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In these mysterious labours of his the Comte de Broglie, later a firm friend of d'Éon, was, with Tercier, one of his main assistants. The King thus enjoyed all the pleasures and excitements of a conspirator in his own kingdom, dealing in ciphered despatches, with the usual cant names, carried in the false bottoms of snuff-boxes, precisely as if he had been a Jacobite plotter.

He did talk later of a private letter of Louis XV., of October 4, 1763, in which the King wrote that he 'had served him usefully in the guise of a female, and must now resume it, and that letter is published, but all the evidence, to which we shall return, tends to prove that this paper is an ingenious deceptive 'interpolation. If the King did write it, then he was deceiving the manager of his secret policy Tercier for, in the note, he bids d'Éon remain in England, while he was at the same time telling Tercier that he was uneasy as to what d'Éon might do in France, when he obeyed his public orders to return.

"It is delightful to have friends," said the Queen; "but in a situation like mine it is sometimes difficult for the friends of our friends to suit us." In the beginning of the year 1778 Mademoiselle d'Eon obtained permission to return to France, on condition that she should appear there in female dress.

'Little d'Éon is very active, very discreet, never curious or officious, neither distrustful nor a cause of distrust in others. De Nivernais was so pleased with him, and so anxious for his promotion, that he induced the British Ministers, contrary to all precedent, to send d'Éon, instead of a British subject, to Paris with the treaty, for ratification.

Projects of new alliances were shuffled and cut, like the actual cards which were seldom out of the hands of the players, when Casanova or Barry Lyndon held the bank, and challenged all comers. It was the age of adventurers, from the mendacious Casanova to the mysterious Saint-Germain, from the Chevalier d'Eon to Charles Edward Stuart.

The Chevalier, or rather the Chevalaere d'Eon had preserved all the King's letters. Messieurs de Maurepas and de Vergennes wished to get them out of his hands, as they were afraid he would print them.

Meanwhile d'Éon simply refused to obey the King's public orders, and denied their authenticity. They were only signed with a griffe, or stamp, not by the King's pen and hand. He would not leave London. Probably there really were designs to kidnap him, just as a regular plot was laid for the kidnapping of de la Motte, at Newcastle, after the affair of the Diamond Necklace.

The discovery in London of the true sex of this pretended woman makes it probable that the few words uttered by the Minister contained a solution of the enigma. The Chevalier d'Eon had been useful in Russia as a spy of Louis XV. while very young he had found means to introduce himself at the Court of the Empress Elizabeth, and served that sovereign in the capacity of reader.

The official order for the Chevalier's return to France was actually delivered to the King's Council; but Louis XV. delayed the departure of the courier who was to be its bearer, and sent off another courier privately, who gave the Chevalier d'Eon a letter in his own writing, in which he said, "I know that you have served me as effectually in the dress of a woman as in that which you now wear.

When de Guerchy arrived, and d'Éon was reduced to secrétariser, and, indeed, was ordered to return to France, and not to show himself at Court, he lost all self-control. The recall came from the minister, de Praslin, but d'Éon, as we know, though de Praslin knew it not, was secretly representing the King himself. The improbability of this action by the King has already been exposed.