The historical studies to which he devoted the leisure left him by the negotiations (the mere titles of which show clearly that he lacked the sense of proportion in all he did) could not reconcile d’Eon to the kind of life which he led in Russia. In the month of July, 1760, he lost all patience, his health being seriously impaired, and he entreated the Marquis de L’Hospital for permission to return to France: Your Excellency is aware that for over eighteen months I have been more often ill than well. M. Poissonier has seriously advised me to leave Russia, in order that I may recover my former strength by breathing my native air. Though I fear neither death nor physicians, and though I am fully persuaded that the medical profession has not the privilege of alarming your secretaries of embassy, yet I feel the approach of a general collapse, which is more convincing than all the doctors’ arguments, and warns me not to spend a fifth winter in Russia.... By gaining still more experience of politics, I may aspire to follow some better trade than that of a scribe and a pharisee. De L’Hospital did not detain d’Eon any longer, and commissioned him to convey to Versailles the ratifications to the treaty of 1758 and to the maritime convention concluded between Russia, Sweden and Denmark. D’Eon left St. Petersburg with the fixed determination of never returning, and carried away with him eulogistic testimonials from the Marquis de L’Hospital and the Baron de Breteuil, and letters of recommendation to the Minister for War. The Czarina graciously presented him with a snuff-box ornamented with diamonds, and upon his taking leave of Woronzow, the Chancellor said: “I am sorry you are going away, even though your first journey here, with the Chevalier Douglas, cost my sovereign more than two hundred thousand men and fifteen million roubles.” As on the first occasion, the bearer of excellent news, d’Eon again met with a warm reception in Paris and at Versailles. The Duc de Choiseul caused a pension of two thousand livres to be conferred upon him out of the privy purse, and promised to do something for his career. D’Eon, whom the journey had exhausted, had just been attacked by small-pox, and was obliged to take care of himself and to await until the spring the realisation of his long-cherished wish. At last, in the month of February, 1761, he was able to ask the Duc de Choiseul, Minister for War, “for permission to serve as aide-de-camp to the Marshal and the Comte de Broglie in the army of the Upper Rhine, and for his transference to the regiment of d’Autichamp’s dragoons, in the same army, the colonel-general’s regiment doing duty that year on the coast.”