Lacretelle, Taylor, and others, are unable to account for the Chevalier’s change of sex, otherwise than that it was produced by some unexplained intrigue, and that he was directed by the French Government to appear as a woman, for reasons which have never been satisfactorily determined. Voltaire wrote, that the whole affair puzzled him. He was unable to picture to himself either D’Eon, or the ministers of his day, or the acts of Louis XV., or what was passing then (1777). He knew nothing of any of them. In returning, however, to the pages of Madame Campan, we seem to find the key to the situation. ‘This strange personage,’ says that lady, ‘had for a long time solicited permission to return to France, but it was considered necessary to spare the family (de Guerchy) he had offended the insult it would feel were he to make his appearance; he was therefore compelled to resume the costume of a sex to which everything is forgiven in France. Anxiety to see his native country no doubt influenced him in submitting to such a condition; but he had his revenge, for, whilst wearing a gown with its long train, and a triple row of sleeves, he bore himself and behaved like a grenadier, giving himself an air of unmistakable vulgarity.’ Might not every secret in which this mystery was involved have been hidden in the _valise_ containing ‘papers that had belonged to the King and Court,’ given to the French minister plenipotentiary by D’Eon, on February 1, 1792? (See note, p. 264, p. 324.) The Count de Vergennes, the minister immediately responsible for the ludicrous innovation, confessed to Beaumarchais his concern lest D’Eon should make his appearance in France as a man, his enemies being on the alert, and not likely to forgive him easily for all he had said of them; and when writing to the Chevalier, two years later, he impressed upon him the conditions, should he think of returning to his native land. (See p. 283.)