Part 14

Some, formerly enemies of Choiseul, delighted in contributing to the success of the Comte de Guerchy’s fiery adversary; but the majority, impelled by curiosity, chiefly showed perplexity at the sight of this pathological wonder, who, with all the appearance and the manners of a man, professed to be a woman. Several contemporaries have described d’Eon as they saw him on that occasion, and it must be admitted that their portraits are far from flattering. “She looks more than ever like a man now that she is a woman,” asserted a newspaper of the time, with reference to the Chevalier. “Indeed, it is impossible to believe that a person who shaves and has a beard; whose proportions and muscular development are herculean; who jumps in and out of a carriage without assistance and goes upstairs four steps at a time, belongs to the female sex.... She dresses in black. Her hair is cut in a circle, like a priest’s, and is plastered with pomade, powdered, and surmounted by a black cap, such as pious ladies wear. She still wears flat, round heels, being unaccustomed to the high, narrow ones worn by women.” D’Eon, in whom the elegant and fashionable paper recognises none of the charms of the fair sex, had not wished to carry his masquerade too far; but if he abstained from using rouge, which was still in vogue, he does not appear to have been entirely free from feminine coquetry, sometimes wearing “black dresses _en raz de Saint Maur_,” more often “sky-blue skirts with narrow, puce-coloured stripes,” or even, “reddish-brown figured twill skirts,” as we gather from the accounts of Mademoiselle Maillot, his dressmaker. But in spite of his efforts to attain elegancy, d’Eon remained supremely ridiculous. “The long train of his gown and his triple row of ruffles” contrasted so unhappily with “his deportment and behaviour, which were those of a grenadier, that he had an air of unmistakable vulgarity.” Such are the unkind terms in which Madame Campan expresses herself in her _Mémoires_, which she wrote after d’Eon’s death, at a time when, enlightened as to the Chevalier’s real sex, she could not entirely conceal her vexation at having been hoaxed by one whom she and her family had befriended.

The opinion of d’Eon’s contemporaries on his appearance, his attire and his manner is, moreover, as unanimous as it is unflattering. “However plain, however prudish her large black head-dress may be,” says Grimm in his _Correspondance Littéraire_, under date of October 25, 1777, “it is difficult to conceive anything more extraordinary, and, if it must be said, more indecent, than Mademoiselle d’Eon in petticoats.” The Abbé Georgel, secretary to the famous Cardinal de Rohan, who was introduced to the Chevalière, sketches her portrait in his _Mémoires_ with a few touches of the pen. “Her garments, to which she could not accustom herself,” he writes, “gave her so awkward and embarrassed an appearance, that she only made one forget that defect by her flashes of wit and her very humorous account of her adventures.”

The transformation naturally created great astonishment; but, apart from a few inhabitants of Tonnerre, who had excellent reasons for not changing their first opinion, did not meet with obstinate incredulity. The sex henceforth official of the Chevalière d’Eon was accepted and respected. The person most interested lent himself, moreover, to corroborating it, and the very embarrassment which he affected, as well as his reluctance to adapt himself to his new life, were but masterly artifices for further concealing his subterfuge. Besides ensuring his safety in France and the payment of a pension which was now his only resource, his masquerade obtained for him a revival of that popularity of which he had always been passionately fond. From the day of his presentation at court his popularity steadily increased, growing to that extraordinary celebrity which, at the present day, still preserves his name from oblivion. He became at this time the subject of every conversation, exciting universal curiosity. The most inflated letters of congratulation and the most extravagant tokens of admiration reached him from strangers, wonder-struck by his amazing adventure, while his old friends assailed him with extremely humorous notes. One of them, the Duc de Chaulnes, who had known him in London in the heat of his contentions with Guerchy, wrote to him, with reference to the latest events:

I do not know if the Chevalière d’Eon recollects having seen the Chevalier d’Eon, surrounded by grenadiers, giving, in 1764, a page of the _Guerchiade_ to the Duc de Picquigny; but I _do_ know that the Duc de Chaulnes remembers it full well, and likewise his or her—for I no longer know where I am—handsome behaviour towards him. I am very much inclined to think, for instance, that your mutual friend will find much more of the Chevalier in the Chevalière than he desires. As for me, who am only a good-natured man, and your neighbour, I would fain know at what hour I may come and talk with Mademoiselle for a few moments, as I was wont to talk with Monsieur. As you have quite recently retired from politics, perhaps you will prefer to come to my house, which is only a few steps distant from yours. But I would rather spare you the trouble, provided, however, it be neither to-morrow, Saturday, nor Monday. I hope you will excuse these ifs and buts, which are quite out of place in a letter destined to express my profound gratitude for all the kindness you have shown me and for the friendship of the late Chevalier. I trust, Mademoiselle, you will do justice to my respect.

D’Eon’s friends did not, indeed, know “where they were,” nor what style to assume. In a gracious letter of invitation to supper, the Marquise Le Camus, deeming his “society unquestionably desirable,” began as follows:—

Brave Being, had I your facility for writing, I should not be in difficulties at the first word. I have, therefore, sought for the epithet which I think most suitable to what you deserve. I hope you will approve of my attributing to you no precise sex, by placing you above both, for fear of making a mistake.

Those who had known d’Eon from his early childhood, and had never lost sight of him during his adventurous career, were still more embarrassed. Such was the case of Madame Campan’s father, M. Genêt, chief clerk at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, who confessed with kindly irony that the French language was wanting in epithets adapted to the condition of his strange correspondent. “In order to avoid styling cardinals _Monseigneur_ as they demand,” he says, “dukes write to them in Italian; and I, unique being, whose model I find only among the gods of the ancients, will make use of the English tongue, the appellatives of which have no precise gender, and which scarcely acknowledges any female besides a cat and a ship, to address you in a manner worthy of you and the sublime mysteries of which you are the emblem. I will therefore call you: _My Dear Friend_, meaning thereby: _mon cher ou ma chère amie, ad libitum_.”

Those who had met “little d’Eon” at the Prince de Conti’s, in the fine reception rooms of the Temple, when he was seeking his fortune and his fate, reminded the illustrious Chevalière of their acquaintance in begging to be received. He himself, still imperturbable, continued to play his part of fashionable phenomenon, and felt a supercilious satisfaction in duping his contemporaries, or, at least, in exciting their astonishment. Some he beguiled by his account of the dramatic events in which he had been implicated; others he captivated by racy stories told with inexhaustible animation. His odd manners never became tiresome, and he was ever in request, his friends finding it difficult to tear themselves away.

I am leaving with the regret of not having been able to offer you my tribute of admiration (wrote the Chevalier de Bonnard, tutor to the Duc de Chartres’ children). I enclose a letter from my aunt, your cousin. I shall tell her, in three days’ time, that I have seen you, and that you surpass your great reputation. She will congratulate herself, no doubt, and will be distressed on my account that I have not availed myself longer and more often of a piece of good fortune which I fully appreciate.

The interest and curiosity which d’Eon had aroused had not won for him merely success at court. The report of his adventure had carried his name far beyond the frontiers. In England, where he had particularly attracted attention, the public were curious to know every detail. Miss Wilkes, who, in an interesting note which has already been reproduced, had asked d’Eon from the first to let her know the truth, inquired of the Baron de Castille what sort of reception the celebrated Chevalière had met with at Versailles, and the baron in sending “extremely tender messages” to d’Eon, from the Lord Mayor’s daughter, added: “I have replied to Miss Wilkes, my dear heroine; I interpreted your sentiments and, as a witness of your success at court, I told her many things about you.”

The echoes of the affair coming from London and Paris had aroused the sceptical curiosity “of the old valetudinarian of Ferney,” who anxiously questioned his faithful friend, the Comte d’Argental, concerning the true condition of a guest who had very indiscreetly announced his intention of paying a visit to the famous patriarch of French literature.

I absolutely must speak to you about the amphibious creature who is neither male nor female, and is at the present moment, I am told, dressed as a woman, wearing the order of Saint Louis on her bodice, and enjoying, like yourself, a pension of 12,000 francs. Is all that quite true? I do not think you are likely to be one of his friends if he be of your own sex, nor one of his lovers if he be of the other. You are better able than anybody else to explain this mystery to me. He or she has sent me word by an Englishman of my acquaintance, that he or she is coming to Ferney, and I am much embarrassed in consequence. I entreat you to solve this enigma for me.

D’Eon’s old comrades in the dragoons had not shown any particular incredulity, though he had led their life in the army, and they heartily welcomed the new heroine. The Baron de Bréget, at one time captain in d’Autichamp’s regiment, who had campaigned with him on the Rhine, asked him, a few months after the change, if he might “flatter himself that he still lived in the remembrance of his former brother-in-arms.”

I only returned from the seat of war a week ago (he wrote), and I hasten to beg my good friend to allow me to call and pay my renewed homage. I most respectfully entreat Mademoiselle d’Eon to permit me frankly and heartily to embrace my old comrade in the regiment.

In a letter written at the same time, the Comte de Chambry, another captain in the same regiment, bitterly reproached d’Eon for not having informed him of his return.

I hope (he added) to find in the Chevalière d’Eon the same feelings of friendship as in the captain of dragoons.... As for me, in whatever form he appears, I shall always take the same interest in him, and am eager to assure him myself of the fact.

The Marquis d’Autichamp, colonel and owner of the regiment in which d’Eon had served, had been one of the first to be apprised by the latter of his metamorphosis.

It is but too true, my dear and gallant Colonel (the Chevalier had written), that, compelled to obey the command of the King and of the law, I have resumed my gown, for the edification of weak-minded persons who were scandalised by the great liberty taken by a young girl who, from prudence, had hidden and entrenched her virtue in your regiment of dragoons, in order that it might be better protected. My stratagem having been discovered, proved, and made public in a Court of Justice, people were surprised to find that I am still a woman. Consequently, the Court, as a reward or punishment, forces me to end my days as I began them, _en cornette_ (mob-cap).

Whereupon the gallant colonel at once answered:

I was much attached to you when you were a captain of dragoons. The new form you have assumed has never prejudiced you in my estimation, and although it forces me to respect you all the more, it does not deprive me of the pleasure of loving you, and I hasten to assure you of both these sentiments.

The same feeling of kindly credulity, the same affectionate expressions are found in the letters of all d’Eon’s old brother officers, and bear witness to the pleasant impression he had made on them. The case, though extraordinary, had seemed to them credible; moreover, it was not without a precedent, as the Baron de Castille hastened to inform the Chevalière in the following letter:

Madame de Laubespin will tell you of the girl-dragoon of the regiment of Belzunce, who has again been to see me this morning. He is most anxious to be introduced to you, and I am convinced that you will find him interesting. He is twenty-seven years old, is nearly five foot five, and has a pleasant face and a beautiful, well-dressed head of hair. He is a junior officer at the Invalides, and wears the insignia of a veteran. The Duc d’Aiguillon gave him the two crossed swords when he was discovered upon receiving a sword-thrust in his hip. He was presented by the Prince de Beauvau to the late King, when hunting at Fontainebleau, and he asked him many questions.

It seems, too, that the adventure of the famous Chevalière had turned the heads of several ladies. Among his papers d’Eon left a whole bundle of letters written to him by “young women of exceptional height,” desirous “of changing their sex as far as appearance was concerned,” in order to be able to enlist and serve in the army. The bundle also included the epistles addressed to him by a few madmen, disturbed, as often happens, by the revelation of a curious personality.

This odd collection, together with notes from his friends, his old comrades, and even strangers who wrote to him directly after his return, leaves no doubt whatever as to the astonishment which the affair excited, and the amazing credulity with which it was generally accepted.

While d’Eon’s unbounded vanity found endless satisfaction in this unhoped-for welcome, the ministers who had flattered themselves that the avowal of his sex and his compulsory change of attire would be accompanied by the resumption of all needful propriety and consideration, were obliged to acknowledge that they had been strangely mistaken. Not only did d’Eon, in his new costume, attract everybody’s attention; but, unable to accustom himself to headdresses, stays and petticoats, he began, notwithstanding the King’s prohibition, to dress frequently as a man again. To prevent a fresh scandal, M. de Vergennes decided to give to the extravagant Chevalière a vigilant guardian. M. Genêt, chief clerk at the Foreign Office, a friend of d’Eon’s and also a Burgundian, seemed the very person for this difficult task. On his estate at Petit-Montreuil, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Comte de Polignac and of M. de Vergennes, he happened to have a pretty cottage, where the petulant Chevalière might be able to resign herself to the quiet existence which she was expected to lead. It was thought that she would find the society of Madame Genêt and her daughters, all attached to the service of the Queen, less austere than that of the Ursuline, Bernardine or Augustine sisters, into one of whose convents she had offered to retire in the first joy of her return. Genêt, therefore, urged her to join his family, and had the quarters of his “illustrious heroine” repaired in great haste. There being prospects of a severe winter, he tried to tempt her by the promise of “very warm rooms” in her little house. “How I dislike to see you,” he said, “boxed up as you are!” Such tender pressure did not easily overcome d’Eon’s reluctance to submit to a guardianship in which he recognised the will of the minister. Consequently he hesitated a long time, and only decided towards the middle of December to accept the hospitality of the kindly Burgundian family, in whose midst he was received with cordiality.

From that day the relations between d’Eon and the Genêts and Campans naturally became more intimate, and led to a daily exchange of kind offices, which we find mentioned in d’Eon’s papers. One day M. Campan thanked him very pompously for an essay on natural history, which he considered “pleasantly conceived, but rather long”; d’Eon, it is true, was not addicted to brevity. Another time, Madame Campan asked d’Eon, in a most affected style, for a simple remedy against deafness for the princes. The Queen’s woman of the bedchamber, who had not yet the grievance against d’Eon of having been duped by him, overwhelmed him with invitations. “On April 24, 1778, the whole Genêt family,” she writes, “are coming to spend the evening at M. Campan’s. She would be overjoyed if Mademoiselle d’Eon would do them the honour of accompanying them; she would only meet her old friends at supper, and Madame Campan begs that she will come without the least ceremony.”

D’Eon was present at all the parties arranged by the Queen’s women of the bedchamber. If, perchance, he refused to accompany them, Sophie Genêt would despatch a note to him, in her schoolgirlish hand, to entreat him to reconsider his decision; at the same time she dreaded being importunate, “for that would mean sadness to her hosts.” When they went on a visit to their Uncle Genêt de Charmontaut at his charming seat at Mainville, near Melun, word was at once sent to d’Eon, who allowed himself to be persuaded by such pressing invitations. So entirely did he captivate the modest lord of the manor, that the latter could not find words flattering enough to thank him for coming, nor terms humble enough to excuse his frugal hospitality.

D’Eon always showed gratitude to the family which had received him so cordially. Very faithful in his friendships, he was equally generous, notwithstanding his small means. He was constantly sending to them various Burgundian produce from Tonnerre; truffles, at that time highly prized and not much known; venison, and especially wine from his own vineyards, which M. Amelot, the Comte de Vergennes, and the Duc de Chaulnes, as they themselves admitted, liked particularly.

I have received, my dear friend (wrote Genêt), two delicious presents from you in one week, both calculated to rejoice the heart—namely, your portrait as a dragoon, which M. Bradel has sent to me, and with which I am much pleased, and a cask of your excellent wine. We shall place the portrait on the table while drinking your health. You are aware of our devotion to you, and we rely on your friendship, knowing, as we do, the kindness of your heart.

But d’Eon was able to prove his attachment better than by these small attentions; for with the prudence and authority of a dowager, who takes pleasure in the part she is acting, he succeeded in bringing about the happiness of one of his young friends, Adelaide Genêt, if we may rely on a letter which she wrote to him the day after her marriage with M. Auguié. According to M. Genêt, it was “a successful piece of work, which was crowned beyond all expectation” by the Queen herself.

D’Eon must have found his patriarchal life very monotonous, and after a few weeks “the charm of Petit-Montreuil covered with snow” vanished. He could think of nothing but fame, success and publicity, and avoided with difficulty the attention of these unimportant people who wished to meet this strange prodigy. His fame was then universal, and everywhere people were courting a heroine who was as modest as she was brave, and whom her contemporaries could only compare to Joan of Arc or Jeanne Hachette.

D’Eon had so ardently wished for and so cleverly planned this apotheosis that, of course, he meant to play a part in it. So he never missed an opportunity of escaping from his retreat; and, as Genêt said of him, “he was as fond of Paris as any dandy.” Among his old acquaintances, the Comtesse de Boufflers, the witty mistress of the Prince de Conti, “the idol of the Temple,” as Madame du Deffand called her, had been one of the first to express a wish to meet again the former minister plenipotentiary by whose side she had done the honours of the embassy in London:

M. d’Usson has told me, Mademoiselle, that you have not forgotten that we had the pleasure of meeting you in England, and that you seemed anxious to renew the acquaintance then begun. I, too, am most anxious to see again one who will be for ever famous on account of the remarkable events of her life as well as her many great qualities, and I shall be delighted if you will come and dine with me at the Temple next Friday.

In truth the audacious adventurer had become the favourite guest, the “lion” for whose presence at their receptions hostesses contended. On the little invitation-cards, which d’Eon religiously kept, appear the names of the cleverest women and the most distinguished people. The most inaccessible drawing-rooms opened their doors to this phenomenon, and not one of the least curious signs of the levity of the eighteenth century may be found in this childish credulity of a society which openly paraded its scepticism. The decadent and exhausted intellects of that period, divorced from all serious ideas and indifferent to both the advancement of science and to the beauty of art, concerned themselves with nothing but the bizarre. At a time when they were unable to read the signs of the tremendous social upheaval which was germinating around them, idlers at the court and unattached officers made _bon-mots_ and told highly spiced stories for the amusement of the ladies who held what was known as a _bureau d’esprit_.

D’Eon excelled in this kind of thing; his imagination, his inexhaustible spirits, his unexpected sallies made his audience forget the occasional coarseness of his oft-told tales. He attracted, in short, by a carefully guarded and mysterious eccentricity. He was even liked for the admirably feigned modesty which made him appear only at small social gatherings; for he prided himself on avoiding inquisitive people, and on being so indifferent to the attention he attracted that his friends found it necessary to press him to keep his engagements.

“The Duc de Luynes is longing to see you, and so is his father-in-law, M. de Laval,” wrote his friend Reine. “He told me he had asked you to dine with him; since you are in Paris, do go to see the Duchess, and be so good as to present our respects to her.”

If it seems strange that he should have received invitations, couched in most courteous terms, from the Comte de la Rochefoucauld, M. de Villaine, the Marquis de Chaponay, the Vicomtesse de Breteuil; that he should have become the assiduous guest of the Duchesse de Montmorency and the Vicomte de la Ferté, is it not stranger still that this extraordinary person had the entry of the drawing-rooms of the upper middle classes and of the legal notabilities, who formed at that time a very cultured and exclusive society? He excited the same curiosity among these people; and Talon, Fraguier, Tascher, Tanlay, Nicolaï, d’Agnesseau were all anxious to entertain him and sent their coaches to fetch him.