_L'Homme de 1400 Ans_ (Vol. v., p 175.).--I have not immediate means of
access to the French work referred to in No. 121. of "N. & Q.," and
therefore do not know how far the personage there alluded to is
described as "imaginary;" but it appears to me that Cagliostro may have
intended reference to his great friend and predecessor in Rosicrucian
philosophy, the Count de St. Germain. This arch-impostor, who attained
no small celebrity at the court of Louis XV., pretended to be possessed
of the elixir of life, by means of which he had prolonged his existence
from a period which he varied according to the supposed credulity of his
audience; at one time carrying back the date of his birth to the
commencement of the Christian Era, at others being content to assume an
antiquity of a few centuries, being assisted in his imposture by a most
accurate memory of the history of the times, the events of which he
related, and also by an able accomplice who attended him as a servant.
On one occasion, when describing at a dinner table a circumstance which
had occurred at the court of "his friend Richard I. of England," he
appealed to his attendant valet for the confirmation of his story, who,
with the greatest coolness replied: "You forget, Sir, I have only been
500 years in your service." "True," said his master, "it _was_ a little
before your time." The origin of this able charlatan, of whom many other
amusing stories are related, is not known. He was sometimes thought,
from the Jewish cast of his features, to be the "wandering Jew;" while
others reported that he was the son of an Arabian princess, and that his
father was a Salamander.