During my stay in Paris an English print was brought to me in your name, in which you are represented as Minerva, and the inscription of which so astonished me that I still hesitate to believe that the present came from you directly. I beg you will explain the meaning of this, which I cannot regard but as a pleasantry until you assure me that it is not so. D’Eon took good care not to satisfy his correspondent’s curiosity on the point, which was about to become the talk of the town. But in order to effect the transformation with all proper brilliance, he required an auxiliary whose renown would further add to his own celebrity, and nobody could serve his purpose better than Beaumarchais, the intrepid and witty adversary of President Goëzman. That is why, as he wrote later on, “like a drowning man abandoned by the King and his ministers to the current of an infected river, he endeavoured to cling to the boat of Caron.” At the time of the negotiation relating to the libel published in London against Madame du Barry, d’Eon, foreseeing all the advantages he might reap from such intercourse, had already laboured hard to make the acquaintance of Beaumarchais, his intermediary being no less a person than Morande himself, the author of the memoir, who had undertaken to bring about a meeting. “Beaumarchais is at my disposal,” he wrote to d’Eon; “he is an adorable man, and I see truth flowing from his pen. He writes so gracefully that I feel consumed with envy. Voltaire never approached him for style. You will form your own opinion of him to-morrow.” But the following day, Beaumarchais, put on his guard, perhaps, by the suspicious patronage assumed by d’Eon, begged to be excused on the score of work, and Morande, vexed, was obliged to write to the Chevalier: “M. de Beaumarchais will not stir abroad until Thursday evening, as he has much business to attend to, which prevents him from seeing anybody.” D’Eon related afterwards that Beaumarchais and he met spontaneously, “led, no doubt, by a curiosity natural to extraordinary animals to seek each other’s society.” The explanation is ingenious but incorrect, for, after buying Morande’s libel on Madame du Barry, and studying the cause of the American rebels, Beaumarchais returned to Paris, and it was only during his second visit to London, in May, 1775, that d’Eon was at last able to make his acquaintance. The Chevalier made up for lost time, and his intriguing skill won over the susceptible Beaumarchais to his cause. The witty author, who seems to have made it his profession to cover his contemporaries with ridicule, became not only his intercessor but his dupe, for d’Eon was clever enough to amuse himself at his expense.