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The Comte de St. Germain - by Isabel Cooper-Oakley - [1912]
The following has been  extracted from Souvenirs de Marie-Antoinette, by the Countess d’Adhémar, who had been an intimate friend of the Queen, and who died in 1822. 

"At this same period a very singular adventure befell me. I was alone in Paris, M. d’Adhémar having gone to visit some relations of his own name that he had in Languedoc. It was one Sunday at eight o'clock in the morning. I am accustomed to hear Mass at noon, so that I had but little time for my toilette and for preparing to go out. I rose hurriedly, then, and had scarcely thrown on my morning wrapper when Mdlle. Rostande, my head waiting-woman in whom also I placed entire confidence, came in to tell me that a gentleman wished to speak to me.

To pay a visit to a woman at eight o'clock was against all accepted rules. 'Is it my procurator, my lawyer?' I asked. For one has always one of these gentlemen at one's heels, however little property one may possess. 'Is it my architect, my saddler, or one of my farmers?'

To each question a negative answer.

'But who is it, then, my dear?'

I treated my maid with familiarity. She was born the same day as myself, in the same house, that of my father, with the difference that I came into the world in a handsome apartment and she in the lodge of our house porter. Her father, a worthy Languedoc man, was a superannuated pensioner in our service.

'I thought,' answered my maid, 'with all due respect to Madame la Comtesse, that the devil had long since made a mantle out of the skin of this personage.'

I passed in review all those of my acquaintance who could have deserved any special treatment by Satan, and I found so many of them that I did not know on whom to fasten my conjectures.

'Since Madame does not guess,' continued Mdlle. Rostande, 'I will take the liberty of telling her that it is the Comte de Saint-Germain!'

'Comte de Saint-Germain!' I exclaimed, 'the man of miracles.'

'Himself.'

My surprise was great on finding that he was at Paris and in my house. It was eight years since he had left France, and no one knew in the least what had become of him. Heeding nothing but my curiosity, I ordered her to show him in.

'Did he tell you to announce him to me under his own name?'

'It is M. de Saint-Noël that he calls himself now. No matter, I should recognise him among a thousand.'

She went out, and a moment after the Count appeared. He looked fresh and well, and almost grown younger. He paid me the same compliment, but it may be doubted whether it was as sincere as mine.

'You have lost,' I said to him, 'a friend, a protector in the late King.'

'I doubly regret this loss, both for myself and for France.'

'The nation is not of your opinion; it looks to the new reign for its welfare.'

'It is a mistake; this reign will be fatal to it.'

'What are you saying?' I replied, lowering my voice and looking around me.

'The truth. . . . A gigantic conspiracy is being formed, which as yet has no visible chief, but he will appear before long. The aim is nothing less than the overthrow of what exists, to reconstruct it on a new plan. There is ill-will towards the royal family, the clergy, the nobility, the magistracy. There is still time, however, to baffle the plot; later, this would be impossible.'

Where have you seen all this? Is it in dreaming, or awake?

‘Partly with the help of my two ears, and partly through revelations. The King of France, I repeat, has no time to lose.'

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I pondered all day on this apparition, as it were, and on the menacing words of the Comte de Saint-Germain. What! we were on the eve of social disorganisation; this reign, which was ushered in under such happy auspices, was brewing the tempest! After long meditation on this text, I determined to present M. de Saint-Germain to the Queen, if she consented to it. He was punctual to the appointment, and delighted at the resolution that I had made. I asked him if he was going to settle in Paris; he answered in the negative, his plans no longer permitting him to live in France.

'A century will pass,' he said, 'before I shall re-appear there.'

I burst out laughing, and he did the same.

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That very day I went to Versailles;  …….When I had sufficiently piqued the Queen's curiosity, I ended by repeating to her what the Count had said to me the previous day, and had confirmed that morning………………

We were in my dwelling, in quarters which at Versailles were called a suite of apartments, when one of the Queen's pages came to ask me on her Majesty's behalf for the second volume of the book that she had desired me to bring her from Paris. This was the signal agreed upon……… Madame de Misery conducted us into the private room where the Queen was awaiting us. She rose with affable dignity.

'Monsieur le Comte,' she said to him, 'Versailles is a place which is familiar to you.'

'Madame, for nearly twenty years I was on intimate terms with the late King; he deigned to listen to me with kindness; he made use of my poor abilities on several occasions, and I do not think that he regretted having given me his confidence.'

'You have wished Madame d’Adhémar to bring you to me; I have great affection for her and I do not doubt that what you have to tell me deserves listening to.'

'The Queen,' answered the Count in a solemn voice, 'will in her wisdom weigh what I am about to confide to her. The Encyclopædist party desire power; they will only obtain it by the absolute downfall of the clergy, and to ensure this result they will overthrow the monarchy. This party, who seek a chief among the members of the royal family, have turned their eyes on the Duc de Chartres; this prince will become the tool of men who will sacrifice him when he has ceased to be useful to them; the crown of France will be offered him, and he will find the scaffold instead of the throne. But before this day of retribution, what cruelties! what crimes! Laws will no longer be the protection of the good and the terror of the wicked. It is these last who will seize power with their blood-stained hands; they will abolish the Catholic religion, the nobility, the magistracy.'

'So that nothing but royalty will be left!' interrupted the Queen, impatiently.

'Not even royalty! . . . but a greedy republic, whose sceptre will be the axe of the executioner.'

At these words I could not contain myself, and taking upon me to interrupt the Count in the Queen's presence:

'Monsieur!' I cried, 'do you think of what you are saying, and before whom you are speaking?'

'In truth,' added Marie-Antoinette, a little agitated, 'these are things that my ears are not accustomed to hear.'

'And it is in the gravity of the circumstances that I find this boldness,' coolly replied M. de Saint-Germain. 'I have not come with the intention of paying a homage to the Queen of which she must be weary, but indeed to point out to her the dangers which threaten her crown, if prompt measures are not taken to avert them.'

'You are positive, Monsieur,' said Marie-Antoinette, petulantly.

'I am deeply grieved to displease your Majesty, but I can only speak the truth.'

'Monsieur,' replied the Queen, affecting a playful tone, 'the true, perhaps, may sometimes not be the probable.'

'I admit, Madame, that this is a case in point; but your Majesty will permit me in my turn to remind you that Cassandra foretold the ruin of Troy, and that they refused to believe it. I am Cassandra, France is the kingdom of Priam. Some years yet will pass by in a deceitful calm; then from all parts of the kingdom will  up men greedy for vengeance, for power, and for money; they will overthrow all in their way. The seditious populace and some great members of the State will lend them support; a spirit of delirium will take possession of the citizens; civil war will burst out with all its horrors; it will bring in its train murder, pillage, exile. Then it will be regretted that I was not  listened to; perhaps I shall be asked for again, but the time will be past . . . the storm will have swept all before it.'