As I shall have occasion to return to Walpole, or rather to his letters, I would limit myself in the interests of this history, seeing that the opinions to which he gave expression were immatured except by his own specious judgment, hastily and prematurely formed, to quoting Macaulay’s estimate of that _gentleman usher at heart_. ‘He sneered at everybody, put on every action the worst construction which it could bear,’ and we are told, further, that he ‘spelt every man backward.’ [Sidenote: DRIVEN TO SEEK EXPATRIATION.] A painful sense of oppression was produced on D’Eon by Tercier’s letter of December 27, and nothing, not even his vigorous mind, could rouse him out of the state of despondency into which he had fallen. To his kindest of protectors, the Duke de Nivernois, he said, ‘... all my trust is in your tender friendship for me, and all my fear lies in your weakness for your friends.’ If the power of his enemies was too great, he continued, to enable the duke to break asunder the chain of error, of falsehood, and of iniquity, he should only ask permission, for himself and his two cousins, to enter the service of a foreign State, a request they made with their hearts plunged in the bitterest grief; for there were none more ready than they to shed the last drop of their blood for the King they adored, and their native land which they cherished. ‘... Since my zeal, my services, and my disinterestedness have incriminated me in my own country, I must, in spite of myself, seek a country where I shall be at liberty to lead the life of a good citizen. That country is found for me, Monsieur le Duc, this you know, and I will not hide it from you....’ In an enclosure, under flying seal, addressed to his other good friend the Duke de Choiseul, he thus expressed himself:— ‘... Your cousinship to the Duke de Praslin, and private reasons, will no doubt have prevented you from rendering to me that justice which is my due, and which exists in your heart.... Forced as I am, by the revolting injustice I am experiencing, by the suppression of my pension out of the privy purse, and by the numerous enemies that my zeal, blind no doubt in the cause of my country, or that the envy of traitors to that same country have excited against me; I find myself under the grievous necessity of entreating you to do me the favour, to send the King’s permission that I, and two of my cousins, may enter the service of a foreign Power....’[167]