unprincipled wretch! But what satisfaction did it create here, to read, under the hands of the chief Ministers in France, to how low an ebb that Court was sunk in abilities! the two Dukes owning to one another that their poor Guerchy, as they called him, was yet the fittest man they had to employ. Among such a heap of baseness great parts appeared; and it seemed lucky for his Court that a man so likely to be raised, and so capable of any treachery, unbosomed himself before he was possessed of more important secrets. In some instances, as in a letter to his mother, D’Eon seemed to have worked himself up to a pitch of frenzy; throughout, to be swayed by intolerable vanity.[453] The blow to Guerchy was heavy and cruel; and scarcely less mortifying to the Duc de Nivernois. Praslin, a hard, unfeeling man, took it with implacable resentment; and yet, in one respect, acted sensibly and honourably: instead of ruining St. Foix, the person whose letters D’Eon had, unprovoked and wickedly, disclosed, he was preferred, and never suffered any marks of his master’s displeasure. Every possible attention was employed here to console M. de Guerchy, and to prevent his thinking that he was lowered in the public esteem; but was it, alas! possible he could believe so? The other foreign Ministers demanded satisfaction for so gross an insult on one of their order; and the Court was willing enough to grant any reparation in its power. But what reparation could it make proportioned to the offence? All it could, it did. The Attorney-General was ordered to file an information against D’Eon for a libel.