On the following day d’Eon happened to be dining at Lord Halifax’s, in the company of Lord Sandwich and the Comte de Guerchy. He was too excited by the events of the previous day to maintain his composure, even before the English ministers, and the ambassador’s presence only served to aggravate him the more. He thought it a good opportunity for declaring that he would not leave England before being recalled in a regular manner, and that, besides, he could not, in any case, dream of taking his departure before settling an affair of honour. The affair of honour in question was the quarrel of the previous day, which he complacently related to his hosts, informing them that he expected a visit from de Vergy on the morrow, that he should accept his challenge, and kill his adversary. When the English ministers reproached him with causing a scandal, and reminded him of the duties attached to his official position, he replied that “if he was a minister plenipotentiary he was above all a dragoon.” “Well, then,” retorted Lord Halifax, “were you even the Duke of Bedford himself, I should have to give you in charge of the guards.” “I have not the honour of being the Duke of Bedford; I am M. d’Eon, and have no need of any escort.” He was so heated that Guerchy joined Lord Halifax in making every effort to calm him. D’Eon heeded neither entreaties nor threats and, pleading an engagement at his club, attempted to make his escape. Thereupon the minister ordered the passage to be barred, and d’Eon, beside himself with rage, exclaimed that he never could have believed it possible for a minister plenipotentiary to be kept a prisoner, in the presence of his ambassador, at the residence of a secretary of state. The scene was becoming tragi-comic. Lord Halifax and de Guerchy felt that they must put an end to it, so as to avoid a far greater scandal than the one they had tried to prevent. They began again to argue with d’Eon, who gradually grew calmer, and finally consented to sign a paper whereby he gave his word of honour to the Earls of Sandwich and Halifax not to fight M. de Vergy, and “not to insult him in any way, without previously informing the said earls of his intention.” D’Eon made a copy of his engagement and caused Lord Halifax, Lord Sandwich and the Comte de Guerchy to sign it. This extraordinary scandal, brought about quite as much by the ambassador’s tactlessness as by the very undiplomatic excitement of his impetuous minister plenipotentiary, had its sequel the next day. D’Eon himself has written an account of it too graphic to be omitted.