Practical results were, however, achieved in the case of d'Eon. According to the Duc de Broglie, Douglas had proved himself an unacceptable person at the Russian Court and it was only through the employment of the services of the youthful Chevalier, then about eight and twenty years old, that he was enabled to attain his mission's object. Far from resenting the trick, when d'Eon, on asking to be released from his position in order to return to France, at the same time revealing the real nature of his sex, the Empress Elizabeth was delighted at the manœuvre and made her reader a handsome present on his departure. He was described about this time as highly educated and capable of writing with distinction on literary subjects; very much devoted to the study of law and philosophy, but, one is somewhat uneasy to hear, as indifferent to female beauty as was Frederick the Great. It is in 1759 that he is to be found working for Louis as a spy upon the official French envoys. In that year the Duc de Choiseul was sent to Russia with the object of inducing the Empress Elizabeth to mediate for peace in the Seven Years' War. The Chevalier was at the same time deputed to go to Russia, where his earlier exploits had given him favourable notice, and bring about the failure of Choiseul's mission. Accordingly d'Eon became possessed of an important French secret which Louis was not disposed to have revealed to his contemporaries; he was given at the successful issue of his mission, a sum equal to £1200 yearly of our money and was sent to the army of the Upper Rhine as aide-de-camp to Marshal de Broglie, where the King hoped a bullet might remove him. The Chevalier appears, however, to have exhibited prowess as a soldier, and in 1762 we find him secretary to the French Embassy in London, where he was instrumental in rifling the portfolio of an important English Foreign Office attaché by resorting to the somewhat vulgar expedient of giving the diplomat too much to drink, the inference being that the wine was drugged. His success must have been important, for in 1763 he was resident Minister in London. In this capacity he began to organise a scheme on behalf of Louis for the invasion of England, and as Horace Walpole states, the importance both of his rôle and position began to prove too great for his usually cool intelligence. As a result of a few sharp repartees to French visitors of rank whom he suspected of spying upon him, as in truth they were, the Chevalier soon found himself reduced to the rank of Secretary, the King, indeed, ordering his man to return to France, but not to present himself at Court. In what followed the intelligent observer begins to discern glimpses of that so-called "artistic temperament" with which we have become so familiar in these later days. D'Eon declared that Louis, far from wishing for his removal in an official capacity, had instructed him to resume female attire and keep up the game of espionage in England.