Hearing this, Bonaventura observed that St Germain might possess a great many secrets, but he too had one that was unknown to anyone else, one that was passed down through his family with the title, and that, if they put their information together, they might perhaps be able to solve the central mystery. It would involve travelling to Britain, as the secret was closely bound up with a specific location.
After some thought, St Germain expressed his willingness to visit a country where he had many dear friends. I too was happy to accept His Lordship’s invitation, as I had no particular business to detain me in France.
(Here Lenglet du Fresnoy relates at some length how he broke off with Thérèse, whose charms had in any case begun to pall. Breaking with her was not easy. I have, I am sorry to say, a strong suspicion that he owed this worthy woman a significant sum of money, and he simply fled Paris, leaving his belongings behind, to join Bonaventura at Arras. The reason he gave for this clandestine departure was that he had not wished to cause her undue distress.)
My heart was beating wildly when, for the first time in my life, I put out to sea. At my first glimpse of the crested waves I knew how Moses felt when he put his faith in God and waited for the waters to open rather than surrender himself to their mercy. I grew more and more violently seasick and spent the entire voyage in penitence and contrition, wracked by dark forebodings as to the outcome of our adventure.
But at last the white shores of Albion rose out of the sea. At the sight of their beauty I began to trust again in Divine Providence.
We spent just a single day in London. St Germain took the occasion to visit the Grand Master of Freemasons in England, and I accompanied His Lordship round the coffee houses and taverns.
Towards evening we were strolling around the Vauxhall pleasure garden, and generally observing the ladies, when we were accosted by a man of striking and unusual appearance, dressed in the splendidly exuberant colours favoured by Italian grandees on their travels. Every finger was encrusted with rings, gold chains swung from every conceivable part of his person, and during the time we were together he produced no fewer than four watches and three snuff boxes. Though his face was not generally handsome, the eyes and play of features were more lively and expressive than those of any man I ever met.
He greeted His Lordship as an old acquaintance. The conversation quickly turned to the Comte St Germain, whereupon the Italian warned my companion to be wary of that gentleman. Bonaventura changed the subject with a well-timed joke, and began to question him about his various conquests.
‘I am no longer the man Your Lordship knew in Paris,’ he confided. ‘I feel as if I am starting to die. A man doesn’t die all at once. It’s a gradual process. The senses grow old and fail. And when I look back on my past life, I no longer know whether I was the greatest fool, or the wisest man alive.’
At this, Bonaventura jested that anyone as famously omniscient as he should surely know St Germain’s prescription for restoring youth. The Italian turned a bright red, observed that His Lordship was no doubt alluding to the story that St Germain had promised eternal youth to Mme d’Urfé, and then cried out:
‘Stay where you belong, in the clutches of that man. Those who make sport of others deserve to be made sport of themselves.’
And, without any sort of farewell, he left us.
In answer to my question as to the name of this strange gentleman, His Lordship told me he did not know whether he was more renowned for his impostures or his countless love affairs. He called himself the Chevalier de Seingalt, but his real name was Giacomo Casanova.
The next morning the three of us set off for the province of Wales, where His Lordship’s estates were situated, and on arrival were entertained in princely style in his castle, known as Pendragon. The following day was spent receiving the ladies and gentlemen of the neighbourhood, and it was not until late that night, when we were left finally to ourselves and sitting by the fire, that we again broached the topic of the occult.
In a voice quavering with excitement, His Lordship told us of an ancient castle that stood close by. Its name meant Dragon’s Head, and beneath its ruins was buried his ancestor Asaph Pendragon who in his day was none other than Rosacrux, the founder of the Brotherhood of Rosicrucians.
‘If this is so,’ St Germain exclaimed, ‘then his body will be lying uncorrupted in his tomb!’
‘The truth exceeds even that,’ whispered His Lordship, leaning closer towards us. ‘Rosacrux is alive, just as, even now, the wizard Merlin and the Welsh hero Bloody-Handed Owen still live. He lies there, in his tomb, waiting for the moment to rise again.’
Family tradition, handed down from father to son, confidently claims that Rosacrux, feeling the hand of old age upon him, summoned his closest friend Robert Fludd, the physician and fellow member of the Brotherhood. It was to Fludd that he entrusted the great secret he had brought back from the Orient, the secret of preserving the life of the body. The body thus rendered immortal lies unmoving in the grave, but lives, contemplating the mysteries of Heaven and Earth.
Rosacrux then lay down in the tomb he had prepared for himself in the image of the universe, and Fludd, having carried out the relevant magical procedures, closed it and left. Then, like a man who has fulfilled his calling, he died in the same year.
St Germain and I listened to his tale in a paroxysm of horror and fear. We asked — in some alarm as to how he might reply — what he desired of us, and what he proposed doing. He answered that Rosacrux was still there, alive in his tomb: he knew more than any living person; he had known more when he was mortal, and had since spent a hundred and twenty years in mystical contemplation of the secrets of Heaven and Earth. If it were possible to rouse him and seek his advice, we could surely come closer to the Magnum Mysterium than anyone ever had. If St Germain, with his power of restoring lost youth, could employ the full force of his knowledge, we might manage to persuade the living dead to break silence.
For what seemed ages, St Germain made no reply. Then, rising from his chair, he announced that he would have first to think it over, and consult his family oracle; and up he went to bed. I remained alone with Lord Bonaventura who, from that moment onwards, filled me with mounting terror. His extraordinary girth, which until then had seemed to me merely an amusing consequence of his unbounded Epicureanism, now lent him, in the glowing light of the fire, a perfectly diabolical aspect, as though he were Mammon himself, clothed in human form and calmly preparing to exhume his ancestors from their graves.
He asked me whether I had been fully ordained before I renounced the cloth, and was delighted when I told him I had. He remarked that, if nothing else served, the black arts would be resorted to, but they would require an ordained priest and a consecrated wafer. If St Germain’s nostrums failed, he said, it would fall to me to celebrate the Satanic Mass over the tomb, on the body of a naked woman, pronouncing the sacred words of the service in reverse order.