D'Eon de Beaumont, his life and times

D’Eon left London on August 13, 1777, and embarked for France the same night. However glad he was to return to his native land, and to revisit his home and his fertile, vine-bedecked Burgundy, his meditations cannot have been free from bitterness. Fifteen years had passed since his last journey: at that time he was the Duc de Nivernais’ “little d’Eon,” the Comte de Choiseul’s protégé, and was bringing to Versailles the ratifications of an important treaty. His wallet was not so full of state papers as his heart of dreams and expectations. Fortune smiled upon his ardent youth, bringing him brilliant rewards and giving him glimpses of a promising future. He had been well received at Versailles, honoured with the notice of Madame de Pompadour, and had returned to London wearing the Cross of Saint Louis on his breast. Shortly afterwards he was appointed minister plenipotentiary, and, thanks to a temporary vacancy, had represented his sovereign most pompously for two months at the embassy. He experienced at that time the rapture of triumph, but immediately afterwards all the rancour of a sudden disgrace. First came the harassing proceedings and the disdainful attitude of the Comte de Guerchy; then a struggle full of snares and subtilties; and finally the bold stroke of the action brought against his rival, and his exultation at the scandal caused by the condemnation of the ambassador of France. But it was a perilous victory fraught with danger, which had roused the indignation of Paris and Versailles, and occasioned his desertion by the King and, successively, by all his powerful friends. Struggles and vicissitudes had been his lot, reducing him by degrees to despair, and finally inciting him to that expedient—suggested by the tenacious idea of the public—long contemplated, and more than once rejected before being finally adopted.

He was now returning vanquished. The “little d’Eon,” once so petted by the Marquis de L’Hospital, whom the Duc de Choiseul had introduced to the Duc de Nivernais as a “very good-looking fellow,” on account of his blue eyes with their bold and intelligent look and his slender but supple and well-proportioned figure, was now a man of fifty, with an awkward gait and a harsh voice; his firm chin displayed the stubbly growth of an ill-shaven black beard. He had kept the manners and style of a dragoon as well as the uniform; that beloved grey uniform, with red cuffs and facings, which he never consented to lay aside during his residence in London, and which made him a figure familiar alike to ministers of state and to the man in the street. He was naturally as reluctant to assume feminine attire as he was to resign himself to the manner of life conformable to his new sex. Notwithstanding the strange document in which he had formally acknowledged his womanhood, he desired to remain a man at least in so far as dress was concerned, and endeavoured to induce the Comte de Broglie to relent on that point. He averred that his fondest hope was to continue his military career in the army, where, thanks to his good conduct, he had never offered a bad example to anybody; but at the same time he expressed his readiness to comply with all the King’s orders, whether his Majesty commanded him to live in the world dressed in mob-cap and petticoats, or even to “retire into a convent and cover his dragoon’s head with the sacred veil.”

How much sincerity was there in these bombastic declarations? Did he realise, in a last lucid interval, that the loss of his dragoon’s uniform involved the ruin of all the noble aspirations of his youth, wantonly sacrificed to an inordinate, and henceforward vain, ambition? Does this unwavering attachment to the symbol of discipline and a regular career betoken a last regret for the secure and honourable existence that would have been his had he but bridled his desires? Perhaps; but possibly it was merely another pretence, an indirect means of prolonging an ambiguous situation and of imposing on the world at large. The decision of the English courts and the command of the King of France had made a woman of him; but the reluctance he showed to assuming the garments of his new sex tended to confirm the opinion of those who still considered him a man. By declaring so openly that he was being compelled to wear female apparel d’Eon evidently intended to convey the impression that the sex was as distasteful to him as the garb, and that the King’s will, to which he must perforce submit, could in no degree modify nature. He thus averted the difficulties of the moment, while preparing the way for a reappearance in male attire at some future date. Voltaire alone, among his contemporaries, appears to have seen through the pretence, to which he does justice by a somewhat unkind comparison: “I cannot believe,” he writes from Ferney to the Comte d’Argental, “that the Chevalier or the Chevalière d’Eon, whose chin is adorned with a very thick and very prickly black beard, is a woman. I am inclined to think that he has carried the eccentricity of his adventures to the point of aspiring to change his sex in order to escape the vengeance of the House of Guerchy, just as Pourceaungnac disguised himself as a woman to escape from justice and the apothecaries.”

Moreover, while protesting loudly against the King’s command, by which his helmet was converted into a mob-cap, d’Eon strove to turn his new condition to account, and to attain fresh and still greater notoriety by his metamorphosis. He relates himself how, passing through Saint Denis, on his way to Versailles, he made Dom Boudier lead him to the mother-superior of the Carmelite convent, no less a person than Madame Louise de France. Before drawing the curtains of the parlour the daughter of Louis XV. asked, it is said, how Mademoiselle d’Eon was dressed, and on being told that she was still in riding-boots and uniform, having only just arrived from London, “Madame Louise exhorted her invisible interlocutor to assume the attire and to lead the life of a Christian woman.” However, notwithstanding the wise counsel of the venerable princess, and in spite of the formal condition imposed by Vergennes in his letter of July 12, it was only at Versailles, where he arrived equipped as a dragoon, that d’Eon finally yielded, and complied with an order which was renewed in the following terms:—

When the Chevalier, at his wits’ end, again objected to the Minister for Foreign Affairs that his modest means did not enable him to procure a suitable outfit, Marie Antoinette, affected by the misfortunes of so intrepid a woman, gave orders (if we are to believe d’Eon and his biographers) for the outfit to be made up at her own expense. It is certain, at all events, that Mademoiselle Bertin, the celebrated milliner and dressmaker to the Queen, was the first to have the singular honour of enveloping the fiery captain of dragoons in the austere and decorous petticoats of an elderly spinster of quality. For the rest of his wardrobe d’Eon had recourse to Mademoiselle Maillot, a humbler milliner, and to Madame Barmant, “manufacturer of flexible and elastic corsets.” The Sieur Brunet, wigmaker, Rue de la Paroisse, received an order for a “headdress composed of three tiers.”

While so many nimble fingers were arranging ribbons and laces or stiffening with whalebone the stays destined to cause d’Eon so much discomfort, the Chevalier took advantage of the few days during which he was still at liberty to wear his uniform, and hastened to take the coach which was to bear him to his old mother.

He reached the little Burgundian town on September 2. If it is true that towns have, as it were, faces in which we are pleased to recognise the characteristics of their most famous men, Tonnerre seems wonderfully to symbolise d’Eon’s disposition and to illuminate his memory. Rocky and mountainous, it has at first sight a bold and animated air. In a brisk, determined manner the streets scale, as though to storm, the rock whence the church of Saint Pierre commands the town, surrounded by the double zone of the river and a range of pleasantly wooded hills. One might fancy that the little town, shut up in its natural prison, had put on that bluff and rebellious look, that somewhat disorderly and straggling appearance, as a protest against its pleasing but restricted site.

The evening that d’Eon arrived, crossing the bridge over the rushing Armençon, Tonnerre was illuminated, all the inhabitants rejoicing, as though for the return of a prodigal son, or rather of a prodigal daughter. “More than twelve hundred persons,” writes d’Eon (probably not without exaggeration), “came to meet me, with cannon, guns, and pistols. My mother, although informed so long ago of my positive return to France, could not believe it, and fainted away in my arms, while my nurse burst into tears. The next day the whole town came in a body to my house before I was out of bed. There I was, encamped in a room without any curtains, mirrors, hangings, or chairs. Such a reminder of my former campaigns pleases me more than a palace.” The jovial humour displayed by the Chevalier does not appear to have made him forget the distressful tone it is wise to adopt towards a correspondent from whom a favour is expected, and he goes on in his exaggerated way, writing to Vergennes: “I found my patrimonial estate, consisting chiefly of vineyards, in a sadly dilapidated state. One would think that a company of hussars had taken possession of it as well as my house, and the river Armençon has flooded my gardens. But if anything can make my life worth living,” he says in conclusion, “it is my enjoyment of the pure friendships which my countrymen, both of the town and of the neighbouring villages, from the greatest to the humblest, have so kindly shown; they have of their own accord paid me the honours which would be due only to you and to Mgr. the Comte de Maurepas if you were to pass through Tonnerre on your way to your country house, and he to his estate of Saint Florentin.”

In spite of the great pleasure he undoubtedly felt at being in the midst of his family and of his countrymen, wonder-struck at his adventures and escapades, d’Eon was not the man to content himself long with provincial celebrity. Experience had probably taught him that nobody is a prophet in his own country, and that the comedy which he was about to act required a larger and more magnificent stage, as well as a more intelligent audience. The Minister for Foreign Affairs was growing impatient at his delay in executing the King’s orders, and Mademoiselle Bertin averred that his presence was necessary for the last trying-on of his costume.

He at once left Tonnerre and proceeded to Versailles, whence he hastened to inform the Comte de Vergennes of his return, of his tardy obedience, and the mortification it caused him. “It is about ten days since I returned,” he wrote to the minister, “and a week since I complied with your injunctions, as Mademoiselle Bertin must have assured you at Fontainebleau. I am doing my utmost to adapt myself to my sad lot in the privacy of my apartments. Now that I have laid aside my sabre and my uniform, I am as embarrassed as a fox which has lost its tail. I try to walk in pointed shoes with high heels, but I have more than once nearly broken my neck; and instead of making a courtesy I frequently remove my wig and my three-tiered headdress, mistaking them for my hat or my helmet. I am not unlike Catherine Petrovna, whom Peter the Great carried away by force from a guard-house at the siege of Derpt, and exhibited at his court before she had been taught to walk on her two hind legs.”

D’Eon, to judge by his contemporaries, did not exaggerate the ridiculous aspect of his new accoutrements, and if, as he himself said, it is difficult to change in a day one’s “garments, resolutions, opinions, language, complexion, fashion, tone, and behaviour,” he at least found consolation in eccentricity and affectation for the physical discomfort he experienced. Nevertheless, he led a retired life in the Rue de Conti, at Versailles, having politely declined the invitation of the Sieur Jamin, a priest of Fontainebleau, who, “without having the honour of his acquaintance,” offered him, “in the event of his coming to court at Fontainebleau, extremely agreeable lodgings, not for gaiety but for walks in the forest,” and assured his guest “that his incognito would be respected there, and that he would be at liberty to dress as he thought fit.” The kind invitation of this “pious person” did not tempt d’Eon, who was not yet prepared to brave the curiosity of the court. He was anxious, moreover, to make that event as dramatic as possible, and set his wits to work to insure its success. A few months before his arrival in France, he had asked M. de la Chèvre to act as “his herald,” and the latter boasted of having “prepared the way with the greatest possible enthusiasm and with indefatigable zeal.” There was also a certain Sieur Dupré, formerly tutor to two English noblemen, who “had opened the eyes of a large number of people, at the Chevalier Lambert’s and the Vicomte de Choiseul’s.” “They have not yet recovered from their surprise,” he wrote to d’Eon, “and come to me for an explanation of this political phenomenon; if I were not so well informed I should frequently be at a loss for an answer.” D’Eon, who was now quite enjoying this masquerade, was everywhere, countenancing all reports, discreetly receiving some of his old acquaintances, and informing his influential friends of his return to France.

The Dowager Countess d’Ons-en-Bray, wife of President Legendre, who had known d’Eon from his early childhood, and was naturally one of the first to be informed of his return, could not help smiling when she pictured the man whom she had known as a law student, an expert fencer and a gallant secretary of the embassy in the petticoats of the Chevalière. She consequently received the new adventure, of which the hero gave her an amusing account, with the utmost incredulity.

As incredulous as Madame d’Ons-en-Bray with regard to the change of sex, Madame Tercier, widow of Louis XV.’s former secret minister who had so long corresponded with d’Eon, was surprised not to have seen the Chevalier again since his return, and reproached him sharply for not having yet called on the Comte de Broglie, while apparently guessing the cause of his hesitation.

Madame Tercier’s friendly reproaches and affectionate messages had not the desired effect, d’Eon remaining in his lair, as he said, “like a fox without a tail.” Nor did Madame d’Ons-en-Bray’s barley-sugar succeed in curing the cold which kept him so opportunely confined to his room. Embarrassed in his petticoats, he remained invisible. Meanwhile, the report of his arrival, his adventures, and his strange transformation rapidly spread beyond the somewhat restricted circle of his intimate friends and soon reached the ears of the Queen, who was immediately seized with a desire to see this modern Amazon. “She sent a footman,” relates Madame Campan, “to tell my father to bring the Chevalier to her apartments. My father thought it his duty first to inform the minister of her Majesty’s desire. The Comte de Vergennes expressed his approval of this prudent course and bade him accompany him. The minister conferred with the Queen for a few minutes, after which her Majesty left her apartment with him, and, seeing my father in the adjoining room, was good enough to express her regret for having disturbed him to no purpose. She added, with a smile, that a few words which the Comte de Vergennes had just said to her had cured her completely of her curiosity.” If, in spite of the King’s official recognition of his new sex, d’Eon was not received in private audience by the Queen, he did not hesitate to show his new garments at Versailles, and chanced on several occasions to be in the galleries of the palace when their Majesties passed through. On October 21, 1777, the Feast of St. Ursula, as he takes care devoutly to record, the Chevalier d’Eon, late captain of dragoons and minister plenipotentiary from France to London, “resumed his first robe of innocence to make his appearance at Versailles, in conformity with the injunctions of the King and his ministers.” The entry of this “political phenomenon,” or of this “amphibian,” as Voltaire most contemptuously called him, created a sensation at court. Everybody wished to see the extraordinary woman, who was plainly dressed and adorned merely with a Cross of Saint Louis, won on the battlefield as well as in embassies.

Some, formerly enemies of Choiseul, delighted in contributing to the success of the Comte de Guerchy’s fiery adversary; but the majority, impelled by curiosity, chiefly showed perplexity at the sight of this pathological wonder, who, with all the appearance and the manners of a man, professed to be a woman. Several contemporaries have described d’Eon as they saw him on that occasion, and it must be admitted that their portraits are far from flattering. “She looks more than ever like a man now that she is a woman,” asserted a newspaper of the time, with reference to the Chevalier. “Indeed, it is impossible to believe that a person who shaves and has a beard; whose proportions and muscular development are herculean; who jumps in and out of a carriage without assistance and goes upstairs four steps at a time, belongs to the female sex.... She dresses in black. Her hair is cut in a circle, like a priest’s, and is plastered with pomade, powdered, and surmounted by a black cap, such as pious ladies wear. She still wears flat, round heels, being unaccustomed to the high, narrow ones worn by women.” D’Eon, in whom the elegant and fashionable paper recognises none of the charms of the fair sex, had not wished to carry his masquerade too far; but if he abstained from using rouge, which was still in vogue, he does not appear to have been entirely free from feminine coquetry, sometimes wearing “black dresses en raz de Saint Maur,” more often “sky-blue skirts with narrow, puce-coloured stripes,” or even, “reddish-brown figured twill skirts,” as we gather from the accounts of Mademoiselle Maillot, his dressmaker. But in spite of his efforts to attain elegancy, d’Eon remained supremely ridiculous. “The long train of his gown and his triple row of ruffles” contrasted so unhappily with “his deportment and behaviour, which were those of a grenadier, that he had an air of unmistakable vulgarity.” Such are the unkind terms in which Madame Campan expresses herself in her Mémoires, which she wrote after d’Eon’s death, at a time when, enlightened as to the Chevalier’s real sex, she could not entirely conceal her vexation at having been hoaxed by one whom she and her family had befriended.

The opinion of d’Eon’s contemporaries on his appearance, his attire and his manner is, moreover, as unanimous as it is unflattering. “However plain, however prudish her large black head-dress may be,” says Grimm in his Correspondance Littéraire, under date of October 25, 1777, “it is difficult to conceive anything more extraordinary, and, if it must be said, more indecent, than Mademoiselle d’Eon in petticoats.” The Abbé Georgel, secretary to the famous Cardinal de Rohan, who was introduced to the Chevalière, sketches her portrait in his Mémoires with a few touches of the pen. “Her garments, to which she could not accustom herself,” he writes, “gave her so awkward and embarrassed an appearance, that she only made one forget that defect by her flashes of wit and her very humorous account of her adventures.”

The transformation naturally created great astonishment; but, apart from a few inhabitants of Tonnerre, who had excellent reasons for not changing their first opinion, did not meet with obstinate incredulity. The sex henceforth official of the Chevalière d’Eon was accepted and respected. The person most interested lent himself, moreover, to corroborating it, and the very embarrassment which he affected, as well as his reluctance to adapt himself to his new life, were but masterly artifices for further concealing his subterfuge. Besides ensuring his safety in France and the payment of a pension which was now his only resource, his masquerade obtained for him a revival of that popularity of which he had always been passionately fond. From the day of his presentation at court his popularity steadily increased, growing to that extraordinary celebrity which, at the present day, still preserves his name from oblivion. He became at this time the subject of every conversation, exciting universal curiosity. The most inflated letters of congratulation and the most extravagant tokens of admiration reached him from strangers, wonder-struck by his amazing adventure, while his old friends assailed him with extremely humorous notes. One of them, the Duc de Chaulnes, who had known him in London in the heat of his contentions with Guerchy, wrote to him, with reference to the latest events:

D’Eon’s friends did not, indeed, know “where they were,” nor what style to assume. In a gracious letter of invitation to supper, the Marquise Le Camus, deeming his “society unquestionably desirable,” began as follows:—

Those who had known d’Eon from his early childhood, and had never lost sight of him during his adventurous career, were still more embarrassed. Such was the case of Madame Campan’s father, M. Genêt, chief clerk at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, who confessed with kindly irony that the French language was wanting in epithets adapted to the condition of his strange correspondent. “In order to avoid styling cardinals Monseigneur as they demand,” he says, “dukes write to them in Italian; and I, unique being, whose model I find only among the gods of the ancients, will make use of the English tongue, the appellatives of which have no precise gender, and which scarcely acknowledges any female besides a cat and a ship, to address you in a manner worthy of you and the sublime mysteries of which you are the emblem. I will therefore call you: My Dear Friend, meaning thereby: mon cher ou ma chère amie, ad libitum.”

Those who had met “little d’Eon” at the Prince de Conti’s, in the fine reception rooms of the Temple, when he was seeking his fortune and his fate, reminded the illustrious Chevalière of their acquaintance in begging to be received. He himself, still imperturbable, continued to play his part of fashionable phenomenon, and felt a supercilious satisfaction in duping his contemporaries, or, at least, in exciting their astonishment. Some he beguiled by his account of the dramatic events in which he had been implicated; others he captivated by racy stories told with inexhaustible animation. His odd manners never became tiresome, and he was ever in request, his friends finding it difficult to tear themselves away.

The interest and curiosity which d’Eon had aroused had not won for him merely success at court. The report of his adventure had carried his name far beyond the frontiers. In England, where he had particularly attracted attention, the public were curious to know every detail. Miss Wilkes, who, in an interesting note which has already been reproduced, had asked d’Eon from the first to let her know the truth, inquired of the Baron de Castille what sort of reception the celebrated Chevalière had met with at Versailles, and the baron in sending “extremely tender messages” to d’Eon, from the Lord Mayor’s daughter, added: “I have replied to Miss Wilkes, my dear heroine; I interpreted your sentiments and, as a witness of your success at court, I told her many things about you.”

The echoes of the affair coming from London and Paris had aroused the sceptical curiosity “of the old valetudinarian of Ferney,” who anxiously questioned his faithful friend, the Comte d’Argental, concerning the true condition of a guest who had very indiscreetly announced his intention of paying a visit to the famous patriarch of French literature.

D’Eon’s old comrades in the dragoons had not shown any particular incredulity, though he had led their life in the army, and they heartily welcomed the new heroine. The Baron de Bréget, at one time captain in d’Autichamp’s regiment, who had campaigned with him on the Rhine, asked him, a few months after the change, if he might “flatter himself that he still lived in the remembrance of his former brother-in-arms.”

In a letter written at the same time, the Comte de Chambry, another captain in the same regiment, bitterly reproached d’Eon for not having informed him of his return.

The Marquis d’Autichamp, colonel and owner of the regiment in which d’Eon had served, had been one of the first to be apprised by the latter of his metamorphosis.

Whereupon the gallant colonel at once answered:

The same feeling of kindly credulity, the same affectionate expressions are found in the letters of all d’Eon’s old brother officers, and bear witness to the pleasant impression he had made on them. The case, though extraordinary, had seemed to them credible; moreover, it was not without a precedent, as the Baron de Castille hastened to inform the Chevalière in the following letter:

It seems, too, that the adventure of the famous Chevalière had turned the heads of several ladies. Among his papers d’Eon left a whole bundle of letters written to him by “young women of exceptional height,” desirous “of changing their sex as far as appearance was concerned,” in order to be able to enlist and serve in the army. The bundle also included the epistles addressed to him by a few madmen, disturbed, as often happens, by the revelation of a curious personality.

This odd collection, together with notes from his friends, his old comrades, and even strangers who wrote to him directly after his return, leaves no doubt whatever as to the astonishment which the affair excited, and the amazing credulity with which it was generally accepted.

While d’Eon’s unbounded vanity found endless satisfaction in this unhoped-for welcome, the ministers who had flattered themselves that the avowal of his sex and his compulsory change of attire would be accompanied by the resumption of all needful propriety and consideration, were obliged to acknowledge that they had been strangely mistaken. Not only did d’Eon, in his new costume, attract everybody’s attention; but, unable to accustom himself to headdresses, stays and petticoats, he began, notwithstanding the King’s prohibition, to dress frequently as a man again. To prevent a fresh scandal, M. de Vergennes decided to give to the extravagant Chevalière a vigilant guardian. M. Genêt, chief clerk at the Foreign Office, a friend of d’Eon’s and also a Burgundian, seemed the very person for this difficult task. On his estate at Petit-Montreuil, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Comte de Polignac and of M. de Vergennes, he happened to have a pretty cottage, where the petulant Chevalière might be able to resign herself to the quiet existence which she was expected to lead. It was thought that she would find the society of Madame Genêt and her daughters, all attached to the service of the Queen, less austere than that of the Ursuline, Bernardine or Augustine sisters, into one of whose convents she had offered to retire in the first joy of her return. Genêt, therefore, urged her to join his family, and had the quarters of his “illustrious heroine” repaired in great haste. There being prospects of a severe winter, he tried to tempt her by the promise of “very warm rooms” in her little house. “How I dislike to see you,” he said, “boxed up as you are!” Such tender pressure did not easily overcome d’Eon’s reluctance to submit to a guardianship in which he recognised the will of the minister. Consequently he hesitated a long time, and only decided towards the middle of December to accept the hospitality of the kindly Burgundian family, in whose midst he was received with cordiality.

From that day the relations between d’Eon and the Genêts and Campans naturally became more intimate, and led to a daily exchange of kind offices, which we find mentioned in d’Eon’s papers. One day M. Campan thanked him very pompously for an essay on natural history, which he considered “pleasantly conceived, but rather long”; d’Eon, it is true, was not addicted to brevity. Another time, Madame Campan asked d’Eon, in a most affected style, for a simple remedy against deafness for the princes. The Queen’s woman of the bedchamber, who had not yet the grievance against d’Eon of having been duped by him, overwhelmed him with invitations. “On April 24, 1778, the whole Genêt family,” she writes, “are coming to spend the evening at M. Campan’s. She would be overjoyed if Mademoiselle d’Eon would do them the honour of accompanying them; she would only meet her old friends at supper, and Madame Campan begs that she will come without the least ceremony.”

D’Eon was present at all the parties arranged by the Queen’s women of the bedchamber. If, perchance, he refused to accompany them, Sophie Genêt would despatch a note to him, in her schoolgirlish hand, to entreat him to reconsider his decision; at the same time she dreaded being importunate, “for that would mean sadness to her hosts.” When they went on a visit to their Uncle Genêt de Charmontaut at his charming seat at Mainville, near Melun, word was at once sent to d’Eon, who allowed himself to be persuaded by such pressing invitations. So entirely did he captivate the modest lord of the manor, that the latter could not find words flattering enough to thank him for coming, nor terms humble enough to excuse his frugal hospitality.

D’Eon always showed gratitude to the family which had received him so cordially. Very faithful in his friendships, he was equally generous, notwithstanding his small means. He was constantly sending to them various Burgundian produce from Tonnerre; truffles, at that time highly prized and not much known; venison, and especially wine from his own vineyards, which M. Amelot, the Comte de Vergennes, and the Duc de Chaulnes, as they themselves admitted, liked particularly.

But d’Eon was able to prove his attachment better than by these small attentions; for with the prudence and authority of a dowager, who takes pleasure in the part she is acting, he succeeded in bringing about the happiness of one of his young friends, Adelaide Genêt, if we may rely on a letter which she wrote to him the day after her marriage with M. Auguié. According to M. Genêt, it was “a successful piece of work, which was crowned beyond all expectation” by the Queen herself.

D’Eon must have found his patriarchal life very monotonous, and after a few weeks “the charm of Petit-Montreuil covered with snow” vanished. He could think of nothing but fame, success and publicity, and avoided with difficulty the attention of these unimportant people who wished to meet this strange prodigy. His fame was then universal, and everywhere people were courting a heroine who was as modest as she was brave, and whom her contemporaries could only compare to Joan of Arc or Jeanne Hachette.

D’Eon had so ardently wished for and so cleverly planned this apotheosis that, of course, he meant to play a part in it. So he never missed an opportunity of escaping from his retreat; and, as Genêt said of him, “he was as fond of Paris as any dandy.” Among his old acquaintances, the Comtesse de Boufflers, the witty mistress of the Prince de Conti, “the idol of the Temple,” as Madame du Deffand called her, had been one of the first to express a wish to meet again the former minister plenipotentiary by whose side she had done the honours of the embassy in London:

In truth the audacious adventurer had become the favourite guest, the “lion” for whose presence at their receptions hostesses contended. On the little invitation-cards, which d’Eon religiously kept, appear the names of the cleverest women and the most distinguished people. The most inaccessible drawing-rooms opened their doors to this phenomenon, and not one of the least curious signs of the levity of the eighteenth century may be found in this childish credulity of a society which openly paraded its scepticism. The decadent and exhausted intellects of that period, divorced from all serious ideas and indifferent to both the advancement of science and to the beauty of art, concerned themselves with nothing but the bizarre. At a time when they were unable to read the signs of the tremendous social upheaval which was germinating around them, idlers at the court and unattached officers made bon-mots and told highly spiced stories for the amusement of the ladies who held what was known as a bureau d’esprit.

D’Eon excelled in this kind of thing; his imagination, his inexhaustible spirits, his unexpected sallies made his audience forget the occasional coarseness of his oft-told tales. He attracted, in short, by a carefully guarded and mysterious eccentricity. He was even liked for the admirably feigned modesty which made him appear only at small social gatherings; for he prided himself on avoiding inquisitive people, and on being so indifferent to the attention he attracted that his friends found it necessary to press him to keep his engagements.

“The Duc de Luynes is longing to see you, and so is his father-in-law, M. de Laval,” wrote his friend Reine. “He told me he had asked you to dine with him; since you are in Paris, do go to see the Duchess, and be so good as to present our respects to her.”

If it seems strange that he should have received invitations, couched in most courteous terms, from the Comte de la Rochefoucauld, M. de Villaine, the Marquis de Chaponay, the Vicomtesse de Breteuil; that he should have become the assiduous guest of the Duchesse de Montmorency and the Vicomte de la Ferté, is it not stranger still that this extraordinary person had the entry of the drawing-rooms of the upper middle classes and of the legal notabilities, who formed at that time a very cultured and exclusive society? He excited the same curiosity among these people; and Talon, Fraguier, Tascher, Tanlay, Nicolaï, d’Agnesseau were all anxious to entertain him and sent their coaches to fetch him.

One day the Comte de Polignac “begs him to come to his garret in the Tuileries and share an informal meal in military fashion. The Chevalière,” he adds, “will find there some good coffee preceded by cutlets, also a man of her acquaintance whom she will be glad to see. Everything will be served to the minute and without any fuss.” Another time the Baron de Castille tells him of the famous Cardinal de Rohan’s desire to know the Chevalière.

“I have given your address to Prince Louis,” he informs him; “he will either call on you while you are at Versailles, or request you to call on him; the short time he had at his disposal in Paris did not allow of his going to see you.” On Wednesday, March 11, 1778, as he carefully enters in a diary most scrupulously kept from day to day, d’Eon lunched with Voltaire. The day which he began with such a curious interview was strangely crowded with engagements, for he dined with the Comtesse de Béarn, and then proceeded to Madame de Marchais for supper. At this time he had already left Petit-Montreuil and settled down in the Rue de Conti, where he found it easier to lead the life which he neither could nor wished to avoid. His reception at court was as flattering as his reception in town. He attended the gala performances, which he watched from the box of Madame de Marchais, whose husband had been formerly gentleman of the bedchamber to Louis XV. Judging by the portrait he has left, d’Eon particularly admired her:

“She is an amiable little woman,” he says, “very witty, extremely pretty, and well made, with fair hair that reaches down to her heels, large blue eyes, and teeth as white as ivory. She was,” he goes on to say, “the friend of the late Marquise de Pompadour. She is a candlelight beauty who spends her days in the bath, in reading or writing, in her boudoir or at her toilet. She is only to be seen at night, or after the play at Court is over, when company meets at her house to partake of a delicious supper.”

D’Eon seems, in fact, as his little diary shows, to have admired the charming hostess no less than he appreciated her suppers. He spent most of his evenings at her house, and when, occasionally, he did not make his appearance, the little coterie which he enlivened by his gaiety was quite anxious about his health. If news reached them that he was ill, all the ladies hastened to his house. “Princess Sapieha, inquiring after him, sends to him the calabash syrup which she has recommended to him, and she sincerely hopes it will help to cure him.” On another occasion the Marquis de Comeiras, major-general of the King’s armies, acted as spokesman for d’Eon’s intimate friends, and expressed their anxiety in the following terms:—