I had in concurring to the great work of peace, has inspired me with sentiments of the justest veneration for the English commissioners who had been employed in it, and with the most lively esteem and sincerest admiration for the late Count Viri, who, in his attachment to the welfare of the two nations then at war, and thanks to his indefatigable zeal, had the glory of bringing that peace to a happy conclusion.... In order to enable you to be as prudent as patriotic, I sign this letter and therein give you my address, that for the maintenance of your own veracity you may furnish me with the means of convicting publicly those slanderers who have dared to make use of my name, in a manner still more repugnant to real facts than the dignity with which I have ever supported my character.[247] ‘I have, &c., ‘The CHEVALIER D’EON.’ ‘In Petty France, Westminster.’ CHAPTER XII. D’Eon and Wilkes—Fickle Louis XV.!—Literary labours—Doubts raised as to D’Eon’s sex—Princess Dashkoff—Heavy gambling transactions on D’Eon’s sex—Insult resented—Irritation at being thought a female—Indignant denial of being concerned in the bets made—State of penury—Offers of relief from Poniatovsky, now King of Poland—Saves England from war—Officially reported to be a female—Personal appearance—Death of Louis XV.—D’Eon’s estimate of the late king—Count de Broglio’s report on D’Eon to Louis XVI.—System of secret correspondence abolished—D’Eon to continue his reports in cypher. The expulsion of John Wilkes from the House of Commons and his trial for libel, and D’Eon’s conviction on a similar charge, both of which took place in 1764, were almost contemporary events, and although the Chevalier abstained from taking any part in the riots of that year, he never failed, when opportunity offered, to show his sympathy for _Wilkes and Liberty!_ After the great agitator had returned to England in 1768, and was undergoing his sentence of twenty-two months’ imprisonment in King’s Bench for seditious libel and blasphemy, D’Eon one day sent him a present of twelve smoked tongues, with a note in which he expressed the wish that ‘the tongues might have the eloquence of Cicero and the nicety of speech of Voltaire,’ to laud him worthily upon the anniversary of his birth, which, in the future, would ever be regarded as that of English liberty.’[248] A singular letter from Louis XV. to the Count de Broglio, dated February 12, 1767, commences thus:—