our preliminary agreement of October 5, I admit with pleasure, although with the pain, the shame, and the tears that the avowal and admission of my own weakness have wrung from me, that you alone were capable of producing such a document ... but if you mean generosity in money matters, as the term you employ would seem to imply, I confess to you my dear, my very dear Beaumarchais, that with the exception of the Duke de Praslin and his friend the late Count de Guerchy, I have never found any person more tenacious of money than yourself.... You will no doubt say that you have had the generosity to promise in the King’s name, but on your own responsibility, the sum of 2,000 crowns, equal to 250 guineas, for my female outfit, and you thereby give yourself credit for extraordinary generosity! My reply is—It is not I who have sought this metamorphosis; it was the late King and the Duke d’Aiguillon, it is the young King and the Count de Vergennes, it is you yourself in virtue of your powers, it is the family of Guerchy which trembles at all that remains to me from my baptism—the title of man, &c. &c. Let the diplomatic appointment from which I was unjustly removed before the eyes of all Europe be restored to me; let me follow my military career; I ask for nothing else, and shall be content. I shall feel in greater safety clad as a dragoon, than in petticoats, for I should not be subjected to that kind of conversation to which women are generally entertained.... This malady is not of my making, and my past life bears witness that I am more worthy of wearing a helmet than a cap, and of dying on the field of battle than on a feather-bed in a nunnery. It appears that fate is continually making sport of me, and my resignation to its cruel decrees, more grievous to me than death itself, is the most complete proof of my devotion and entire obedience to the orders of the King.... I hope that so just a King will give heed to me in so extraordinary a case.... I cannot forgive the generous Beaumarchais, who knows that I have often despised my sex, fortune, and death in the pursuit of glory; no, I cannot forgive the generous Beaumarchais, who knows how I have, upon six occasions, flown from one end of the world to the other, travelling night and day to hasten, in 1755 and 1756, the reunion of France and Russia, and arrange for the marching of one hundred thousand Muscovites against the common enemy; and that by secret orders from my master, unknown to the great Choiseul, I caused the last war to be prolonged by three years, and that I then toiled, day and night, towards the conclusion of peace.... Alas! had it not been for the insurmountable timidity of my late good master, Louis XV., so fatal to my welfare, which kept him from openly avowing me,