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.”