We need not stop to inquire why the Empress Catherine, attached as she was, when grand-duchess, to the party against which all D’Eon’s assaults, by command of his sovereign, were directed; and who sat up for nights, translating into French from the Russian, for the edification of Sir Hanbury Williams, all such decisions of the Council as were favourable to France, should have thus expressed herself with regard to the secretary of a brilliant French Embassy; and this in his adversity, twenty-two years after his certain appearance at the Court of Russia for the first time. Apart from D’Eon’s own observation that he dined occasionally at the table of the grand-duke, there exists a letter which tends to controvert the assertion of her Majesty. _The Marquis de l’Hôpital to M. D’Eon._ ‘Plombières, August 13, 1762. ‘... And so the bully[75] has ceased to exist! What a page he will fill in history! Now let us see to the new Catherine. She has all the courage and the qualities requisite for making a great Empress, and I have agreeable recollections of having heard you frequently say so; her firmness, on certain occasions, has always been to your taste. It should also be admitted that you discovered the hidden virtues of the Princess Dashkoff; it is true that you have known her and cultivated her friendship since her earliest youth, and that you and the Chevalier Douglas encouraged her romantic temperament.’[76] We have here, at any rate, the testimony of the French ambassador to D’Eon’s personal knowledge of the Empress Catherine, and of his intimacy with the Princess Dashkoff,[77] of whom we will have something to say hereafter. In taking leave of Russia and its concerns, as we must now do, we are brought to the close of the Seven Years’ War, and our attention turns for a time to the relations of France with Great Britain during the administration of Lord Bute. [Sidenote: THE EARL OF SANDWICH.] The preliminaries of the notable peace of 1763, between France and England, were signed at Fontainebleau on November 3, 1762, the ambassador selected to conduct the negotiations in England being the Duke de Nivernois, once ambassador at Rome, and sent to Berlin in trying circumstances (1756) to endeavour to treat with Frederick. Gaillardet and the Duke de Broglie fall into the same singular error in attributing to this nobleman a portrait by D’Eon, the latter adding disdainfully—‘the portrait was in all probability one that pleased D’Eon, for in his official correspondence the same is applied, word for word, to Lord Sandwich.’ That it was intended for the libertine English peer, of whom it was said Search earth, search hell, the devil cannot find An agent, like Lothario, to his mind,