The business which called him to London was, indeed, a complicated one. For several years one of his creditors, to whose care he had confided his library and papers on leaving England, a man named Lautem, claimed from his debtor, who turned a deaf ear, the payment of a sum of £400. Obtaining nothing from d’Eon himself he had applied to the Comte de Vergennes, and had not omitted to enforce his request by a gentle threat: “D’Eon’s effects,” he said, “are a security and not a deposit; I could therefore have them sold, but I do not wish to sell state papers. Born at Brussels, a subject of his Imperial Majesty, an ally of the King of France, I have no desire to amuse Englishmen at the expense of a Frenchman who has been my tenant; but Mademoiselle d’Eon no longer deserves any consideration on my part.” The Minister for Foreign Affairs replied through the chief clerk, Durival, that “the arrangements which the King had deigned to authorise, in Mademoiselle d’Eon’s favour, for facilitating her return to France, and the fact that she had then surrendered her political correspondence, did not allow of the supposition that she had left any of value” in the keeping of the Sieur Lautem. It would seem, however, that the Comte de Vergennes was not quite sure, for though he did not send the £400 demanded he at least offered 200 louis. But Lautem did not accept these terms, and proceeded to advertise the sale by auction, in London, of all the papers belonging to the Chevalier. The effect of this announcement was immediate. D’Eon at once received permission to visit England in person for the purpose of winding up his affairs, and a sum of 6000 livres was given to him, for the payment of his creditors. He returned to London on November 18, 1785, and took up his old quarters in the house of the Sieur Lautem, displaying so little ill-feeling that it is difficult to believe that debtor and creditor had not come to an understanding on the matter. Besides his landlord, Lautem, d’Eon paid his most exacting creditors. Having recovered his books and documents, he was able to resume his literary labours, for to the end of his days he was an inveterate scribe. The events in which he had been mixed up increased in importance, in his accommodating imagination, as they became more remote, and formed the basis of statements constantly laid aside and then resumed, in a fresh, more grandiloquent and more elaborate form. He again issued pamphlets broadcast in English society, and entertained the public through the columns of the papers, which found in him at the same time a fertile and ingenious correspondent and an attraction to please readers eager for something out of the common. So anxious was he to bestir himself that he even consented to employ the adventurer Morande once again, though he had formerly treated him with scant courtesy. The latter, however, did not seem to bear him any malice. “I loved you sincerely,” he wrote, “and you