The most perfect stranger to Charles XII. was Love! They had never nudged one another! This was not the case with the Chevalier D’Eon, who resembled Swift perhaps in more ways than one. In Mademoiselle Constance de Courcelles and the Countess de Rochefort (the latter, by the way, was a young widow), D’Eon had his Stella (short of wedlock) and Vanessa. Of the scenes of their love, we know nothing. He may have had a dozen Varinas, but I very much doubt it. Of Mademoiselle de Courcelles’ letters he preserved a large packet for twenty years, and it may be, for longer, after their correspondence had ceased upon his assuming female attire. The Duke de Nivernois was in the habit of teasing him by introducing the name of the Countess, but this was the shortest-lived flirtation of the two, because the Chevalier remained in England and the Countess resided chiefly in France. Without actually avoiding the society of ladies, he never sought it—_he could not speak of that he did not feel_—and was never known, in the course of his career, to have been engaged in any amorous adventure or affair of gallantry as it was termed, whether at Court or in the camp, and this in an age when courtiers, like their sovereigns, were strangely given to profligacy. The old Marquis de l’Hôpital, an antiquated debauchee, who will be remembered as French ambassador at St. Petersburg, frequently twitted D’Eon on his cold temperament, but the latter preferred close application to his duty, working early and late, with fencing for recreation, to any kind of unsavoury indulgence. He never sought to wrong the decencies of life. [Sidenote: DISPASSIONATE TEMPERAMENT.] I am not aware that Swift’s unfeeling treatment of the two women he after a fashion loved has ever been satisfactorily explained; whereas D’Eon himself, upon various occasions, assigns to physical causes his state of insensibility. Two examples will probably suffice:— ‘I am sufficiently mortified at being what nature has made me, and that the dispassion of my natural temperament should induce my friends to imagine in their innocence, and this in France, in Russia, and in England, that I am of the female sex. The malice of my enemies has confirmed all this....’ ‘If the Great Master of the universe has not endowed me with all the external vigour of manhood, He has amply made amends by gifting my head and heart. I am what the hands of God have made me; satisfied with my weakness, I would not exchange it for the dangerous strength of Marshal Saxe, even were it in my power to do so.’[392] Most accounts agree, the one being taken from the other, that D’Eon’s attainments included an acquaintance with ancient and modern languages. That this was not the case is evidenced by the contents of his library and the almost complete absence, amongst his MSS., of any note or quotation except in French or Latin; while forty years’ residence in England did not suffice to teach him English.