Do you desire a riot at the opening of Parliament after the next election? If so, I must have so much for Wilkes and so much for the others.... Wilkes costs us very dearly, but the English have the Corsican Paoli, whom they lodge and feed on our account. He is a bomb which they keep loaded to throw in our midst at the first conflagration. Let us keep bomb for bomb. These numerous intrigues testify to the ingenuity and activity which d’Eon did not cease to display at every turn. He was ever on the watch, ever ready to follow the first trail which chance or even his imagination supplied. Though wounded in his self-love and disappointed in his ambition, d’Eon did not resign himself to becoming useless, to being forgotten. Elated by too rapid a success, he was attacked with a malady rarer at that time than at the present day—the passion for advertisement. He must attract attention, even at the risk of incurring blame, preferring the questionable reputation of an adventurer to the obscurity of an honest servant of the King. Besides, he thought that by rendering the King new services, even should they be unsolicited, he would be strengthening his claim to a pension which was paid to him with no regularity. The privy purse was indeed often empty, as most of the private letters reveal. The Chevalier was in consequence sadly in want of money; he petitioned the Duc de Choiseul, renewed his complaints to the Duc d’Aiguillon, who, thanks to Madame du Barry’s protection, had just succeeded the Duc de Praslin as Minister for Foreign Affairs; and he entreated the Comte de Broglie. “I am dying of starvation,” he wrote to the count, “between the two pensions you have granted me, like Buridan’s ass between the two bundles neither of which he could reach with his mouth.” He was in despair, and although he had always refused the offer of the English Cabinet, which promised him an equal, but more punctually remunerated, post if he applied for letters of naturalisation, he would willingly have quitted the service of France, provided it was for the benefit of a friendly nation. Indeed, he was seriously thinking of transferring his allegiance to Poland, where the nobles had just chosen Stanislas Poniatowsky, the favourite of Catherine II., as their king. During his residence in Russia d’Eon had been at great pains to ingratiate himself with that brilliant prince, and his efforts had been crowned with success. On the election of Stanislas, he therefore hastened to present his respectful congratulations to the new king, and informed him that he should be extremely happy to enter his service. Stanislas having answered him kindly and having even invited him to join him at Warsaw as soon as he could, d’Eon at once wrote to him a grateful and effusive letter, of which he kept a copy, and in which he dwelt complacently upon his capabilities, with a view, no doubt, to obtaining a more advantageous offer.