‘If —— is not to go to Sweden, he will receive for answer that since his health suffers, it is considered to his advantage that he should return directly. If, on the contrary, it is deemed expedient that he should proceed, the same will be intimated to him in the form of advice. If it is considered necessary that he should return, the remark will be made to him that a muff has been obtained here, and that consequently he is requested not to purchase one. ‘The whole of this, written in small characters and epitomised, will be placed by —— in the false bottom of a tortoise-shell snuff-box, which will not induce any suspicion.’[9] The duties confided to D’Eon were entirely distinct and of a more intimate nature. He was supplied by M. Tercier, chief clerk at the Foreign Office and in charge of the King’s secret correspondence, with a quarto copy of Montesquieu’s ‘Esprit des Lois,’ the binding, in double boards, being cunningly devised to hold papers. The documents thus concealed and entrusted to D’Eon included private letters from the King to the Empress Elizabeth; a cypher for the intelligence of her Imperial Majesty and Count Woronzoff, the Vice-Chancellor, in their correspondence with Louis XV.;[10] a cypher for D’Eon’s own correspondence with the King and Tercier, and another cypher for D’Eon’s use in communicating with the Prince de Conti, Tercier, and M. Monin. He received strict injunctions that none of the King’s ministers, not even any ambassador his Majesty might have at St. Petersburg, should be allowed to entertain the slightest suspicion of this secret intercourse; he was ordered to furnish the King with copies of all letters received from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, together with the Ambassador’s replies, noting thereon his own observations, and he was further required to thwart clandestinely any transactions on the part of the King’s ministers, so long as they were in opposition to the secretly known royal will and pleasure.[11]