Notwithstanding the martial spirit with which men and soldiers credit me, I cannot but feel from the bottom of my heart that I am a coward, when I behold the greatness and extent of the sacrifice you offer up to God. Until now I have only sacrificed my body in serving my King and my country, that is in serving my own ends; the horse I mounted in the combats and battles in which I have fought has done as much as I, while you, Mesdames, have offered to God and to your community the entire sacrifice of yourselves, body and soul; you have kept back nothing save your innocence and submission. It is very kind of Madame de Montchevreuil to send me leverets and partridges for my dinner; one dish and some salad constitute a good meal in my opinion. Happily I am not addicted to sensual pleasures. I can sleep on straw on the ground, and can live on bread and water. Our Lord said that man does not live by bread alone, but by the word of God; I will therefore strive to feed my soul with His word while listening attentively to the excellent sermon that will be preached in your church, on Monday next, at the holy sacrifice of your two victims. After reading d’Eon’s works “with dragoon-like voracity,” Sister de Durfort began to realise that the remorse of the author of _Lettres, Mémoires et Negociations_ was far from being groundless. Without deceiving herself as to the difficulty of transforming this “hero in the eyes of the world” into a “heroine of religion,” she strove, with touching simplicity, to bring him to repentance. “You are right,” she wrote, “in saying that I should have more trouble in bringing you back to a state of grace than Madame d’Eon had in bringing you into the world. However, I do not despair: with so much courage, firmness, constancy, valour, and intrepidity—in short, great as you are—it needs but one effort to make a saint of you....” D’Eon appears soon to have realised how ungenerous it was of him to take advantage of her credulity, for he put a stop to the pious correspondence. Far from entertaining the idea of taking the veil, as his venerable correspondent had hoped, the Chevalière had no more ardent desire than to doff the mob-cap and resume the soldier’s helmet. Too active for the part which he was reduced to play, for the life of the court, the visits and entertainments, the tedium of which he tried to forget by writing incessantly; tired, also, of the perpetual mystery of which he was at once the author and the victim, d’Eon regretted his old life of adventure. The American War appeared to him a favourable opportunity for resuming it, and no sooner had hostilities begun with England than he solicited de Sartine and de Vergennes for permission to re-enter the army. But he met with a positive and quite comprehensible refusal on the part of the two ministers, who desired nothing better than to hear the last of him.