From the time that de Praslin, as Count de Choiseul, had succeeded his cousin, the Duke de Choiseul, in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, D’Eon took frequent occasion to remind him of his entangled situation, arising from having to pay interest on the original loan of ten thousand livres expended in the interests of the Crown. His debt had increased to fifteen thousand livres, and he found himself seriously compromised and threatened by his creditors, with no prospect whatever, considering his own limited resources, of being able to satisfy their just demands. Having settled his small property on his mother, he was entirely dependent on his own exertions, and, notwithstanding the estimation in which his services were held, he had always been kept a poor man. His salary as secretary of Embassy in Russia never exceeded three thousand livres, and even that was reduced to one thousand crowns upon the Duke de Choiseul assuming office. When on leave of absence from his regiment, awaiting orders to proceed to St. Petersburg, his pay was stopped; and as secretary of Embassy in London he was in receipt of three thousand livres only. ‘Three thousand livres a year,’ wrote de Nivernois to de Praslin, when pressing the Chevalier’s claims to greater consideration, ‘does not go so far in London as would fifteen thousand livres in Paris. These are but the wages of an ordinary clerk ... his salary should be more in accordance with the style of living in England, where everything is singularly expensive.’ De Praslin was not to be moved, and yet what stronger proof was needed of his sense of the wrongs under which D’Eon was suffering, and of the recognised serious nature of his embarrassments, than is to be found in the singular document supplied to him as protection in France against arrest and detention, at a moment when he was required to proceed to Versailles, with the ratifications to the Treaty of Peace. _LETTER OF STATE, in favour of the Sieur D’Eon de Beaumont._