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. 16, 186l.] 

compelled to notify officially to the British Government that D’Eon no longer held any office at London. He was consequently denied admission to St. James’s Palace. Furious at what had happened to him, and impelled by vanity as much as by a desire for revenge, D’Eon published at London a stout quarto volume under the title of “Letters, Memoirs, and Private Negotiations of the Chevalier d’Eon.” This volume comprised the narrative of the various operations which had been entrusted to him, and of his disputes with M. de Guerchy, as well as his correspondence with the Duc de Praslin, the Minister of Foreign Affairs: the friendly letters he had himself received from the Duc de Nivernois, and—what was the height of imprudence on his part—the correspondence of his friend St. Foix, clerk in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in which the latter indulged in many biting remarks on his superiors. To these relations were added confidential letters between the Ducs de Nivernois and de Praslin, in which D’Eon was alluded to in kind and flattering terms, while the Count de Guerchy was treated with contempt; though it was allowed that this “poor Guerchy” was the most proper man they could find at the moment. The book produced an immense sensation, which was lessened neither by the attempts to suppress the edition, nor by an answer published under the title—“Examination of the Letters, &c., of the Chevalier D’Eon, in a Letter to M. N.” M. de Guerchy’s colleagues in London having taken his part and demanded satisfaction, the Solicitor-General received orders to prosecute D’Eon for a libel, while in France the idea was momentarily entertained of carrying him off by force from London and imprisoning him in the Bastille. It is said that Louis XV., having heard of the plan, gave D’Eon a hint to be on his guard. Driven to desperation by the loss of his place and his salary, D’Eon threatened to publish the whole of his secret correspondence with Louis XV., which the monarch prevented by granting him a pension of 12,000 livres, the patent for which, entirely in the royal handwriting, was thus drawn up:

In consequence of the services which the Sieur d’Eon has rendered me, both in Russia and with my armies, I deign to grant him an annual pension of 12,000 livres,