Baser conduct in Beaumarchais was his participation in the interminable and ever-increasing sex policies, the Chevalière entreating him, over and over, to abstain from mixing himself up in affairs that sorely afflicted her. Thoroughly persuaded that D’Eon was of the female sex, Beaumarchais added insult to injury by offering her eight thousand louis d’or and a share in all his profits, if she would submit herself to the verdict of a qualified jury nominated for the purpose by the policy-holders—proposals that were repelled with the contempt they deserved, and in the same spirit in which similar advances were repulsed in 1771, when the accommodation bribe amounted to fifteen thousand guineas. As bad was the confederacy into which Beaumarchais suffered himself to be drawn, having become associated in these foul speculations with the needy adventurer Morande; and it being the Chevalier’s practice, with his _cacoëthes scribendi_, to commit to paper every circumstance, every incident, small or great, in which he chanced to be concerned, he drew up and afterwards distributed a declaration, which was to show forth how Morande and Beaumarchais had endeavoured, in defiance of him, to practise fraud in their speculations on his sex. ‘We, the undersigned, Charles-Geneviève, &c. D’Eon de Beaumont, formerly captain of dragoons, &c.; François de la Chèvre, of Queen Street, Golden Square; Jacques Dupré, Esq., of New Bond Street; and Jean de Vignolles, Esq., of Warwick Street, do hereby declare on our word of honour, that being at dinner with the Chevalier D’Eon, of Brewer Street, Golden Square, on Thursday, April 11, of the current year, 1776, and being in the company of the said Chevalier D’Eon and of M. Charles Théveneau de Morande, Esq., of Duke Street, Oxford Road, whom we know to be the intimate friend and confidant of M. Caron de Beaumarchais, known to us as having been entrusted by the King of France to treat with the said Chevalier D’Eon for his return to France—the conversation turned on the revival, in November 1775, of the policies in regard to the sex of the said Chevalier D’Eon; that the said Chevalier D’Eon then declared to us that M. Caron de Beaumarchais and M. de Morande, who were present, had tried to induce him, the said Chevalier D’Eon, to associate himself with them in the traffic of these policies, representing to him that such a measure would infallibly lead to the gain of large sums of money. The said M. de Morande having eluded giving a categorical answer, the said Chevalier D’Eon sharply called upon the said M. de Morande to declare, frankly and clearly, whether he, Charles Théveneau de Morande, had not proposed to the said Chevalier D’Eon, in October 1775, at the time that M. Caron de Beaumarchais was in this country engaged in his negotiations, that he should make common cause