‘You know that D’Eon is a madman, and perhaps a dangerous one, but there is nothing better to be done with madmen than to lock them up, and certainly in England he is recognised as such, and cannot be of any use to the English except to afford them amusement, and enable them to make fun of M. de Guerchy. I do not know what instructions M. de Fuentes has had, or expects to receive, in regard to him.[249] For all that, all I have promised him must be performed, but nothing more. I have a deadly hatred to madmen....’ Yet the man who was considered insane only when it suited the King to say so, was retained as secret agent enjoying the royal confidence, and upon the Baron de Breteuil, nominated ambassador to Holland, being sent to England in 1768 on a special mission, he was ordered ‘to see and confer with D’Eon,’ which, however, he was to do ‘in the most secret manner possible.’[250] [Sidenote: BRIEF LULLS.] For the next few years D’Eon beguiled his leisure in literary labours, spending his summers chiefly at Staunton Harold, Earl Ferrers’ seat in Leicestershire. He retired late and rose early, worked fifteen hours a day, partook of one meal only, at two P.M., and refused to receive any visitors except on Sundays. His ordinary residence from July 1769, when he quitted 32 Brewer Street, and 1772, when he returned to those his old quarters, was Petty France, Westminster, the house he occupied having a garden bordering on the park, and to which he removed to be near his friend, Mr. Cotes. He produced ‘Les Loisirs du Chevalier D’Eon, &c., in thirteen volumes,[251] which he dedicated to his friend and protector, the now disgraced and exiled Duke de Choiseul. ‘... It is, my lord, in the land of philosophy and liberty, where one learns not to bestow praise except on virtue and merit, that my mind, freed from prejudice, publicly exposes the traits that characterise you.’ [Illustration: THE CHEVALIER D’EON. 1770. _See Appendix._] Commenting on this dedication, a newspaper article thus eulogises D’Eon:—