While d’Eon’s unbounded vanity found endless satisfaction in this unhoped-for welcome, the ministers who had flattered themselves that the avowal of his sex and his compulsory change of attire would be accompanied by the resumption of all needful propriety and consideration, were obliged to acknowledge that they had been strangely mistaken. Not only did d’Eon, in his new costume, attract everybody’s attention; but, unable to accustom himself to headdresses, stays and petticoats, he began, notwithstanding the King’s prohibition, to dress frequently as a man again. To prevent a fresh scandal, M. de Vergennes decided to give to the extravagant Chevalière a vigilant guardian. M. Genêt, chief clerk at the Foreign Office, a friend of d’Eon’s and also a Burgundian, seemed the very person for this difficult task. On his estate at Petit-Montreuil, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Comte de Polignac and of M. de Vergennes, he happened to have a pretty cottage, where the petulant Chevalière might be able to resign herself to the quiet existence which she was expected to lead. It was thought that she would find the society of Madame Genêt and her daughters, all attached to the service of the Queen, less austere than that of the Ursuline, Bernardine or Augustine sisters, into one of whose convents she had offered to retire in the first joy of her return. Genêt, therefore, urged her to join his family, and had the quarters of his “illustrious heroine” repaired in great haste. There being prospects of a severe winter, he tried to tempt her by the promise of “very warm rooms” in her little house. “How I dislike to see you,” he said, “boxed up as you are!” Such tender pressure did not easily overcome d’Eon’s reluctance to submit to a guardianship in which he recognised the will of the minister. Consequently he hesitated a long time, and only decided towards the middle of December to accept the hospitality of the kindly Burgundian family, in whose midst he was received with cordiality. From that day the relations between d’Eon and the Genêts and Campans naturally became more intimate, and led to a daily exchange of kind offices, which we find mentioned in d’Eon’s papers. One day M. Campan thanked him very pompously for an essay on natural history, which he considered “pleasantly conceived, but rather long”; d’Eon, it is true, was not addicted to brevity. Another time, Madame Campan asked d’Eon, in a most affected style, for a simple remedy against deafness for the princes. The Queen’s woman of the bedchamber, who had not yet the grievance against d’Eon of having been duped by him, overwhelmed him with invitations. “On April 24, 1778, the whole Genêt family,” she writes, “are coming to spend the evening at M. Campan’s. She would be overjoyed if Mademoiselle d’Eon would do them the honour of accompanying them; she would only meet her old friends at supper, and Madame Campan begs that she will come without the least ceremony.”