“Charles-Geneviève-Louise-Auguste-Andrée-Timothée d’Eon de Beaumont is hereby commanded to lay aside the uniform of a dragoon, which she is in the habit of wearing, and resume the garments of her sex, and is forbidden to appear in any part of the kingdom in other garments than those suitable to women. “Given at Versailles, August 27, 1777. “(Signed) LOUIS GRAVIER DE VERGENNES.” 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.