels about dates. Only one discerns that Saint-Germain was much about the French court and high in the favour of the king, having rooms at Chambord, during the Seven Years' War and just before the time of the peace negotiations of 1762 to 1763. The art of compiling foals or forged memories of that period was widely practised, but the memoirs of Madame de Hossée, who speaks of Saint-Germain, are authentic. She was the widow of a poor man of noble family, and was one of two from the chambre of Madame de Pompadour. Her manuscript was written, she explains, by aid of a brief diary which she kept during her term of service. One day M. Sénac de Mélan found Madame de Pompadour's brother, M. de Marigny, about to burn a packet of papers. It is the journal, he said, of a from the chambre of my sister, a good kind woman. The Mélan asked for the manuscript, which he later gave to M. Cronford, one of the kill-winning family in Ayrshire, who later helped in the escape of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to Varenne, where they were captured. With the journal of Madame de Hossée, were several letters to Marigny on points of historical anecdote. Cronford published a manuscript of Madame de Hossée, which he was given by the Mélan, and the memoirs are thus from an authentic source. The author says that Louis XV was always kind to her, but spoke little to her, whereas M. de Pompadour remarked, the king and I trust you so much that we treat you like a cat or a dog and talk freely before you. As to Saint-Germain, M. de Hossée writes, a man who was as amazing as a witch came often to see M. de Pompadour. This was the count of Saint-Germain who wished to make people believe that he had lived for several centuries. One day M. said to him, while at her toilet, what sort of man was Francis I, a king whom I could have loved? A good sort of fellow, said Saint-Germain, too fiery. I could have given him a useful piece of advice, but he would not have listened. He then described in very general terms the beauty of Mary Stuart and Larène Margaux. You seem to have seen them all, said M. de Pompadour, laughing. Sometimes, said Saint-Germain, I amuse myself not by making people believe, but by letting them believe that I have lived from time immemorial. But you do not tell us your age and you give yourself out as very old. Mme de Gérgie, who was wife of the French ambassador at Venice fifty years ago, I think says that you knew you there and that you are not changed in the least. It is true, Mme, that I knew Mme de Gérgie long ago. But according to her story, you must now be over a century old. It may be so, but I admit that even more possibly the respected lady is in her dotage. At this time Saint-Germain, says Mme de Hossée, looked about fifty, was neither thin nor stout, seemed clever and dressed simply as a rule, but in good taste. Say that the date was seventeen sixty. Saint-Germain looked fifty, but he had looked the same age according to Mme de Gérgie at Venice fifty years earlier, in seventeen ten. We see how pleasantly he left from the pompadour and doubt on that point. He pretended to have the secret of removing flaws from diamonds. The king showed him a stone valued at six thousand francs. Without a flaw it would have been worth ten thousand. Saint-Germain said that he could remove the flaw in a month, and in a month he brought back the diamond, flawless. The king sent it without any comment to his jeweler, six thousand six hundred francs for the stone, but the king returned the money and kept the gem as a curiosity. Probably it was not the original stone, but another cut in the same fashion, Saint-Germain sacrificing three thousand or five thousand francs to his practical joke. He also said that he could increase the size of pearls, which he could have proved very easily in the same manner. He would not oblige Mme de Pompadour by giving the king an elixir of life. I should be mad if I gave the king a drug. There seems to be a reference to this desire of Mme de Pompadour in an unlikely place, a letter of Pickle the Spy to Mr. Vaughan, 1754. This conversation Mme de Hosey wrote down on the day of its occurrence. Both Louis XV and Mme de Pompadour treated Saint-Germain as a person of consequence. He is a quack, for he says he has an elixir, said Dr. Kenney with medical skepticism. Moreover, our master the king is obstinate. He sometimes speaks of Saint-Germain as a person of illustrious birth. The age was skeptical, unscientific and, by reaction, credulous. The philosophes, Hume, Voltaire and others were exposing, like an ingenious American gentleman, the mistakes of Moses. The Earl Marie-Charles told Hume that life had been chemically produced in a laboratory, so what becomes of creation? Prince Charles, hidden in a convent was being tortured by Mme de Mosey Lucie in the sensational philosophy of Locke, nothing in the intellect which does not come through the senses, a queer theme for a man of the sword but, thirty years earlier, the regent Dorléon had made crystal-gazing fashionable and stories of ghosts and second sight in the highest circles were popular. Mesmer had not yet appeared to give a fresh start to the old savage practice of hypnotism. Caliostra was not yet on the scene with his free masonry on the ancient Egyptian school. But people were already in extremes of doubt and of belief. There might be something in the elixir of life and in the philosopher's stone. It might be possible to make precious stones chemically and Saint-Germain, who seemed to be over a century old at least, might have all these secrets. Whence came his wealth in precious stones, people asked unless from some mysterious knowledge or some equally mysterious and illustrious birth. She showed Madame du Pompadour a little box full of rubies, topazes and diamonds. Madame du Pompadour called Madame du Hossé to look at them. She was dazzled but skeptical and made a sign to show that she thought them paced. The count then exhibited a superb ruby tossing aside contemptuously a cross covered with gems. That is not so contemptible, said Madame du Hossé hanging it round her neck. The count begged her to keep the jewel. She refused and Madame du Pompadour backed her refusal. But Saint-Germain insisted and Madame du Pompadour thinking that the cross might be worth forty louis made a sign to Madame du Hossé that she should accept. She did and the jewel was valued at one thousand five hundred francs which hardly proves that the other large jewels were genuine though von Gleichen believed they were and thought the count's cabinet of old masters very valuable. The fingers, the watch, the snuff box, the shoe buckles, the garter studs, the solitaires of the count on high days all burned with diamonds and rubies which were estimated one day at two hundred thousand francs. His wealth did not come from cards or swindling no such charges are ever hinted at. He did not sell elixirs nor prophecies nor initiations. His habits do not seem to have been extravagant. One might regard him as a clever eccentric person, the unacknowledged child perhaps of some noble who had put his capital mainly into precious stones. But Louis XV treated him as a serious personage and probably knew, or thought he knew, the secret of his birth. People held that he was a bastard of a king of Portugal, says Madame du Hossé. Perhaps the most ingenious and plausible theory of the birth of Saint-Germain makes him the natural son, not of a king of Portugal, but of a queen of Spain. The evidence is not evidence, but a series of surmises. Saint-Germain, on this theory, robbed his bath-up in a mystery, like that of Charles James Fitzgames de Pluch, out of regard for the character of his royal mama. I believe this about as much as I believe that a certain reverent Mr. Douglas, an obstreperous covenanting minister, was a descendant of the captive Mary Stuart. However, Saint-Germain said, like Caspar Hauser, to have murmured of dim memories of his infancy, of diversions on magnificent terraces, and of palaces glowing beneath the Missouri sky. This is reported by von Gleichen, who knew him very well, but thought him rather a quack. Possibly he meant to convey the idea that he was Moses, and that he had dwelt in the palaces of the Ramacids. The grave of the prophet was never known, and Saint-Germain may have insinuated that he began a new avatar in a cleft of Mount Piscar. He was capable of it. However, a less wild surmise ever is that, in 1763, the secrets of his birth and the source of his opulence were known in Holland. The authority is the memoirs of Grossley, 1813. Grossley was an archeologist of Troy's. He had traveled in Italy, and written an account of his travels. He also visited Holland and England. And, later, from a Dutchman, he picked up information about Saint-Germain. Grossley was a fellow of our Royal Society, and I greatly revered the authority of a FRS. His later years were occupied in the compilation of his memoirs, including an account of what he did and heard in Holland, and he died in 1785. According to Grossley's account of what the Dutchman knew, Saint-Germain was the son of a princess who fled, obviously from Spain to Bayonne, and of a Portuguese Jew dwelling in Bordeaux. What fairy and fugitive princess can this be, whom not in vain the ardent Hebrew would? She was, she must have been, as Grossley saw, the heroine of Victor Hugo's Rue Blas. The unhappy Charles II of Spain, a kind of mammoth as the English called the Richard II who appeared up in Isle, having escaped from Pomfret Castle, had for his first wife a daughter of Henrietta, the favourite sister of our Charles II. This childless bride, after some ghostly years of matrimony, having being exercised in disgusting circumstances, died in February 1689. In May 1690 a new bride, Marie de Nubour, was brought to the Grisly side of the crowned mammoth of Spain. She too failed to prevent the wars of the Spanish succession by giving an heir to the crown of Spain. Scandalous chronicles aver that Marie was chosen as Queen of Spain for the levity of her character and that the crown was expected, as in the Pictish monarchy, to descend on the female side. The father of the prince might be anybody. What was needed was simply a son of the Queen of Spain. He married while Queen no son as far as is ascertained but she had a favourite account and a nero whom she made minister of finance. He was not a born count, he was a financier, this favourite of the Queen of Spain. That lady did go to live in Bayonne in 1706, six years after the death of Charles II, her husband. The hypothesis is then that Saint-Germain was the son of this ex-Queen of Spain and of the financial court and a nero, a man not born in the sphere of counts and easily transformed by tradition into a Jewish banker of Bordeaux. The Duke de Chasseux, who disliked the intimacy of Louis XV and of the court with Saint-Germain said that the count was the son of a Portuguese Jew who deceives the court. It is strange that the king is so often allowed to be almost alone with this man, though when he goes out he is surrounded by guards as if he feared assassins everywhere. This anecdote is from the memoirs of Gleichen who had seen a great deal of the world. He died in 1807. It seems a fair inference that the Duke de Chasseux knew what the Dutch bankers knew, the story of the counts being a child of a princess married to Bayonne, namely the ex-queen of Spain and of a Portuguese Hebrew financier. The Chasseux was ready to accept the Jewish father but thought that, in the matter of the royal mother, Saint-Germain deceived the court. A queen of Spain might have carried off any quantity of the diamonds of Brazil. The presence of diamonds from her almost idiotic lord must have been among the few comforts of her situation in a court overridden by etiquette. The reader of Madame d'Ornoy's contemporary account of the court of Spain knows what a dreadful dungeon it was. Again, if born at Bayonne about 1706, the count would naturally seem to be about 50 in 1760. The purity with which he spoke German and his familiarity with German princely courts, where I do not remember that any Indian ever met him, are easily accounted for if he had a royal German to his mother. But, alas, if he was the son of a Hebrew financier, Portuguese or Alsatian, as some said, he was likely, whoever his mother may have been, to know German and to be fond of precious stones. That oriental taste notoriously abides in the hearts of the chosen people. Never shag your gory locks at me, thou canst not say I did it. Quotes Pinto, the hero of Thackeray's Notch on the axe. He pronounced it, by the way, I did it, by which I know that Pinto was a German, says Thackeray. I make little doubt, but that Saint-Germain, too, was a German, whether by the mother's side and of princely blood or quite the reverse. Grossly mixes Saint-Germain up with a lady as mysterious as himself, who also lived in Holland, on wealth of an unknown source, and Grossly inclines to think that the Count found his way into a French prison where he was treated with extraordinary respect. von Gleichen, on the other hand, shows the Count making love to a daughter of Madame Lambert and lodging in the house of the mother. Here von Gleichen met the man of mystery and became rather intimate with him. Von Gleichen deemed him very much older than he looked, but did not believe in his elixir. In any case, he was not a card-sharper, a swindler, a professional medium or a spy. He passed many evenings almost alone with Louis XV, who, when men were concerned, liked him to be of good family. About ladies, he was much less exclusive. The Count had a grand manner. He treated some great personages in a cavalier way as if he were at least their equal. On the whole, if not really the son of a princess, he probably persuaded Louis XV that he did come of that blue blood, and the king would have every access to authentic information. Horace Walpole's reasoning for thinking Saint-Germain, not a gentleman, scarcely seemed convincing. The Duke de Chasseau did not like the fashionable Saint-Germain. He thought him a humbug, even when the doings of the desless one were perfectly harmless. As far as is known, his recipe for health consisted in drinking a horrible mixture called senate, which was administered to small boys when I was a small boy and in not drinking anything at his meals. Many people still observed his regimen in the interest it is said of their figures. Saint-Germain used to come to the house of de Chasseau, but one day when von Gleichen was present the minister lost his temper with his wife. He observed that she took no wine at dinner and told her she had learned that habit of abstinence from Saint-Germain that he might do as he pleased. But you, madame, whose health is precious to me, I forbid to imitate the regimen of such a dubious character. Gleichen, who tells the anecdote says that he was present when the Chasseau thus lost his temper with his wife. The dislike of the Chasseau had a mournful effect on the career of Saint-Germain. In discussing the strange story of the Chevalier Dion, we have seen that Louis XV amused himself by carrying on a secret scheme of fantastic diplomacy through subordinate agents, behind the banks and without the knowledge of his responsible ministers. The Duke de Chasseau, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, was excluded, it seems, from all knowledge of these double intrigues, and the Maréchal de Belle Île, Minister of War, was obviously kept in the dark, as was madame de Pompadour. Now it is stated by von Gleichen that the Maréchal de Belle Île, from the War Office, started a new secret diplomacy behind the back of the Chasseau at the Foreign Office. The King and Madame de Pompadour, who was not initiated into the general scheme of the King's secret, were both acquainted with what the Chasseau was not to know, namely, Belle Île's plan for secretly making peace through the mediation or management at all events of Holland. All this must have been prior to the death of the Maréchal de Belle Île in 1761 and probably de Broglie, who managed the regular old secret policy of Louis the 15th, knew nothing about this new clandestine adventure. At all events, the late Duke de Broglie says nothing about it in his book, The King's Secret. The story, as given by von Leichen, goes on to say that Saint-Germain offered to conduct the intrigue at the Hague. As Louis the 15th certainly allowed that maidenly captain of dragoons, Dion, to manage his hidden policy in London, it is not at all improbable that he really entrusted this fresh cabal in Holland to Saint-Germain, whom he admitted to great intimacy. To the Hague went Saint-Germain, diamonds, rubies, finality and all, and began to diplomatize with the Dutch. But the regular French minister at the Hague, Daphrie found out what was going on behind his back, found it out either because he was sharper than other ambassadors, or because a personage so extraordinary Saint-Germain was certain to be very closely watched, or because the Dutch did not take to the undying one and told Daphrie what he was doing. Daphrie wrote to the choiseu, an immortal but dubious personage, he said, was treating in the interests of France for peace, which it was Daphrie's business to do if the thing was to be done at all. Choiseu replied in a rage by the same curier. Saint-Germain, he said, must be extradited, bound-handed foot and sent to the Bastille. Choiseu thought that he might take his regimen and drink his senatee to the advantage of public affairs within those venerable walls. Then the angry minister went to the king, told him what orders he had given, and said that, of course, in the case of this kind it was superfluous to inquire as to the royal pleasure. Louis XV was caught, so was the maichal de Belle-Ile. They blushed and were silent. It must be remembered that this report of a private incident could only come to the narrator, von Gleichen, from the Choiseu, with whom he professes to have been intimate. The king and the maichal de Belle-Ile would not tell the story of their own discomforture. It is not very likely that the Choiseu himself would blab. However, the anecdote averse that the king and the minister for war thought it best to say nothing, the demand for Saint-Germain's extradition was presented at the Hague. But the Dutch were not fond of giving up political offenders. They let Saint-Germain have a hint. He slipped over to London, and a London paper published a kind of veiled interview with him in June 1760. His name, we read, when announced after his death, will astonish the world more than all the marvels of his life. He has been in England already 1743-17 He is a great unknown. Nobody can accuse him of anything dishonest or dishonorable. When he was here before, we were all mad about music, and so he enchanted us with his violin. But Italy knows him as an expert in the plastic arts, and Germany admires him a master in chemical science. In France, where it is supposed to possess the secret of the transmutation of metals, the police for two years sought and failed to find any normal source of his opulence. A lady of 45 once swallowed a whole bottle of his elixir. Nobody recognized her, for she had become a girl of 16 without observing the transformation. Saint-Germain is said to have remained in London, but for a short period. Horace Walpole does not speak of him again, which is odd, but probably the Count did not again go into society. Our information, mainly from von Gleichen, becomes very misty, a thing of surmises, really worthless. The Count is credited with a great part in the palace conspiracies of Saint Petersburg. He lived at Berlin, and under the name of Tsaroghi at the court of the Margrave of Petersburg. Then he went, they say, to Italy, and then north to the Landgrave, Charles of Hesse, who dabbled in alchemy. Here he is said to have died about 1780 to 85, leaving his papers to the Landgrave, but all is very vague after he disappeared from Paris in 1760. When next I meet Saint-Germain he is again at Paris, again mysteriously rich, again he'd rather disappears than dies. He calls himself Major Fraser, and the date is in the last years of Louis-Philippe. My authority may be cavilled at. It is that of the late ingenious Mr. van Damme, who describes Major Fraser in a book on the characters of the Second Empire. He does not seem to have heard of Saint-Germain, whom he does not mention. Major Fraser, in spite of his English name, was decidedly not English though he spoke the language. He was, like Saint-Germain, one of the best-dressed men of the period. He lived alone and never alluded to his parentage. He was always flush of money, though the sources of his income were a mystery to everyone. The French police vainly sought to detect the origin of Saint-Germain's supplies and letters at the post office. Major Fraser's knowledge of every civilised country at every period was marvellous though he had very few books. His memory was something prodigious. Strange to say, he used often to hint that his was no mere book knowledge. Of course it is perfectly ridiculous. He remarked with a strange smile but every now and then I feel as if this did not come to me from being but from personal experience. At times I become almost convinced that I lived with Nero, that I knew Dante personally and so forth. At the major's death not a letter was found giving a clue to his antecedents and no money was discovered. Did he die? As in the case of Saint-Germain no date is given. The author had an idea that the major was an illegitimate son of some exalted person of the period of Charles IV and Ferdinand VII of Spain. The author does not mention Saint-Germain and may never have heard of him. If his account of major Fraser is not mere romance in that warrior we have the undying friend of Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour. He had drunk at Medmenham with Jack Wilkes as Richard he had sung duets for the fairest of unhappy queens. He had extracted from Blanche de Bechamel the secret of Gobi de Mouchi. At Pinto he told much of his secret history to Mr. Thackeray who says I am rather sorry to lose him after three little bits of roundabout papers. Did Saint-Germain really die in a palace of Prince Charles of Hesse about 1780 to 85? Did he on the other hand escape from the French prison where grossly thought he saw him during the French Revolution? Was he known to Lord Lytton about 1860? Was he then major Fraser? Is he the mysterious Muscovite advisor of the Dalai Lama? Who knows? He is a will or the wisp of the memoir writers of the 18th century. Whenever you think you have a chance of finding him in good authentic state papers he gives you the slip and if his existence were not vouched for by Horace Walpole I should incline to deem of him as Betsy Prigg thought of Mrs. Harris. Note since the publication of these essays I have learned through the courtesy of a Polish nobleman that there was nothing mysterious in the origin and adventures of the major Fraser mentioned in pages 274 to 276. He was of the Salton family and played a part in the Civil Wars of Spain during the second quarter of the 19th century. Major Fraser was known in Paris to the father of my Polish correspondent. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Of Historical Mysteries This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Historical Mysteries by Andrew Lange Chapter 13 The Mystery of the Kirks No historical problem has proved more perplexing to Englishmen than the nature of the differences between the various Kirks in Scotland. The South Rhond found that whether he worshipped in a church of the established Kirk the old Kirk of the free church or of the United Presbyterian church the UPs it was all the same thing. The nature of the service was exactly similar though sometimes the congregation stood at prayers and sat when it sang sometimes stood when it sang and knelt at prayer. The Kirks used a prescribed liturgy. I have been in a free Kirk which had no pulpit. The pastor stood on a kind of raised platform like a lecturer in a lecture room but that practice is unessential. The Kirks, if I mistake not have different collections of hymns which till recent years were condemned as and therefore idolatrous. But hymns are now in use as also are organs or harmoniums or other musical instruments. Thus the faces of the Kirks are similar and sisterly. What then the South Run used to ask? Is the difference between the free church the established church and the United Presbyterian church? If the South Run put the question to a Scottish friend the odds were that the Scottish friend could not answer. He might be a member of the Scottish Episcopal Catholic Church. If the South Run put the question to a Scottish friend the member of the Scottish Episcopal community and as ignorant as any Anglican or he might not have made these profound studies in Scottish history which throw glimmerings of light on this obscure subject. Indeed, the whole aspect of the mystery has shifted of late like the colors in a kaleidoscope. The more conspicuous hues are no longer the Kirks, Free Kirks and UPs but Ald Kirk, Free Kirk and United Free Kirk. The United Free Kirk was composed in 1900 of the old United Presbyterians as old as 1847 with the overwhelming majority of the old Free Kirk while the Free Kirk of the present moment consists of a tiny minority of the old Free Kirk which declined to join the recent Union. By a judgment one may well call it a judgment of the House of Lords August 1st 1904 the Free Kirk commonly called the We Freeze now possesses the wealth that was the old Free Kirk's before in 1900 it united with the United Presbyterians the United Free Church. It is to be hoped that common sense will discover some out gate or issue from this distressing in Roglio. In the words which Mr. R. L. Stevenson then a sage of 24 penned in 1874 we may say those who are at all open to a feeling of national disgrace look forward eagerly to such a possibility they have been witnesses already too long to the strife that has divided this small corner of Christendom in quote the eternal sysms of the Kirk said R. L. S. exhibit something pitiful for the pitiful man but bitterly humorous for others the humor of the present situation is only two manifest two generations ago about half of the ministers of the Kirk of Scotland left their manses and pleasant glebes for the sake of certain ideas of these ideas they abandoned some or left them in suspense a few years since and as a result they have lost if only for the moment their manses, stipends colleges and pleasant glebes why should all these things be so? the answer can only be found in the history and a history both sad and bitterly humorous it is of the reformation in Scotland when John Knox died on November 24, 1572 a decent Burgess of Edinburgh wrote in his diary quote John Knox minister who had as was alleged the most part of the blame of all the sorrows of Scotland since the slaughter of the late Cardinal Beaton murdered at St. Andrews in 1546 the sorrows of Scotland had endured when Knox died four but 26 years since his death 332 years have gone by and the present sorrows of the United Free Kirk are the direct though distant result of some of the ideas of John Knox the whole trouble springs from his peculiar notions and the notions of his followers about the relations between church and state in 1843 half the ministers of the established Kirk in Scotland or more left the Kirk and went into the wilderness for what they believed to be the ideal of Knox in 1904 they have again a prospect of a similar exodus because they are no longer rigid adherents of the very same ideal a tiny minority of some 27 ministers clings to what it considers to be the Knoxian ideal and is rewarded by all the wealth bestowed on the Free Kirk by pious benefactors during 60 years the quarrel for 344 years 1560 to 1904 has been we know about the relations of church and state the disruption of 1843 the departure of the Free Kirk out of the established Kirk arose thus according to Lord McNaughton who gave one of the two opinions in favor of the United Free Kirk's claim possessions held by the Free Kirk before its union in 1900 with the United Presbyterians before 1843 there were says the sympathetic judge two parties in the established church the moderates and the evangelicals also called the wild men the highland host or the high flyers the evangelicals became the majority and they carried matters with a high hand they passed acts in the assembly altogether beyond the competence of a church established by law the state refused to admit their claims the strong arm of the law restrained their extravagancies still they maintained that their proceedings were justified and required by the doctrine of the headship of Christ to which passed peculiar and extraordinary significance end quote now the state in 1838 to 1843 could not and would not permit these extravagancies in a state paid church the evangelical party therefore seceded maintaining as one of their leaders said that quote we are still the church of Scotland the only church that deserves the name the only church that can be known and recognized by the maintaining of those principles to which the church of our fathers was true when she was on the mountain and on the field when she was under persecution when she was an outcast from the world end quote thus the free Kirk was the Kirk and the established Kirk was heretical was what Knox would have called quote now the fact is that the church of Scotland had been since August 1560 a Kirk established by law or by what was said to be a legal parliament yet had never perhaps for an hour attained its own full ideal relation to the state had never been granted its entire claims but only so much or so little of these as the political situation compelled the state to concede or enabled it to withdraw there had always been members of the Kirk who claimed all that the free Kirk claimed in 1843 but they never got quite as much as they asked they often got much less than they wanted and the full sum of their desires could be granted by no state to a state paid church entire independence could be obtained only by cutting the church a drift from the state the free Kirk then did cut themselves a drift but they kept on maintaining that they were the church of Scotland and that the state ought in duty to establish and maintain them while granting them absolute independence the position was stated thus in 1851 by an act and declaration of the free Kirk's assembly quote she holds still and through God's grace will ever hold that it is the duty of civil rulers to recognize the truth of God according to his word and to promote and support the kingdom of Christ without assuming any jurisdiction in it or any power over it in quote the state in fact if we may speak carnally ought to pay the piper but must not presume to call the tune now we touch the skirt of the mystery what was the difference between the free Kirk and the United Presbyterians who since 1900 have been blended with that body the difference was that the free Kirk held it to be the duty of the state to establish her and leave her perfect independence while the United Presbyterians maintain the absolutely opposite opinion namely that the state cannot and must not establish any church or pay any church out of the national resources when the two Kirk's united in 1900 then the free Kirk either abandoned the doctrine of which in 1851 she said that she holds it still and through God's grace ever will hold it or she regarded it as a mere pious opinion which did not prevent her from coalescing with a Kirk of contradictory ideas the tiny minority the we frees the free Kirk of today would not accept this compromise hence these tears to leave differences in purely metaphysical theology out of view now the root of all the trouble all the sisms and sufferings of more than three centuries lies as we have said in some of the ideas of John Knox and one asks of what Kirk would John Knox be if he were alive in the present state of affairs I venture to think that the venerable reformer would be found in the ranks of the established Kirk the old Kirk he would not have gone out into the wilderness in 1843 and he would most certainly have opposed the ideas of the united Presbyterians this theory may surprise you at first glance but it has been reached after many hours of earnest consideration Knox's ideas as far as he ever reasoned them out reposed on this impregnable rock namely that Calvinism as held by himself was an absolutely certain thing in every detail if the state or the civil magistrate entirely agreed with Knox then Knox was delighted that the state should regulate religion the magistrate was to put down Catholicism and other aberrations from the truth as it was in John Knox with every available engine of the law corporal punishment prison exile and death if the state was ready and willing to do all this then the state was to be implicitly obeyed in matters of religion and the power in its hands was God given in fact the state was the secular aspect of the church looking at the state in this ideal aspect Knox writes about the obedience due to the magistrate in matters of religious after the manner of what in this country called the fiercest Erastianism the state rules the roost in all matters of religion and may do what Lord and Charles I perished in attempting may alter forms of worship always provided that the state absolutely agrees with the Kirk thus under Edward VI Knox would have desired the secular power in England the civil magistrate to forbid people to kneel at the celebration of the sacrament that was entirely within the competence of the state simply and solely because Knox desired that people should not kneel but when long after Knox's death the civil magistrate insisted in Scotland that people should kneel the upholders of Knox's ideas denied that the magistrate James VI had any right to issue such an order and they refused to obey while remaining within the established church they did not disrupt like the free church they simply hacked it as they pleased and denounced their obedient brethren as no lawful ministers the end of it all was that they stirred up the civil war in which the first shot was fired by the legendary Jenny Gettis throwing her stool at the reader in St. Giles thus we see that the state was to be obeyed in matters of religion when the state did the bidding of the Kirk and not otherwise when first employed as a licensed preacher and agent of the state in England Knox accepted just as much of the state's liturgy as he pleased the liturgy ordered the people to kneel Knox and his Berwick congregation disobeyed with equal freedom he and the other royal chaplains at Easter preaching before the king denounced his ministers Northumberland and the rest Knox spoke of them in his sermon as Judas Shabna and some other scriptural malignance later he said that he repented having put things so mildly he ought to have called the ministers by their names not availed things in a hint now we cannot easily conceive a chaplain of her late majesty in a sermon preached before her denouncing the chancellor of the exchequer say Mr Gladstone has Judas yet Knox in a church indulged his spiritual independence to that extent and took shame to himself that he had not gone further obviously if this is Erastianism it is of an unusual time the idea of Knox is that in a Catholic state the ruler is not to be obeyed in religious matters by the true believers sometimes Knox wrote that Catholic ruler ought to be met by passive resistance sometimes that he ought to be shot at sight he stated these diverse doctrines in the course of 18 months in a Protestant country the Catholics must obey the Protestant ruler or take their chances of prison exile fire and death the Protestant ruler in a Protestant state is to be obeyed in spiritual matters by Protestants just as far as the Kirk may happen to approve his proceedings or even further in practice if there is no chance of successful resistance we may take it that Knox if he had been alive and retained his old ideas in 1843 would not have gone out of the established church with the free church because in his time he actually did submit the regulations of which he did not approve for example he certainly did not approve of bishops and had no bishops in the Kirk as established on his model in 1560 but 12 years later bishops were reintroduced by the state in the person of the regent Morton a Ruffian and Knox did not retire to the mountain and the fields but made the most practical to get the best terms possible for the Kirk he was old and outworn and he remained in the established Kirk and advised no man to leave it it was his theory again as it was that of the free Kirk that there should be no patronage no presentation of ministers to cures by the patron the congregations were to choose and call a properly qualified person at their own pleasure as they do now in all the Kirk's including since 1874 the established church but the state in Knox's lifetime overrode this privilege of the church the most infamous villain of the period Archibald Douglas was presented to the Kirk of Glasgow and indeed the nobles made many such presentations of unscrupulous and ignorant cadets to important livings Morton gave a bishopric to one of the murderers of Ritcio yet Knox did not advise a secession he merely advised that non-residents or a scandalous life or erroneous doctrine on the part of the person presented should make his presentation null and of no force for effect and this to have place also in the nomination of the bishops thus Knox was on occasion something of an opportunist if alive in 1843 he would probably have remained in the establishment and worked for that abolition of patronage which was secured from within in 1874 if this conjecture is right the free Kirk was more Noxian than John Knox and departed from his standard he was capable of sacrificing a good deal of spiritual independence rather than break with the state many times long after he was dead the national church under stress of circumstances accepted compromises Knox knew the difference between the ideal and the practical it was the ideal that all non-convertible Catholics should die the death but the ideal was never made real the state was not prepared to oblige the Kirk in this matter it was the ideal that any of the brethren conscious of a vocation and seeing a good opportunity should treat an impenitent Catholic ruler as Jehu treated Jezebel but if any brother had consulted Knox as to the propriety of assassinating Queen Mary in 1561-67 he would have found out his mistake and probably have descended the reformers stairs much more rapidly than he mounted them yet Knox though he could submit to compromise really had a remarkably mystical idea of what the Kirk was and of the attributes of her clergy the editor of the Free Church Union case Mr. Taylor Ennis himself author of a biography of the reformer writes in his preface to the judgment of the House of Lords quote the church of Scotland as a Protestant church had its origin in the year 1560 for its first confession dates from August and its first assembly from December in that year in fact the confession was accepted and passed as law by a very dubious legal convention of the estates in August 1560 but Knox certainly conceived that the Protestant church in if not of Scotland existed a year before that date and before that date it possessed the power of the keys and even it would perhaps seem the power of the sword to his mind as soon as a local set of men of his own opinions met and chose a pastor and preacher who also administered the sacraments the Protestant church was a church in being the Catholic church then by law established was Knox held no church at all the priests were not lawful ministers her pope was the man of sin ex officio and the church was the Kirk of the malignance a lady of pleasure in battle on bread on the other hand the real church it might be of but 200 men was confronting the Kirk of the malignance and alone was genuine the state did not make and could not unmake the true church but was bound to establish foster and obey it it was this last proviso which caused 130 years of bloodshed and persecution and general unrest in Scotland from 1559 to 1690 why was the Kirk so often out in the Heather and hunted like a cartridge on the field and the mountain the answer is that when the wilder spirits of the Kirk were not being persecuted they were persecuting the state and bullying the individual subject all this arose from Knox's idea of the church to constitute a church no more was needed than a local set of Calvinistic Protestants and a lawful minister to constitute a lawful minister at first later far more was required no more was needed than a call to a preacher from a local set of Calvinistic Protestants but when once the call was given and accepted that lawful minister was by the theory as superior to the laws of the state as the celebrated emperor was superior to grammar a few lawful ministers of this kind possessed the power of the keys they could hand anybody over to Satan by excommunicating the man and apparently they could present the power of the sword to any town council which could then decree capital punishment against any Catholic priest who celebrated mass as by the law of the state was in duty bound to do such were the moderate and reasonable claims of Knox's Kirk in May 1559 even before it was accepted by the convention of estates in August 1560 it was because not the church but the wilder spirits among the ministers persevered in these claims that the state when it got the chance drove them into moors and mosses and hanged not a few of them I have never found these facts fully stated by any historian or by any biographer of Knox except by the reformer himself partly in his history partly in his letters to a lady of his acquaintance the mystery of the Kirk's turns on the Noxian conception of the lawful minister and his claim to absolutism to give examples Knox himself about 1540-43 was a priest of the altar one of Bale's Shaven sort on that score he later claimed nothing after the murder of Cardinal Beaton the murderers and their associates forming a congregation in the castle of St. Andrews gave Knox a call to be their preacher he was now a lawful minister in May 1559 he with about four or five equally lawful ministers two of them converted friars one of them a baker and one Harlow a tailor were in company with their Protestant backers who destroyed the monasteries in Perth and the altars and ornaments of the church there they at once claimed the power of the keys and threatened to excommunicate such of their allies as did not join them in arms they the brethren also denounced capital punishment against any priest who celebrated mass at Perth now the lawful ministers could not think of hanging the priests themselves they must therefore have somehow bestowed the power of the sword on the Baileys and town council of Perth I presume for the regent Mary of Guise when she entered the town dismissed these men from office which was regarded as an unlawful and perfidious act on her part again in the summer of 1560 the Baileys of Edinburgh while Catholicism was still by law established denounced the death penalty against recalcitrant Catholics the Kirk also allotted lawful ministers to several of the large towns and thus established herself before she was established by the estates in August 1560 thus nothing could be more free and more absolute than the Kirk in her early bloom on the other hand as we saw even in Knox's lifetime the state having the upper hand under the regent Morton a strong man introduced prelacy of a modified kind and patronage did not restore to the Kirk or Petrimony the lands of the old church and only hanged one priest not improbably for a certain reason of a private character there was thus from the first in the Protestant church Hand State at various times one preacher said to have declared that he was the solitary lawful minister in Scotland and one of these men Mr. Cargill excommunicated Charles II while another Mr. Renwick denounced a war of assassination against the government both gentlemen were hanged these were extreme battles of spiritual independence and the Kirk or at least the majority of the preachers protested against such conduct which might be the logical development of the doctorately lawful minister but was in practice highly inconvenient the Kirk as a whole was loyal sometimes the state under a strong man like Morton or James Stewart or Aaron a thorough paced ruffian put down these pretensions of the church at other times as when Andrew Melville led the Kirk under James VI she maintained that there was but one king in Scotland, Christ and that the actual king the lad James VI was but Christ's silly vassal he was supreme in temporal matters but the judicature of the church was supreme in spiritual matters this sounds perfectly fair but who was to decide what matters were spiritual and what were temporal the Kirk assumed the right to decide that question consequently it could give a spiritual color to any problem of statesmanship for example a royal marriage trade with Spain which the Kirk forbade or the expulsion of the Catholic peers quote there is a judgment above yours said the reverend Mr. Ponte to James VI and that is God's put in the hand of the ministers for we shall judge the angels set the apostles again you shall sit upon the royal thrones and judge quoted Mr. Ponte which is chiefly referred to the apostles and consequently to ministers end quote things came to a head in 1596 the king asked the representatives of the Kirk whether he might call home certain earls banished for being Catholics if they satisfied the Kirk the answer was that he might not Knox had long before maintained that a prophet might preach treason he is quite explicit and that the prophet and whoever carried his preaching into practical effect would be blameless a minister was accused at this moment of preaching libelously and he declined to be judged except by men of his own cloth if they acquitted him as they were morally certain to do what court of appeal could reverse the decision of men who claim to judge angels a riot arose in Edinburgh the king seized his opportunity he grasped his nettle the municipal authorities backed him and in effect the claims of true ministers thenceforth gave little trouble and the volley of Charles I led to the rise of the Covenant the sovereign had overshot his limits of power as wildly as ever the Kirk had tried to do and the result was that the Kirk having now the nobles and the people in arms on her side was absolutely despotic for about 12 years her final triumph was to resist the estates with success and to lay Scotland open to the Cromwellian conquest what plantagenets and tutors could never do nall affected he conquered Scotland the Kirk having paralyzed the state the preachers found that Cromwell was a perfect malignant that he would not suffer profits to preach treason now the general assembly to meet angels they might judge if they pleased but not iron sides excommunication and Kirk discipline were discounted even witches were less frequently burned the preachers Cromwell said had done their do had shot their bolt at this time they split into two parties the extremists calling themselves Godly and the men of milder mood Charles II at the restoration ought probably to have sided with the milder party some of whom were anxious to see their fierce brethren banish to Orkney out of the way but Charles's motto was never again and by a pedophogging fraud he reintroduced bishops without the hated liturgy after years of risings and suppressions the ministers were brought to submission accepting an indulgence from the state while but a few upholders of the old pretensions of the clergy stood out in the wilderness of southwestern Scotland there might be three or four such ministers there might be only one but they or he to the mind of the remnant were the only lawful ministers at the revolution of 1688 to 89 the remnant did not accept the compromise under which the Presbyterian Kirk was re-established they stood out breaking into many sects the spiritual descendants of most of these blended into one body as United Presbyterian Kirk in 1847 in the established Kirk the moderates were in the majority till about 1837 when the inheritors of those extreme views which Knox compromised about and which the majority of ministers disclaimed before the revolution of 1688 obtained the upper hand they had planted the remotest parishes of the Highlands with their own kind of ministers who swamped in 1838 the votes of the lowland moderates as under James the 6th Highland moderates had swamped the votes of the lowland extremists the majority of extremists or most of it left the Kirk in 1843 and made the free Kirk in 1900 when the free Kirk joined the United Presbyterians it was Highland ministers mainly who formed the minority of 27 or so who would not accept the new union and now constitute the actual free Kirk or we freeze and possess the endowments of the old free Kirk of 1843 we can scarcely say be a tea posidentis it has been shown or I have tried erroneously or not to show that wild and impossible as were the ideal claims of Knox of Andrew Melville of Mr. Pond and others the old Scottish Kirk of 1560 by law established was capable of giving up or suppressing these claims even under Knox and even while the Covenant remained in being the mass of the ministers after the return of Charles II before Worcester fight before bloody Dunbar were not irreconcilables the old Kirk the Kirk established has some right to call herself the church of Scotland by historical continuity while the opposite claimants the men of 1843 may seem rather to descend from people like young Renwick the last hero died for their ideas but not in himself the only lawful minister between Tweed and Cape Wrath other times other manners all the Kirk's were perfectly loyal now none persecutes interference with private life Kirk discipline is a vanishing minimum and but for this recent garboil as our old writers put it we might have said that under differences of nomenclature all the Kirk's are united at last in the only union worth having that of peace and goodwill that union may be restored let us hope by good temper and common sense qualities that have not hitherto been conspicuous in the ecclesiastical history of Scotland or of England End of Chapter 13 Recording by Bill Mosley Lano County, Texas Chapter 14 of Historical Mysteries This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Historical Mysteries by Andrew Lang Chapter 14 The End of Jean Delamotte In the latest and best book on Marie-Antoinette and the Diamond Knacklass La Faire du Collier Monsieur Funk Brentonot does not tell the sequel of the story of Jean Delamotte Né de Saint-Remy and calling herself de Valois He leaves this wicked woman at the moment when in August 1786 she has been publicly flogged and branded struggling, scratching and biting like a wildcat Her husband at about the same time was an Edinburgh and had just escaped from being kidnapped by the French police In another work Monsieur Funk Brentonot criticizes with his remarkable learning the conclusion of Jean Delamotte Carlisle, in his well-known essay The Diamond Knacklass leaves Jean's later adventures obscure and is in doubt as to the particulars of her death Perhaps absolute certainty except as to the cause of Jean's death is not to be obtained how she managed to escape from her prison entrier later so famous for Charcot's hypnotic experiments on hysterical female patients remains a mystery It was certain that if she was once at liberty Jean would tell the lies against the queen which she had told before and tell some more equally false popular and damaging Yet escape she did in 1787 the year following bad of her imprisonment at the Salpetrière She reached England compiled the libels which she called her memoirs and died strangely in 1791 On June 21st 1786 to follow Monsieur Funk Brentonot Jean was taken after her flogging to her prison for disillute women the majority of the captives slept as they might confusedly in one room to Jean was allotted one of 36 little cells of 6 feet square given up to her by a prisoner who went to join the promiscuous horde Probably the woman was paid for this generosity by some partisan of Jean On September 4th the property of the swindler and of her husband including their valuable furniture jewels books and plate was sold at Barsouab where they had a house So far we can go guided by Monsieur Funk Brentonot who relies on authentic documents For what followed we have only the story of Jean herself and her memoirs I quote the English translation which appears to vary from the French How did such a dangerous prisoner make her escape? We cannot but wonder that she was not placed in a prison more secure Her own version of course is not to be relied on She would tell any tale that suited her purpose A version which contradicts hers has reached me through the tradition of an English family but it presents some difficulties Jean says that about the end of November or early in December 1786 she was allowed to have a maid named Angelica This woman was a prisoner of long standing condemned on suspicion of having killed her child One evening a soldier on guard in the court of the air passed his musket through a hole in the wall or a broken window and tried to touch Angelica He told her that many people of rank were grateful to her for her kindness to Madame Lamotte He would procure writing materials for her that she might represent her case to them He did bring gilt-edged paper pens and ink and a letter for Angelica who could not read The letter contained an invisible ink brought out by Jean the phrase, it is understood be sure to be discreet People are intent on changing your condition was another phrase which Jean applied to herself She conceived the probable hypothesis that her victims the queen and the cardinal de Rohan had repented of their cruelty had discovered her to be innocent and were plotting for her escape Of course nothing could be more remote from the interests of the queen Presently the soldier brought another note Jean must procure a model of the key that locked her cell and other doors by dint of staring at the key in the hands of the nuns who looked after the prisoners Jean, though unable to draw made two sketches of it and sent them out the useful soldier managing all communications How Jean procured the necessary pencil she does not inform us Practical locksmiths may decide whether it is likely that from two amateur drawings not to scale any man could make a key which would fit the locks The task appears impossible In any case in a few days the soldier pushed the key through the hole in the wall Jean tried it on the door of her cell and on two doors in the passages found that it opened them and knelt in gratitude before her crucifix In place of running away Jean now wrote to ladies of her acquaintance begging them to procure the release of Angelica Her nights she spent in writing three statements for the woman each occupying a hundred and eighty pages presumably of gilt-edged paper Soon she heard that the king had signed Angelica's pardon and on May 1 the woman was released The next move of Jean was to ask her unknown friend outside to send her a complete male costume a large blue coat a flannel waistcoat a pair of half boots and a tall round shaped hat with a switch The soldier presently pushed these commodities through the hole in the wall The chaplain next asked her to write out all her story but sister Martha, her custodian would not give her writing materials and it did not apparently occur to her to bid the soldier bring fresh supplies Cut off from the joys of literary composition Jean arranged with her unknown friend to escape on June 8 First the handy soldier having ample leisure was to walk for days about the king's garden disguised as a wagoner and carrying a whip The use of this manoeuvre is not apparent unless Jean, with her switch was to be mistaken for the familiar presence of the carter Jean ended by devising a means of keeping one of the female porters away from her door She dressed as a man opened four doors in succession walked through a group of the nuns or sisters wandered into many other courts at last joined herself to a crowd of sight-seeing Parisians and left the prison in their company She crossed the Seine and now walking, now hiring coaches and using various disguises she reached Luxembourg Here a Mrs. McMahon met her bringing a note from Monsieur de Lamotte This was on July 27th Mrs. McMahon and Jean started next day for Ostend and arrived at Dover after a passage of 42 hours Jean then repaired with Mr. McMahon to that lady's house in the Haymarket This tale is neither coherent nor credible On the other hand the tradition of an English family a verse that a Devonshire gentleman was asked by an important personage in France to succour an unnamed lady who was being smuggled over in a sailing boat to our south-west coast Another gentleman not unknown to history actually entertained this French angel unawares not even knowing her name and Jean when she departed for London left a miniature of herself which is still in the possession of the English family Which tale is true? And who was the unknown friend that suborned the versatile soldier and sent in not only gilt-edged paper and a suit of mail attire but money for Jean's journey? Only the liberals in France had an interest in Jean's escape She might exude more useful venom against the queen and books or pamphlets and she did while giving the world to understand that the queen had favoured her flight The escape is the real mystery of the affair of the necklace The rest we now understand The death of Jean was strange The sequel to her memoirs in English a verse that in 1791 a bailiff came to arrest her for a debt of 30 shillings she gave him a bottle of wine slipped from the room and locked him in but he managed to get out and discovered the wretched woman in a chamber in the two-pair back she threw up the window leapt out struck against a tree broke one knee shattered one thigh knocked one eye out yet was recovering when on August 21st 1791 she partook too freely of mulberries to which she was very partial and died on Tuesday, August 23rd This is confirmed by two newspaper paragraphs which I cite in full First the London Chronicle writes from Saturday, August 27th to Tuesday, August 30th 1791 The unfortunate Countess de Le Mans who died on Tuesday last in consequence of a hurt from jumping out of a window was the wife of Count de Le Mans who killed young Grey the jeweler in a duel a few days ago at Brussels This duel is recorded in the London Chronicle August 20th through 23rd Next the public advertiser remarks Friday, August 26th 1791 The noted Countess de Le Mans of necklace memory and who lately jumped out of a two-pair-of-stairs window to avoid the bailiffs died on Tuesday night last at eleven o'clock at her lodgings near Astley's Riding School But why did Le Mans fight the young jeweler? It was to Grey of New Bond Street that Le Mans sold a number of the diamonds from the necklace Grey gave evidence to that fact and Le Mans killed him Le Mans himself lived to a bad old age On studying Monsieur Funk Brantano's work styled caliostro and company in the English translation one observes a curious discrepancy According to the Gazette du Trek cited by Monsieur Funk Brantano the window in Jean's cell was at a height of ten feet above the floor Yet the useful soldier outside introduced the end of his musket through a broken pane of glass This does not seem plausible Again the Gazette du Trek August 1st 1780 says that Jean made a hole in the wall of her room but failed to get her body through that aperture Was that the hole through which in the English translation published after Jean's death the soldier introduced the end of his musket? There are difficulties in both versions and it is not likely that Jean gave a truthful account of her escape Chapter 14 Read by The Story Girl End of Historical Mysteries by Andrew Lang