If d’Eon declined to follow the Comte de Broglie’s interested advice on the subject of the “ministerial papers,” he at all events showed that he was affected by the reproaches he had incurred for his negligence. Thus, during the course of rather over seven years, we find him drawing up reports, which he entitled “political letters,” and which he sent to the secret minister, either corresponding in cypher under his own name, or openly under the name of William Wolf. In these reports he discourses on war and finance; gives brief statements of home administration and colonial aspirations; relates carefully parliamentary debates and party quarrels; and does not omit to mention the little incidents of the court and the intrigues of the diplomatists. In one of his letters, selected from among many others, in which he expatiates on the question of _General Warrants_—a burning question in England at that time—he reports the love affairs of the royal princes. The Duke of York, surprised with a lady by her jealous husband, had just received a sword thrust in the shoulder; his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, on the point of contracting a secret marriage, was to be sent abroad. The Duke of Brunswick neglected his wife because he had discovered that she had contracted the king’s evil, which had broken out on the leg. In this same letter, after this scandalous gossip (which, however, is not always a negligible quantity in politics), d’Eon touches lightly upon a matter of the greatest interest—namely, the overtures made to him by Lord Bute, the ex-minister, with a view to an eventual restoration of the Stuarts. Concerning this the Chevalier stated as his own point of view that “men and matters were not sufficiently matured.” The Comte de Broglie hastened to reply that he should follow up the proposals without binding himself; but the project, so frequently considered by France, was once again abandoned. In the same year d’Eon informed the cabinet of Versailles and Prince Masseran, the Spanish Ambassador, of “England’s design to invade Mexico and Peru in the approaching war, on the plan devised by the Marquis d’Aubarède, who was in receipt of a pension from England.” But the sphere of his inquiries was not confined to England; the correspondence he entertained with acquaintances in Russia enabled him in 1769 to apprise the King of an expedition which the Empress was then planning against the Turks, and which actually took place eight months later. [Illustration: LA CHEVALIERE D’EON 1782 _From a Contemporary Oil-painting_]