In the course of his contentions with the ambassador d’Eon had not scrupled to make use of one invective after another; but he had, perforce, exposed himself in his turn to most offensive repartees. A strange insinuation had been made against him which had not remained unnoticed, and which, cleverly turned to account and well circulated, had finally excited the curiosity of a people ever on the watch for eccentricities. One of the pamphleteers in de Guerchy’s pay had raised doubts as to the nature of the Chevalier’s sex, whose “dragoon’s uniform,” he said, “concealed a woman or a hermaphrodite.” D’Eon’s frail appearance, small stature, slender figure, and the delicate features of his almost beardless face lent colour to this idea. He was not known to have had any of those amorous adventures of which it was unusual at that time to make a mystery. D’Eon, who, in the heat of the controversy, had probably attached no importance to that strange insult, had taken no notice of it. Besides, he must have felt it less than anybody else, for he was wont to speak openly “of the singular lack of passion of his temperament,” taking in good part the banter which neither the Marquis de L’Hospital nor the Duc de Nivernais had spared him. His acquaintances in London had often expressed surprise at the discrepancy in such an exuberant personality. John Taylor, a contemporary of d’Eon, relates, in his _Records of My Life_, that “several marriages with ladies of good family, and with large fortunes, had been proposed to him at the country seats he visited; but that upon all such occasions he immediately left the house, whence it was inferred he quitted the place on account of his being really of the female sex.”