Is it true, as d’Eon asserted later in the libel which he published in London against the ambassador, that the Comte de Guerchy contented himself with putting the order in his pocket, saying to d’Eon: “If you have a supply of ammunition, you have only to remove it to a park of artillery you will find at half-a-league’s distance,” and that, in spite of discipline, the young aide-de-camp had to gallop after the lieutenant-general to recover the order, and to take it upon himself to carry out the marshal’s instructions? The Comte de Guerchy naturally took care not to admit the truth of the story, which he treated as a wild fabrication, and the tardy and interested testimony of so biassed and insincere a person as d’Eon can only be accepted with extreme caution. However that may be, it is interesting to record this first meeting on the battlefield of two officers who were destined three years later, as colleagues in the same embassy, to quarrel so violently and to astonish the whole of Europe by the scandal of their dispute. Yet despite his exemplary conduct in the army and the ability he displayed in discharging the duties of a dragoon on real battlefields after following in embassies what he called “the trade of a scribe and pharisee,” d’Eon quitted the service before the month of September 1762, when the preliminaries of peace were signed. Towards the end of December, 1761, he returned to Paris in compliance with an order from the ministry. There was some question of sending him back to St. Petersburg, where he had so successfully made his first diplomatic campaign, and of appointing him successor to the Baron de Breteuil. Once more he was about to change his career, by gaining another promotion. He left Cassel, where he chanced to be with Marshal de Broglie’s staff, taking away with him the certificate which recorded his brilliant military exploits, and reached France in the beginning of the year 1762. Hardly had he set out when the Czarina died, bearing away to her grave d’Eon’s prospects of an embassy. If, notwithstanding his comparatively inferior rank and origin, he had seemed in the eyes of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the King peculiarly qualified for the accomplishment of a confidential mission to the Empress, who had known him for several years and had frequently given him proofs of her good-will, the accession of a new sovereign at St. Petersburg considerably diminished the importance of these particular reasons, and the impetuous Burgundian was thwarted once again in his aspirations by the obstacle of caste.