Make a bundle of your valuables, and take them with you. Arrange for the other things to follow you as you require them. Mrs. Cole will see that they are sent, and you will receive everything. Senator Barthélemy will only be too happy to present you to the First Consul, and I have no doubt but that you will obtain, if not the whole, at least part of your pension. When you are here everything will go well. At a distance nothing goes as it should. Come, and to begin with take furnished lodgings; even this circumstance may not be indifferent to your success. The world will be more ready to pity the lot of a heroine whom no party can reproach, when she is seen, at her age, deprived of all resources. But whether old age and sickness prevented his departure, or whether he was discouraged by so many vain efforts and expected nothing from the change, d’Eon remained in London. He went through a time of great need, although several of his old friends, and even some members of the English aristocracy, continued to take an interest in him and to help him until the end of his days. The Marchioness of Townshend, the Duke of Queensberry, and Mrs. Crawford regularly provided him with money. His infirmities compelled him to keep his bed during the last two years of his life, and throughout that sad time he was tended affectionately by Mrs. Cole, the friend whose house he shared. Several months before his death he sent for a French physician, Dr. Élisée—formerly attached to the “Pères de la Charité” at Grenoble. When, on May 21, 1810, d’Eon breathed his last, the doctor was not less surprised than Mrs. Cole on discovering the real sex of this extraordinary individual, who, notwithstanding old age, want and sickness, had taken a pride in playing his part to the bitter end. A certificate of the post-mortem examination made it possible to record officially the answer to this singular problem, which for forty years had excited so much curiosity and given rise to so many disputes. But, published at a time when public attention was being claimed by so many great contemporary events, this document, which definitely settled a point of dispute in the annals of the eighteenth century, was scarcely noticed. It is only in our time that patient scholars have unearthed it from the depths of English archives. Mystery no longer enshrouds the enigma that baffled even the perspicacity of a Voltaire or of a Beaumarchais. Freed from the disguise which she had assumed, and to which tradition still faithfully adheres, the legendary Chevalière d’Eon resumes his true aspect in the form of the daring and brilliant adventurer, ruined by his inordinate pride, whose life will remain for all time as one of the strangest challenges that history has ever offered to fiction. THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH