He at once left Tonnerre and proceeded to Versailles, whence he hastened to inform the Comte de Vergennes of his return, of his tardy obedience, and the mortification it caused him. “It is about ten days since I returned,” he wrote to the minister, “and a week since I complied with your injunctions, as Mademoiselle Bertin must have assured you at Fontainebleau. I am doing my utmost to adapt myself to my sad lot in the privacy of my apartments. Now that I have laid aside my sabre and my uniform, I am as embarrassed as a fox which has lost its tail. I try to walk in pointed shoes with high heels, but I have more than once nearly broken my neck; and instead of making a courtesy I frequently remove my wig and my three-tiered headdress, mistaking them for my hat or my helmet. I am not unlike Catherine Petrovna, whom Peter the Great carried away by force from a guard-house at the siege of Derpt, and exhibited at his court before she had been taught to walk on her two hind legs.” D’Eon, to judge by his contemporaries, did not exaggerate the ridiculous aspect of his new accoutrements, and if, as he himself said, it is difficult to change in a day one’s “garments, resolutions, opinions, language, complexion, fashion, tone, and behaviour,” he at least found consolation in eccentricity and affectation for the physical discomfort he experienced. Nevertheless, he led a retired life in the Rue de Conti, at Versailles, having politely declined the invitation of the Sieur Jamin, a priest of Fontainebleau, who, “without having the honour of his acquaintance,” offered him, “in the event of his coming to court at Fontainebleau, extremely agreeable lodgings, not for gaiety but for walks in the forest,” and assured his guest “that his incognito would be respected there, and that he would be at liberty to dress as he thought fit.” The kind invitation of this “pious person” did not tempt d’Eon, who was not yet prepared to brave the curiosity of the court. He was anxious, moreover, to make that event as dramatic as possible, and set his wits to work to insure its success. A few months before his arrival in France, he had asked M. de la Chèvre to act as “his herald,” and the latter boasted of having “prepared the way with the greatest possible enthusiasm and with indefatigable zeal.” There was also a certain Sieur Dupré, formerly tutor to two English noblemen, who “had opened the eyes of a large number of people, at the Chevalier Lambert’s and the Vicomte de Choiseul’s.” “They have not yet recovered from their surprise,” he wrote to d’Eon, “and come to me for an explanation of this political phenomenon; if I were not so well informed I should frequently be at a loss for an answer.” D’Eon, who was now quite enjoying this masquerade, was everywhere, countenancing all reports, discreetly receiving some of his old acquaintances, and informing his influential friends of his return to France.