I further leave with her M. Durand’s original document. Neither of these papers can be taken from her by me without a severity that would ill accord with the benevolent and equitable intentions at present entertained by his Majesty towards the said Demoiselle d’Eon de Beaumont. As to the cross of Saint Louis, which she desires to retain with the right of wearing it in female attire, I must admit that, notwithstanding the extreme kindness with which his Majesty has deigned to trust to my prudence, zeal, and intelligence in the conduct of this affair, I am afraid I should be exceeding my powers in determining so delicate a question. Considering, on the other hand, that the cross of the royal and military order of Saint Louis has ever been regarded solely as the proof of, and reward for, valour, and that several officers who were thus decorated, having abandoned the military career for the church or the law, continued to wear on their new garments this honourable evidence that they had worthily performed their duties in a calling fraught with great dangers; I do not think that there can be any objection to a like indulgence being granted to a valorous maiden who, having been brought up in male attire by her parents, and having courageously fulfilled all the perilous duties imposed by the profession of arms, may not have been aware of the impropriety of adopting the attire in which she had been compelled to live, until it became too late to change, and is therefore not in the least to blame for not having done so until now. Considering, also, that the rare example offered by this extraordinary maiden is not likely to be followed by those of her sex, and can have no consequences; that had Jeanne d’Arc, who saved the throne and the states of Charles VII., fighting in male attire, obtained during the war, as has the said Demoiselle d’Eon de Beaumont, some military reward or other decoration, such as the cross of Saint Louis, it does not appear that, her task being completed, the King would have deprived her of the honourable reward for valour when requiring her to resume the garments of her sex, nor that any chivalrous French knight would have considered the distinction as being profaned because it ornamented the breast and attire of a woman who, on the field of battle, had ever shown herself worthy of being a man.