Early in the following year the Citoyenne Geneviève, in a transport of delight, informed her friend, M. Beauvais,[371] that in consequence of instructions received from the Minister of War for the Republic of France, she was about to proceed to Paris, thence to join the army of General Dumouriez,[372] and begged leave to forward to his care six cases for despatch to France, _viâ_ Rouen or Havre de Grace, as she might determine after her arrival in that country. Nine other cases were at the same time sent to Mr. Christie, who had promised to find room for them. She was also invited by the ladies of Paris to return to them, the invitation, dated in the month of April, having been entrusted for personal delivery to her old friend, Captain Arden, of the Royal Navy. The Chevalière did not return to France, having been detained in all probability by her creditors, who would have acted with greater wisdom and profit to themselves had they trusted to her honour, and left her free to seek for better days under the changed fortunes of her country. It was doubtlessly her late surrender of State papers, and the nature of their contents,[373] that had influenced the administrators of the Republic in her favour; but her right to a pension was no longer recognised under the new form of Government in France, her property had been confiscated, and she was thus left without resources of any description, now verging on her sixty-fifth year. The Chevalière appears to have existed at this time chiefly upon the hospitality of her friends, there being amongst those who entertained her more frequently the names of Lady Constable, Mr. Christie, Lord and Lady Glencairn, Lady Wallis (sister to the Duchess of Gordon), Colonel and Mrs. Kemys-Tynte, General Melville, General Rainsford, at whose house she met Horne Tooke and Paine; Mr. Fitzmaurice (brother of Lord Lansdowne), Colonel Macbean, of the Artillery; Mr. Lockhart, banker, Pall Mall; Mr. Dent, banker, Clarges Street; Sir William Ffloyd, Count Zenobio, envoy from Venice; Colonel du Bathe, M. Hirsinger, Chargé d’Affaires from France, &c. &c. By the end of the year 1792 the Chevalière’s remaining means and credit were completely exhausted, and there was no alternative but to make public exhibition of her pre-eminent skill in fencing, a resolution in which she appears to have been supported by Mrs. Bateman, the noted actress and female fencer. Her first appearance, in a series of performances, was at a _déjeuner_ given by Mrs. Bateman in her house, Soho Square, to a party of English and French officers of both services, several ‘literary characters, and gentlemen of first-rate stage talents,’ upon which occasion, as announced in the papers,