The Chevalier D’Eon, of whom I have given an account, occasioned at this period much and strange discourse. A notion had for some time prevailed that he was a woman in man’s habit. The Duc de Choiseul believed it from the report of a female English spy who pretended to be certain of it from having washed his linen; and as the report spread, it gained farther credit from assertions that he never dressed himself before any witness, nor could any of his comrades recollect an instance of his amours. His beard, though black, was inconsiderable; and though he was strong and an excellent fencer, his legs had a feminine turn. At first he pretended to resent the report, but afterwards spoke and wrote so dubiously on his sex, that the most judicious suspected him for author of the fable from interested views. Sometimes he disappeared and returned again, till by the usual discrepancy of opinions, very great sums were wagered on the question; and he, though he denied the charge in print, was taxed with encouraging those bets in order to share the spoil, according as he should pronounce on his own gender: but the question came to no issue, and was forgotten like other legends of the day.[196] In August this year I again went to Paris, and was witness to the final overthrow of their constitution. Since the removal of the Duc de Choiseul, no Prime Minister had been named. Over the King’s mind Madame du Barry had almost unlimited ascendant, except that she could not prevail on him to place his confidence on the Duc d’Aiguillon, who certainly intrigued with her husband’s sister, a very sensible woman, and was suspected of having secured the mistress herself to his interest by the same _attention_. Yet, whether it was owing to the King’s aversion to strangers, or that Choiseul had instilled lasting prejudices into his mind against D’Aiguillon, the latter could not entirely surmount them. He was a dark, violent, and vindictive man, with less parts than passions; but the rancour borne to him and the mortifications it had brought on him, had taught him to curb his temper; and he now affected universal benignity and condescension; proceeding even to obtain the arrears of the pension due to La Chalotais, the patriot magistrate of Bretagne, whom he had so cruelly oppressed. Yet would not this ostentatious benevolence have expunged the odium his persecutions had created, if another man had not presented himself as a still more offensive object to the indignation of the public. This was the Chancellor Maupeou, a man who had mounted by the regular steps of villany from flattery through treachery to tyranny. He had affected such loathsome idolatry of Choiseul that he had been heard to declare he would on no consideration change his house, because, from the upper windows, he could survey at least the chimneys of the Hôtel de Choiseul. Yet while there was but a very dubious prospect of that Minister’s disgrace, Maupeou, then