‘... Can the King of France grant to a female a safe-conduct intended for an officer? Who is it that served the King? Is it Mademoiselle or M. D’Eon? If his Majesty in learning, but too late, the offences committed by her parents to the prejudice of good manners and against the laws, is desirous of forgetting the past and unwilling to impute to her the fault of having wilfully persevered in such a course—is it to be expected that the King’s leniency is to extend to laying to the charge of the late King the ridicule that attaches to her indecent disguise, by employing the words she has suggested?... Never has the King’s service required that a female should usurp the title of man, the uniform of an officer, the status of an envoy! It is in thus increasing the number of her rash claims, that this woman has succeeded in trying the King’s and my own patience and the good-will of her partisans. Whether she remains in England or goes elsewhere is, as you well know, a matter of perfect indifference to us. As to her eagerness to return to France, I gave her to understand, through you, it was the King’s desire that she should not do so unless in the character of her sex, and that she should here lead a quiet, virtuous, and circumspect life, such as she should never have departed from.’ Beaumarchais added, that for his own part he did not believe, more than the minister, that any fresh claims she made could be of the least advantage to her, and with many kind words expressed his readiness to serve her as he had hitherto done, provided she did not persist in creating further difficulties.[325] This refusal of Louis XVI. to accede to the request made by D’Eon, reached him at a moment that Morande had successfully defeated all his plans to punish him. Foiled in his purpose of chastising Morande by resort to arms, the Chevalier sued him for libel, and Lord Mansfield directed rule to be granted; but when it was shown that D’Eon had written equally libellous matter to Morande, the Court discharged the rule, and the Chevalier had the mortification of seeing his enemy reap the advantage of his own imprudence. It was whilst smarting under a sense of these failures that D’Eon wrote to his tormentor:—