But all of the solicitude of the English Ambassador was lost. He could not get the Empress to agree to the reopening of negotiations looking to the treaty between the two countries. On the contrary she renewed her request to King Louis XV for an official representation of that country at the Russian Court. The Empress’s request was given prompt consideration, for in July of the same year the Chevalier Douglass was accredited chargé d’affaires to the Russian Court, while D’Eon, the dashing young adventurer, joined him, no longer in woman’s apparel but in the handsome dress of a fashionable young man. He was appointed and served with great success as Secretary of the French Legation at the Russian Court. It is very significant of the waning influence of the wily Chancellor in the esteem of the Empress, that he knew nothing of the arrangement by which Douglass and D’Eon were sent to St. Petersburg until these two persons had reached the frontier town of Riga. This was an instance where French shrewdness got the better of English gold. Chancellor Bestuzhev was outwitted and outplayed at every stage of the diplomatic game. He realized, when it was too late, that he had been beaten by a French spy, disguised as a woman, and the recollection of it embittered the remainder of his life. There was a dramatic sequel to this defeat, which fortunately for those concerned, did not have a fatal ending. Armed thugs entered the house where Douglass and D’Eon were sleeping and, rushing into the room, fired several shots at the young men. They escaped with their lives and were content to regard the affair as an ordinary case of housebreaking. But if either of them had been called upon to point the finger of suspicion at any one, it would have been straight in the direction of Chancellor Bestuzhev. VII HOW NAPOLEON’S CHIEF SPY HOODWINKED THE EMPEROR OF AUSTRIA The amazing audacity of Charles Louis Schulmeister—Napoleon’s chief spy—was never illustrated to better advantage than when he hoodwinked Francis II, Emperor of Austria. The episode really had its inception on the twenty-third of October, 1805, when Napoleon sent for his favorite and told him that he wanted to know the plans of the Austrian army. At that time General Kontovsoff was believed to be hurrying westward with 60,000 Russians. It was characteristic of Schulmeister that he received this commission as a matter of course. He had men and money at his disposal and was in a position to command the attention of the great. But his biggest asset was his fearlessness.