[The secret of long life. The Eighteenth century Comte de St. Germain came from nowhere, but was a favorite of kings. The mystery grew as it was rumoured that he was impossibly old. He was an adventurer with an assumed name and a supposed noble-but-tragic-and-dangerous past, not unlike Cagliostro. Unlike Caglisotro, he was never exposed, never revealed to be a charlatan. On the contrary, his knowledge and talents gained him respect. He is one (Nicolas Flamel (13thC.) and Fulcanelli (20th C.) are among others) who was thought to have found the secret of eternal life or the Philosopher’s Stone sought by the alchemists.]
“One can, I think, well assert that a portion of his miracles is due to his knowledge of physics and chemistry, in which sciences he is well grounded. At all events it is palpable that his knowledge has laid the seeds for him of sound good health; a life which will, or which has, overstepped the ordinary time allotted to men; and has also endowed him with the means of preventing the ravages of time from affecting the body. Among other statements concerning the Count’s astounding qualities, made to the Favorite by Mme. de Gergy after her first meeting with the Count, after a lapse of years, was that during her first stay in Venice, she received from him an elixir which for fully a quarter of a century, preserved unaltered the youthful charms she possessed at 25. Elderly Gentlemen whom Madame de Pompadour questioned concerning this peculiar incident, gave the assurance that the standing still of time in the aging and preservation of the youthful appearance of Mme. de Gergy, supported by the testimony of these old men, would make it appear still more probable.”The Comte de St. Germain: The Secret of Kings By Isabel Cooper-Oakley. Milano, 1912. Reprinted by forgottenbooks.org. P17. Pasted from <http://books.google.ca/books?id=Jb1LN0s1yZ8C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false> or http://www.forgottenbooks.org/info/9781606201022
[From Goethe’s Witches’ Kitchen scene we have Mephistophele’s recipe for naturally living for a long time:
Take yourself off to the nearest field,
To scratch around, and hoe, and dig in,Maintain yourself, and constrain
Your senses in a narrow sphere:Feed yourself on the purest fare,
Be a beast among beasts: think it no robbery,To manure the fields you harvest, there:
Since that’s the best of ways, believe me,To keep your youth for eighty years!
http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/FaustIScenesIVtoVI.htm#Scene_VI
Faust isn’t impressed.]