SAINT-GERMAIN, Comte de (d. 1780), a celebrated adventurer of the 18th century -who by the assertion of his discovery of some extraordinary secrets of nature exercised considerable influence at several European courts. Of his parentage and place of birth nothing is definitely known; the common version is that he was a Portuguese Jew. It was also commonly stated that he obtained his money from discharging the functions of spy to one of the European courts. He knew nearly all the European languages, spoke good German and English, excellent Italian, French (with a Piedmontese accent), and Portuguese and Spanish with perfect purity. Grimm affirms him to have been the man of the best parts he had ever known. His knowledge of history was comprehensive and minute, and his accom- plishments as a chemist, on which he based his reputation, were undoubtedly real and considerable. The most remarkable of his professed discoveries was of a liquid which could prolong life, and by which he asserted he had lived 2000 years. At the court of Louis XV., where he appeared about 1 7 48, he exercised for a time extraordinary influence, but, having interfered in the dispute between the houses of Austria and France, he was compelled in June 1760, on account of the hostility of the duke of Choiseul, to remove to England. He appears to have resided in London for one or two years, but was at St Petersburg in 1762, and is asserted to have played an important part in connexion with the conspiracy against the emperor Peter III. in July of that year. He then went to Germany, where, according to the Mémoires authentiques of Cagliostro, he was the founder of freemasonry, and initiated Cagliostro into that rite. After frequenting several of the German courts he finally took up his residence in ...