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Wraxall, vol. v. pp. 356, 357. Abraham-Nicolas Amelot de la Houssaye, was born at Orleans in the year 1634, and passed nearly all his life in composing works of history and in translating the historians by whom he had been preceded.
Rather easy-going and familiar by nature, she nevertheless assumed towards strangers a certain queenly haughtiness which frequently gave offence; and Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, who was introduced at her house in 1788, found, to his surprise, that all the plate belonging to Mme. d'Albany was engraved with the royal arms of England; that guests were conducted through an ante-room in which stood a royal throne also emblazoned with the arms of England; nay, that the servants had orders to address the lady of the house by the title of a queen: a state of things whose institution by a woman who affected nobility of sentiment and who made no secret of her hatred of Charles Edward, whose toleration by a man who scorned the world and abhorred royalty, is one of those strange anomalies which teach us the enormous advance in self-respect and self-consistency due to social and democratic progress, an improvement which separates in feeling even the most mediocre and worldly men and women of to-day from the most high-minded and eccentric men and women of a century ago.
It is further apparent that Mr Wraxall had published a book, and that it treated of a holiday he had once taken in Brittany. More than this I cannot say about his work, because a diligent search in bibliographical works has convinced me that it must have appeared either anonymously or under a pseudonym. As to his character, it is not difficult to form some superficial opinion.
Count Magnus, I think, sleeps sound enough. A visit to the De la Gardie tomb-house was soon arranged for the next day, and a little general conversation ensued. Mr Wraxall, remembering that one function of Scandinavian deacons is to teach candidates for Confirmation, thought he would refresh his own memory on a Biblical point. 'Can you tell me, he said, 'anything about Chorazin?
Pray make Henry give you an account of the grand dinner we were at, and the Spanish priest who called Rousseau and Voltaire vagabones, and the gentleman who played the "Highland Laddie" on the guitar, and of Mr. Grainger, who was present at one of the exhibitions of that German spectre-monger celebrated in Wraxall.
The man who built it was a scion of the great house of De la Gardie, and his descendants possess it still. De la Gardie is the name by which I will designate them when mention of them becomes necessary. They received Mr Wraxall with great kindness and courtesy, and pressed him to stay in the house as long as his researches lasted.
The deacon seemed startled, but readily reminded him how that village had once been denounced. 'To be sure, said Mr Wraxall; 'it is, I suppose, quite a ruin now? 'So I expect, replied the deacon. 'I have heard some of our old priests say that Antichrist is to be born there; and there are tales 'Ah! what tales are those? Mr Wraxall put in.
Lascelles Wraxall, again, in Remarkable Adventures , says: 'Whatever truth there may be in Saint-Germain's travels in England and the East Indies, it is indubitable that, for from 1745 to 1755, he was a man of high position in Vienna, while in Paris he does not appear, according to Wraxall, till 1757, having been brought from Germany by the Maréchal de Belle-Isle, whose 'old boots, says Macallester the spy, Prince Charles freely damned, 'because they were always stuffed with projects. Now we hear of Saint-Germain, by that name, as resident, not in Vienna, but in London, at the very moment when Prince Charles, evading Cumberland, who lay with his army at Stone, in Staffordshire, marched to Derby.
So Ernest, overborne by her intreaties, yielded at last, and made an appointment with Sir Antony Wraxall. He took his quarter-hour in due form, and told the great physician all his symptoms as though he believed in the foolish farce.
It could not be denied that this threw a rather lurid light upon the tastes and beliefs of the Count; but to Mr Wraxall, separated from him by nearly three centuries, the thought that he might have added to his general forcefulness alchemy, and to alchemy something like magic, only made him a more picturesque figure, and when, after a rather prolonged contemplation of his picture in the hall, Mr Wraxall set out on his homeward way, his mind was full of the thought of Count Magnus.
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