Having displayed his keys at Versailles, and assured de Vergennes that four days would suffice to regulate affairs finally with D’Eon, Beaumarchais returned to London, the first step he took being to inform the Chevalier, in the clearest terms, that as the primary condition of all future negotiations it was absolutely necessary she should agree to resuming female attire. D’Eon became very noisy upon receiving intimation for which he was so little prepared, and persistently refused to assent; but the determined attitude and dictatorial bearing assumed by Beaumarchais were not without effect, and for the first time in his life, perhaps, he quailed, and in the end, yielded. ‘All this has afforded me the opportunity for becoming better acquainted with the creature with whom I have to deal ... the feeling of resentment against the late ministers and their friends of thirty years’ standing is so strong in her, that too great a barrier cannot be placed between the contenders. Written promises to be prudent do not suffice to keep in check one whose blood boils at the simple mention of Guerchy. The positive declaration of her sex, and her promise to live for ever after in female attire, will be the only means of putting an end for the future to all kind of clamour and its consequences. I have been resolute in exacting this, and have succeeded.’[296] CHAPTER XIV. D’Eon surrenders the King’s papers—Earl Ferrers’ share in their custody—Covenant between Beaumarchais and D’Eon, who receives permission to return to France—and is ordered to resume female attire. The next few weeks were employed in arranging the terms of that Covenant by which D’Eon irrevocably bound himself to renounce his style as a man, and appear for ever thereafter in the character of a female, that being the sex to which he more properly belonged. During this interval also the iron safe was opened, and its contents declared by Beaumarchais to be far from meriting the importance attached to them. D’Eon insisted, on the contrary, that they were very precious, including, as they did, the earliest instructions supplied to the Duke de Nivernois on his proceeding to England; the earliest despatches of that minister giving the secret details of the negotiations for peace; and the family pact of the House of Bourbon, together with the secret convention—the whole of which were made up into four bundles; but he admitted that the papers of the greatest consequence were not in the iron safe at all. To produce these he took Beaumarchais to his residence, led him into his bedroom, and from beneath the flooring withdrew four parcels securely sealed and directed: _Secret papers to be given to the King only_, which, he avowed, completed the collection. D’Eon then drew up a list of the whole, in detail, Beaumarchais affixing his initials and a numeral to each sheet as he hastily perused it.