musician, and chemist, good-looking, and a perfect ladies' man. For
awhile he gave them paints and cosmetics; he flattered them, not that he
would make them young again (which he modestly confessed was beyond him)
but that their beauty would be preserved by means of a wash which, he
said, cost him a lot of money, but which he gave away freely.

He had contrived to gain the favour of Madame de Pompadour, who had
spoken about him to the king, for whom he had made a laboratory, in which
the monarch--a martyr to boredom--tried to find a little pleasure or
distraction, at all events, by making dyes. The king had given him a
suite of rooms at Chambord, and a hundred thousand francs for the
construction of a laboratory, and according to St. Germain the dyes
discovered by the king would have a materially beneficial influence on
the quality of French fabrics.

This extraordinary man, intended by nature to be the king of impostors
and quacks, would say in an easy, assured manner that he was three
hundred years old, that he knew the secret of the Universal Medicine,
that he possessed a mastery over nature, that he could melt diamonds,
professing himself capable of forming, out of ten or twelve small
diamonds, one large one of the finest water without any loss of weight.
All this, he said, was a mere trifle to him. Notwithstanding his
boastings, his bare-faced lies, and his manifold eccentricities, I cannot
say I thought him offensive. In spite of my knowledge of what he was and
in spite of my own feelings, I thought him an astonishing man as he was
always astonishing me. I shall have something more to say of this
character further on.

When Madame d'Urfe had introduced me to all her friends, I told her that
I would dine with her whenever she wished, but that with the exception of