Since D’Eon was not visible to the world at large in Paris, it became the fashion to personate her at masquerades, and even at ordinary evening parties, when Beaumarchais would also be brought into ridicule by the pretended Chevalière relating, for the amusement of the company, the incidents of her courtship with that individual. The tales told, however, were not always harmless, and one report spread, was to the effect that a portion of the money destined by the King for the Chevalière’s use in England, and confided to Beaumarchais, had been appropriated by the latter, who accordingly complained to de Vergennes of the base accusation, charging D’Eon with being the author of it. He was at once reassured by that minister, who wrote word that his Majesty’s satisfaction at the correctness of the accounts he had rendered should suffice to vindicate his character from any such attacks; and having obtained permission to publish the minister’s letter, he sent a copy to D’Eon under cover of some offensive and very angry lines. Calmer judgments had certainly not as yet prevailed in the unsettled mind that was ever craving after excitement; and in malicious enjoyment of Beaumarchais’ participation in his own unenviable notoriety, D’Eon seized the opportunity for indulging in his favourite recreation, by treating the Minister for Foreign Affairs to one of the most tedious effusions of which he had ever been guilty, but humorous and satirical withal. ‘Now that I have obeyed the King’s commands in resuming female attire on the feast day of St. Ursula, patroness of the eleven thousand virgins and martyrs in England; now that I am living in tranquillity and peace in the uniform of a vestal, and that I had completely forgotten Caron and his boat, judge of my surprise in receiving an epistle from the said Caron, enclosing copies, duly certified, of a letter he addressed to you and of your reply.... What has he done for me?... He has made me blush for my country by paying a sum of money in the name of the State, in bills at six, twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four months date, charging seven per cent. discount, and finally swindling an English peer out of two hundred and thirty-three louis.... Was it not M. Beaumarchais who, unable to persuade me to be dishonest in supporting him in his speculations on my sex, spread the report everywhere in Paris that he was to marry me after I should have spent seven months at the abbey of the Ladies of St. Anthony, when, as a fact, he was within an inch of being espoused to my cane, whilst in London?... Let me tell you that fictitious Demoiselles D’Eon, wearing the cross of Saint Louis, have made their appearance in more than one fashionable house in Paris. They were jesters who said the most absurd things of the real Chevalière, and chiefly with reference to the agreeable and