It is impossible not to feel some sympathy for the unfortunate Chevalière in this ignoble treatment by a succession of British peers, with all of whom she had long been on terms of intimate friendship, even though the moral to be deduced by the circumstances is, that the would-be biter herself became the bitten one! Turning back a few pages to the time when Beaumarchais was conducting the mission entrusted to him by Louis XVI., Lord Ferrers appears as a creditor of D’Eon for 5,000_l._, and as if to give colour to the claim, it was represented by the supposed creditor and debtor that the iron safe filled with important documents had been deposited with the English nobleman in security for the debt, a story that cannot be regarded otherwise than as a pure invention. It is clear enough that in her anxiety to secure a sufficiently large advance out of the funds supplied by the King, who was fully disposed to liberality, but with which Beaumarchais was most unwilling to part, D’Eon had secured the earl’s sanction to the entry, in her list of liabilities, of this imaginary debt. Never for a moment doubting the genuineness of the claim after his first suspicions had been removed, or suspecting complicity in any kind of deception, Beaumarchais paid the money, but instead of immediately passing on the whole to D’Eon’s creditors, as he had promised to do, his lordship boldly retained 3,000_l._ for his own use and benefit, in the conviction that the Chevalière would be in no hurry to expose her own share in the double dealing, by publicly resenting the breach of trust of which he had been guilty. The Chevalière discovered, but too late, the blunder she had committed in trusting to her would-be friend, and submitted tamely enough to the earl’s shameless and unfeeling settlement, by which she was required to wait five years for her little capital, and not one year as originally convened. [Sidenote: DONE!]