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Andrew Lang Saint-Germain the Death/ess the best brief masterpieces of fiction are Lytton's The Haunters and the Haunted, and Thackeray's 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 an 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. Thackeray'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 Comte de Saint-Germain not, of course, the contemporary and normal French soldier and minister, of 1707-1778, who bore the same name. I have found the name, with dim allusions, in the unpublished letters and MSS. of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, and have not always been certain whether the Both given in the accompanying volume containing " Old- Time English " Stories. See also the first story in the " North Europe " volume. Editor. reference was to the man of action or to the man of mystery. On thesecret of the latter, the deathless one, I have no new light to throw, and only speak o...
