Thanks to this impudent trick, Choiseul, already apprised of all the difficulties about to be raised, was enabled to come to terms with the Duke of Bedford, expeditiously and without taking any risks. This amusing story was given considerable publicity throughout France, and the papers of the Opposition soon published it in England, taking advantage of it to heckle the cabinet. The preliminaries signed, there was nothing more for the two governments to do but to come to an agreement on certain minor points and the actual wording of the treaty. This task, somewhat ungrateful and difficult on account of Choiseul’s anxiety about recovering some of the concessions he had made in his great haste to negotiate before the opening of Parliament, kept Nivernais and d’Eon occupied for three more months; the definite treaty being signed only on February 10. This disastrous peace, which cost France a fine colonial empire full of still finer possibilities, was welcomed there with transports of joy, while in England it raised genuine reprobation. D’Eon was too ambitious not to turn to good account the transactions in which he had taken part. Two personal experiences had taught him that it was always profitable to bear good news to the court, and that the King showed his pleasure on such occasions by granting favours to the messenger. He had won a lieutenancy in the dragoons by bringing to Versailles the Empress Elizabeth’s ratification to the Treaty of Versailles, and three years later a life-pension of two thousand livres by discharging a similar commission. The new treaty which had been so earnestly desired and so well received in France should evidently obtain from him still greater advantages, only he must reach the King himself, not surreptitiously, as the agent of the secret correspondence, but before the whole court, as the accredited secretary of an official embassy. D’Eon, who thought nothing was impossible, urged his chief to request the British Government to grant him the favour of conveying the ratifications to the treaty to Versailles. Such a selection on the part of a foreign government for a mission regarded as highly honorific was unprecedented and contrary to all usage. Nevertheless, the ambassador consented to make the application, however irregular, although the Duc de Praslin considered it to be doomed to failure. The Minister for Foreign Affairs put Nivernais on his guard, assuring him that the court of St. James’ would certainly not entrust such a mission to a French secretary. It would appear also that the minister, out of patience at the aspirations with which premature successes had inspired d’Eon, was anxious to put him in his place. “He is young,” he wrote, “and has still time enough to be of good service and to earn distinction. I take an interest in his welfare and will gladly put him in the way of gaining advance by time and work.”