M. de Beaumarchais has sought to deprive me of that consideration so conducive to my peaceful existence. I put him to confusion by ridiculing his impotent rage. He is a Thersites who should be whipped for having dared to be insolent to his betters, whom he ought to respect. I denounce and abandon him to the whole feminine sex of my time, as one who would fain have exalted himself at the expense of a woman, and avenged his frustrated hopes by humiliating a woman, who, of all others, has at heart the glory of her sex. This appeal to the feelings and pride of her feminine contemporaries met with a ready response, and d’Eon, who had not failed to scatter broadcast the newspapers which published this strange polemic, received the heartiest congratulations from far and near. “The elevation of her sentiments” were contrasted with “the horror with which her antagonist fills all thinking and sentient persons.” “Unaware of the motives which prompt the Minister for Foreign Affairs to employ such an agent,” wrote a contemporary of d’Eon, “I think it desirable that he should at least prevent his encouraging imitators. Mankind were too much to be pitied if Beaumarchais should form others after his own pattern.” At Caen, “where all the honest folk of the province wished to see him,” his malicious appeal met with great success. “I received it at the house of the Comtesse de la Tournelle,” wrote a certain Count d’Ormesson, “where all the nobility of the neighbourhood were assembled, as there have been balls and theatrical performances for four successive days. I cannot describe the effect it produced. Everybody was delighted with your style and the simple and straightforward way in which you tell your adversary his faults.”