D’Eon had quitted St. Petersburg in April, entrusted by the Empress with private letters to Maria Theresa and Louis XV.; he was the bearer to the Courts of Vienna and Versailles of Elizabeth’s friendly assurances that the Treaty of Subsidies with England was no longer of effect, and that the eighty thousand men she had assembled in Livonia and Courland should henceforth act in concert with the forces of Austria and France. He was also charged to deliver the ratification to the Treaty of Versailles, the plan to be pursued by the Russian army in its operations with the Austrian and French troops, and other papers of considerable importance relating to secret transactions in which he had borne a part; and, further, he was commissioned by Count Schouvaloff to take with him fifty thousand livres in gold, being a gift from the Empress to Voltaire, who had received her Majesty’s commands to write the life of Peter—specie D’Eon lodged with the bankers Hermani and Dietrich, at Strasburg, on his way through that town. In her letter to the King, Elizabeth referred to D’Eon in flattering terms as having been instrumental in conducing to the happy results which necessitated the journey he was about to take, and ‘as a mark of her favour’ she presented him with a gratuity of three hundred ducats.[25] When D’Eon first went to Russia, one commission entrusted to him was to obtain for the Prince de Conti, from the Empress, the command-in-chief of the Russian army and the principality of Courland; the secret aim of the prince being, through such means, to work his way gradually to the throne of Poland, and to that of Russia by marrying Elizabeth. Douglas and D’Eon had met with success on the two first points, which alone had been mooted to the Empress, and D’Eon’s errand to Versailles included the Empress’ and Woronzoff’s assurances to the prince that he should have the command of the army and the principality of Courland, if the King would....[26] The rest is obliterated by D’Eon in his letter. One result of Douglas’ and D’Eon’s labours was the appointment of an ambassador to the Court of Russia in the person of the Marquis de l’Hôpital; but a whole year having elapsed between that minister’s nomination and departure for his post, it so happened that when D’Eon got to Bieloyēstok on his way to Vienna, the two met, to the great advantage of the marquis, as he himself subsequently avowed; for he was supplied with so much useful practical information, upon a country of which he knew literally nothing, as a somewhat hurried interview would allow. It was nightfall on the day that D’Eon got to the gates of Vienna, where a little incident occurred which serves to illustrate at least one trait in his character.