‘... I must represent to you most humbly and most firmly that the year of my female novitiate having expired, it is impossible for me to continue a profession of that sex. The expenses are beyond my means, and my income is too limited.... This very sedentary life is completely ruining the elasticity of my body and mind.... I renew this year my entreaties that you will obtain the King’s permission for me to re-enter his service, and there being no fighting on land, that I be allowed to serve as a volunteer in the fleet of the Count d’Orvilliers.[351] I have managed to live in petticoats in time of peace, from a desire to obey the orders of the King and of his ministers, but I find it impossible to do this in time of war.... Assist me, Monseigneur, to escape out of the lethargic state into which I have been plunged ... it is _a matter of great moment to the glory of the house of de Guerchy that I should be allowed to continue my military career; at least such is the general opinion in the army in France, and I might say all over enlightened Europe; whereas my present inconsistent course of life gives cause for the gravest misconstructions, and affords material to the maliciously disposed_. I have always thought and acted as did Achilles. _I am not at war with the dead_, and I do not destroy the living _unless they are the first to attack me_. You have my written word of honour for this.... You are not aware that it is I who support my mother, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my three nephews in the King’s service; that I am still in debt in London, where I have left the whole of my library and my papers in chambers, for which I am paying 24 francs a week.... You must be aware that to play the part of a maid at Court is one of the most stupid imaginable, so long as I am still able to play that of a lion in the army....’[352] D’Eon must have been fully persuaded that escape out of her state of wretchedness was impossible, and that the pen and ink agitation, in which she was repeating so much sad nonsense, would prove fruitless, for, in writing, on the very next day, to her nephews who were about leaving to take part in the war, she playfully observed that the King, or rather his presiding minister, absolutely refused to allow her to join the forces, through fear, no doubt, that the indomitable English who in other days had burned, in Normandy, the Maid of Orleans, might now be guilty of drowning, in America, the Maid of Tonnerre! Whatever the intentions of the ministers with regard to the epicene D’Eon, her allusions to the de Guerchy family, and her ill-concealed desire to avenge herself on the son of her old and deceased enemy, could only have served to confirm them in their earliest resolution that she should not, under any circumstances, be liberated from the thraldom into which she had yielded her person.