‘In Paris the duke houses and boards a Jesuit, who dines regularly every day at his table; and yet he is a friend of thirty years’ standing of the destructor of the Order of Jesuits.[80] Whilst in London he absolutely wished to be a friend at Court and in favour in the city; a friend of the party in the majority, and of the party in the minority; he also sought, comically enough, to reconcile the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Bute, Mr. Pitt and the Duke of Bedford. He was enamoured of thirty thousand maidens, and pretended to be dying of love whenever he met the charming Duchess of Grafton, and this because the duke, her husband, was one of the leaders of the Opposition.’[81] D’Eon would have preferred a soldier’s career had he been free to choose. Ministers combined to dissuade him, the Duke de Praslin bidding him ‘hang up his sword,’ there being nothing for him to do in the army, and the Duke de Nivernois invited him to become his secretary of Embassy in London. D’Eon felt that four years’ service as secretary in Russia, ‘under critical and most important circumstances,’ to use de Nivernois’ own words, entitled him rather to advancement, and in accepting the post in London purely from personal regard for the duke, he took the liberty of making it a condition that he should return to France with the ambassador at the termination of his mission. [Sidenote: ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND.] Accompanied by this secretary the duke crossed the Channel in September. When his lean figure appeared at the place of embarkation at Calais, an English sailor said to his mate, ‘I say, d’ye see how thin that duke is? I remember him as a fine fat fellow. This is how we’ve skinned the French swells in the war.’ And so greatly struck by his appearance was an English gentleman (Mr. C. Townsend, one of the _Flag_ party) on seeing him for the first time that he exclaimed: ‘What! the French have sent over the preliminaries of a man to sign the preliminaries of peace!’