‘This ambiguous creature,’ says Lacretelle, ‘had been by turns and sometimes simultaneously, a diplomatist, student, statesman, jurisconsult, and soldier. Few of his contemporaries devoted themselves so much to study and manly exercise. His mind was reasoning and profound, without being elegant; he was of a robust constitution and endured to all kinds of fatigue; his face was repulsively coarse. Of an unmanageable disposition, he was a pertinacious quarreller. There was one blemish in his courage—it was restless impatience that had constituted him almost a professed duellist.’[387] ‘As a soldier,’ says his intended biographer,[388] ‘his personal courage and thorough knowledge of the military profession had distinguished him on many occasions, and in the art of fencing his skill was eminently conspicuous. His political reputation was sufficiently established, not only by the public missions in which he was employed, but also by the confidential situations he maintained in the secret correspondence of Louis XV., whose private protection and support he continued to enjoy, even during the inveterate persecution he experienced from the ministers of the French Court. In private life D’Eon was much esteemed, not only as a man, but during his assumed character of a woman; and though his natural inclinations, and the restraint he must ever have felt himself under, on account of his concealed sex, led him very much into retirement, yet in those societies where he did mix, his suavity of manner and obliging disposition always rendered him a welcome guest, whilst his various attainments, and the discordant characters he had sustained, gave to his person, especially as a supposed female, a degree of interest rarely excited by any individual. The shades in his character were, most inflexible tenacity of disposition, and a great degree of pride and self-opinion; general distrust and suspicion of others, and violence of temper which could brook no opposition. To these failings may be traced the principal misfortunes of his life; a life of much labour and suffering, mixed with very little repose.’[389] John Taylor had met the Chevalier in his advanced life at Mr. Angelo’s, when he found that his former captivating manners must have undergone great alteration, for, although dressed as a woman, he spoke and acted with all the roughness of a veteran soldier. He was generally considered to be most intelligent, full of anecdote and fertile conversation, and it was believed that his name and extraordinary appearance would never be forgotten. [Sidenote: TASTES AND HABITS.]