Part 15

One day the Comte de Polignac “begs him to come to his garret in the Tuileries and share an informal meal in military fashion. The Chevalière,” he adds, “will find there some good coffee preceded by cutlets, also a man of her acquaintance whom she will be glad to see. Everything will be served to the minute and without any fuss.” Another time the Baron de Castille tells him of the famous Cardinal de Rohan’s desire to know the Chevalière.

“I have given your address to Prince Louis,” he informs him; “he will either call on you while you are at Versailles, or request you to call on him; the short time he had at his disposal in Paris did not allow of his going to see you.” On Wednesday, March 11, 1778, as he carefully enters in a diary most scrupulously kept from day to day, d’Eon lunched with Voltaire. The day which he began with such a curious interview was strangely crowded with engagements, for he dined with the Comtesse de Béarn, and then proceeded to Madame de Marchais for supper. At this time he had already left Petit-Montreuil and settled down in the Rue de Conti, where he found it easier to lead the life which he neither could nor wished to avoid. His reception at court was as flattering as his reception in town. He attended the gala performances, which he watched from the box of Madame de Marchais, whose husband had been formerly gentleman of the bedchamber to Louis XV. Judging by the portrait he has left, d’Eon particularly admired her:

“She is an amiable little woman,” he says, “very witty, extremely pretty, and well made, with fair hair that reaches down to her heels, large blue eyes, and teeth as white as ivory. She was,” he goes on to say, “the friend of the late Marquise de Pompadour. She is a candlelight beauty who spends her days in the bath, in reading or writing, in her boudoir or at her toilet. She is only to be seen at night, or after the play at Court is over, when company meets at her house to partake of a delicious supper.”

D’Eon seems, in fact, as his little diary shows, to have admired the charming hostess no less than he appreciated her suppers. He spent most of his evenings at her house, and when, occasionally, he did not make his appearance, the little coterie which he enlivened by his gaiety was quite anxious about his health. If news reached them that he was ill, all the ladies hastened to his house. “Princess Sapieha, inquiring after him, sends to him the calabash syrup which she has recommended to him, and she sincerely hopes it will help to cure him.” On another occasion the Marquis de Comeiras, major-general of the King’s armies, acted as spokesman for d’Eon’s intimate friends, and expressed their anxiety in the following terms:—

I was more grieved than astonished, dear comrade, to hear, yesterday, that your throat was bad, that you had asked to be excused from going to Madame de Brige’s, and that she had sent you some broth. I told all that to Madame de Marchais last night: she at once wanted to send you some soup, another lady some beef-tea.... The Princesse de Montbarrey is very anxious to see you at her house; I have promised to mention this to you. They flatter me very much, my dear old comrade, by thinking that you are at my disposal. The fair sex, wishing to see their heroine, is constantly speaking to me of her.

Indeed d’Eon’s popularity was at its height, and he did his best to sustain it. Conceiving the idea of handing down to posterity the record of his exploits, he set about composing a series of fantastic accounts of his resumption of feminine dress, and also some important notes relating to the negotiations in which he had taken part. These various projects were not published, and are contained in the voluminous collection of his papers, d’Eon contenting himself with offering to the admiration of his contemporaries _The Military, Political, and Private Life of Mademoiselle d’Eon, known until 1777 by the Name of Chevalier d’Eon_. He himself edited the greater part, which appeared in the _Fastes Militaires_; but the signature of M. de la Fortelle, which figures on the title-page of the work, enabled the Chevalier to sing his own praises—praises to which he considered himself honestly entitled—without infringing the laws of modesty. Three thousand copies were specially printed off and sold in England, or distributed among friends, to whom the donor also sent his portrait, either engraved or etched.

All the engravers of the time were anxious to reproduce the features of the heroic Chevalière, who, of course, took good care not to refuse them such a favour. D’Eon was portrayed as a dragoon, with a helmet or a cocked hat; half-length, full-length or on horseback; as a woman, supplied with an elegant bust, bedecked with lace, and wearing a very fascinating cap; or as a dowager, soberly dressed in a tight-fitting black bodice, relieved by the Cross of Saint Louis. Other prints represent him as Minerva, wearing a sort of morion which is anything but antique, and on which the owl, the goddess’s emblem, has been replaced by the cock, which figures in the coat-of-arms of the d’Eon family. But equally interesting are the emblems, the inscriptions and the mottoes that surround these portraits. D’Eon, who prided himself on his learning as well as his courage, borrowed from antiquity the most pompous allusions from the classics, boldly inscribed round his own portrait the lines that the Latin poets had consecrated to the most redoubtable heroes and to the most fiery amazons of Greece and Rome. These prints, of which there were many and various, met with great success and are still much sought after.

They were to be found at Bradel’s studio, or at the shop of Esnault and Rapilly; but the hero himself circulated them with the utmost liberality. He had one engraved for his old comrades: “Dedicated to the Dragoons,” ran the inscription, and they delighted in studying the features of the illustrious captain, and in making of his exploits an inspiring example. At least that is what was asserted by the Abbé Moullet de Monbar, chaplain of the regiment of Ségur’s dragoons.

I have not the happiness of seeing you, Mademoiselle (he wrote to d’Eon), but I enjoy seeing your portrait, which attracts many visitors to my room, where it is the only ornament. This portrait penetrates my very soul when I gaze upon it. I see before me a heroine greater than the amazons and all the celebrated women of antiquity, a soldier full of spirit and daring, a faithful and patriotic minister plenipotentiary, who commands respect for his king and himself; I see before me an illustrious and interesting character, who will prove a perplexing phenomenon for the ages to come.

The thanks received from persons of high rank, though expressed in a less pompous style, were not less ardent or less flattering. Chancellor Maupeon wrote: “This attention from you has given me great pleasure; be assured, Mademoiselle, that nothing could exceed the esteem and affection I feel for you.”

The Duc de Guines, former ambassador of France in London, received “with much gratitude the present” which he had asked of d’Eon through the medium of the Comtesse de Broglie, his sister-in-law. As for the personal friends of the Chevalier, they never tired of the prints which he heaped on them, and praised to the full the charm of Latour’s pastel or the bold grace of Bradel’s engraving. “Your print is superb,” exclaimed Genêt, “particularly about the eyes, which are those of Bellona herself. The look is as haughty as if you were face to face with Beaumarchais. I defy him to bear it. Truth and honesty shine from it, and it is the thunderbolt which will annihilate him.”

Since death had delivered him from de Guerchy, d’Eon had found in Beaumarchais a new and no less determined adversary. Their quarrel had arisen just as that to which the ambassador had fallen a victim—out of a question of money. D’Eon did not hesitate to proclaim aloud that he had been duped by Beaumarchais, and that at the time of their covenant the latter had appropriated a sum of 60,000 livres, which was to have been set apart for indemnifying Lord Ferrers. This allegation, to which d’Eon gave considerable publicity, was welcomed by the enemies of the author of _The Barber of Seville_, who, naturally enough, were many. The complacently-told story of the ridiculous romance by which he allowed himself to be carried away for a time, set court and town shaking with laughter. For once the celebrated pamphleteer was obliged to admit that the laughter was not with him, and, after having so often diverted himself at the expense of his contemporaries, he had to endure their raillery. Certain impromptu comedies which were performed at that time in fashionable circles, and some burlesques inspired by the carnival, which represented him as engaged in making love to the virile Chevalière, exasperated him beyond measure. The point was all the more telling as d’Eon amused himself by acting his own part—that of an artless maiden—with an improvised Beaumarchais. Seeing himself held up to ridicule in this manner, and accused of such incredible blindness, Beaumarchais was put out of countenance, and completely lost his temper. Not knowing how to retaliate, he complained to M. de Vergennes, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, begging him to vindicate his character from the calumnies that were being publicly circulated about him:

As long as the Demoiselle d’Eon contented herself with writing ill of me to you in reference to the services I rendered her in England, or of sending word to you to the same effect, I treated her ingratitude with silent contempt, as you are aware, regretting her folly without complaining. I concealed her faults and attributed them to the weakness of a sex to which all is forgiven.... Now she no longer tries to injure me from a distance, nor in writing; but in Paris, in the best houses, where she is received out of curiosity, and even at dinner, before lacqueys, she is base enough to accuse me of having appropriated 60,000 livres, which sum, she says, was a portion of the money confided to me for her use.... I do not wish the Demoiselle d’Eon to be punished, I pardon her; but I entreat his Majesty to permit me to make my justification as public as the insult which has been offered to me.

Beaumarchais had no trouble in obtaining the vindication which he desired. M. de Vergennes wrote to him a most flattering letter, giving him permission to publish it; making acknowledgments to the great scrupulousness of the negotiator who “without claiming the reimbursement of his personal expenses, had, throughout the transaction, shown no other interest than that of facilitating the Demoiselle d’Eon’s return to her native land.”

Beaumarchais was too well pleased with this testimony not to hasten to publish it, adding thereto, by way of postscript, an open letter addressed to d’Eon, in which he showed himself disdainful if generous:

May this gentle treatment, which you so little deserve, make you reflect seriously and teach you to govern yourself, since the many services rendered by me have neither inspired you with justice nor with gratitude. Such a change of conduct is necessary to your own peace of mind, believe me, who while pardoning would rue the day when first I met you, if it were possible to regret having placed ingratitude personified under obligation.

The author of _The Barber of Seville_ had only sought to justify himself before the public by issuing those documents, for he knew his adversary too well to entertain the hope of reducing him so easily to silence. Brought before the tribunal of public opinion, whose approval he had ever courted, stung to the quick by Beaumarchais’ disdain, humiliated by the minister’s offensive language, d’Eon replied at once with malicious irony. His letter to the Comte de Vergennes is too long to be cited here in full; but a few passages will be sufficient to indicate the tone:

Now that I have obeyed the King’s commands by resuming female attire on the feast day of St. Ursula; now that I am living in tranquillity and peace in the habit of a vestal, and that I have completely forgotten Caron and his boat, judge of my surprise in receiving an epistle from the said Caron, enclosing copies, duly certified, of a letter he addressed to you, and of your reply.

Although I know my Beaumarchais by heart, I must admit, Monseigneur, that his imposture and the way he sets about causing its acceptance have nevertheless astonished me.

Was it not M. de Beaumarchais who, unable to persuade me to be dishonest and to support him in his speculations on my sex, spread the report all over Paris that he was to marry me after I had spent seven months at the Abbey of the Ladies of St. Anthony, when, as a fact, he was within an inch of being espoused to my cane, while in London? But his name alone is a remedy against nuptial love; the acheronic ring about it would frighten any _dragonne_, however resolute she might be.

I must warn you, Monseigneur, that fictitious Demoiselles d’Eon, wearing the order of Saint Louis, have made their appearance in more than one fashionable house in Paris. They were jesters who said the most absurd things about all the acquaintances of the real Chevalière d’Eon, but chiefly with reference to the agreeable, honourable, and courageous Pierre-Augustin-Caron de Beaumarchais.... This scene, of which there have been an infinite number of variations, was repeated, I am told, last week, while I was quietly working and sleeping in my retreat at Petit-Montreuil. Does M. de Beaumarchais, so fond of hoaxing others, desire to have the monopoly of such a privilege?...

Let me tell you, Monseigneur, that all the integrity of the four ministers joined to your own, even adding to it that of the chief clerks, would fail to make an honest man of M. de Beaumarchais in this business. The searching light which his past conduct throws on his character has compelled me much to my regret to class him with those by whom one must be hated in order to retain any self-respect.

To add further to the irony of this curious epistle, and to win over to his cause the sex whose heroine he flattered himself he had become, d’Eon, assuming the tone of an outraged woman, ended the letter with a most fantastic invocation which he entitled:

_The Appeal of Mademoiselle d’Eon to her Contemporaries_

M. de Beaumarchais has sought to deprive me of that consideration so conducive to my peaceful existence. I put him to confusion by ridiculing his impotent rage. He is a Thersites who should be whipped for having dared to be insolent to his betters, whom he ought to respect. I denounce and abandon him to the whole feminine sex of my time, as one who would fain have exalted himself at the expense of a woman, and avenged his frustrated hopes by humiliating a woman, who, of all others, has at heart the glory of her sex.

This appeal to the feelings and pride of her feminine contemporaries met with a ready response, and d’Eon, who had not failed to scatter broadcast the newspapers which published this strange polemic, received the heartiest congratulations from far and near. “The elevation of her sentiments” were contrasted with “the horror with which her antagonist fills all thinking and sentient persons.” “Unaware of the motives which prompt the Minister for Foreign Affairs to employ such an agent,” wrote a contemporary of d’Eon, “I think it desirable that he should at least prevent his encouraging imitators. Mankind were too much to be pitied if Beaumarchais should form others after his own pattern.”

At Caen, “where all the honest folk of the province wished to see him,” his malicious appeal met with great success. “I received it at the house of the Comtesse de la Tournelle,” wrote a certain Count d’Ormesson, “where all the nobility of the neighbourhood were assembled, as there have been balls and theatrical performances for four successive days. I cannot describe the effect it produced. Everybody was delighted with your style and the simple and straightforward way in which you tell your adversary his faults.”

The bitter enmity which Beaumarchais had brought down on himself in every quarter had doubtless contributed to d’Eon’s success; yet that would not of itself entirely explain the interest which attached to the most insignificant doings of the Chevalière. In spite of his eccentric behaviour, and the scandal he created, d’Eon had succeeded in pleasing serious and soberminded people, while at the same time he won over the populace by his art of self-advertisement. His keen perception had gauged the power of the press, then still in its infancy, and since his residence in England he had not ceased to exploit himself in the newspapers. No doubt he shared with many others the merit of having bravely done his duty on the field of battle; but such modest deeds, already made much of when they were known to have been accomplished by a woman, had become exaggerated, in the flattering brilliancy of enthusiastic accounts, into veritable triumphs. “The Chevalière was a unique heroine, whose whole life belonged to her contemporaries.” Such was certainly d’Eon’s opinion. Accordingly, no sooner had his dispute with Beaumarchais subsided than he thought it necessary to announce in a rhodomontade, which now appears absurdly pompous, the verdict of the Lord Chief Justice, annulling the decision as to the validity of the wagers regarding his sex. Men of affairs and scholars even did not hesitate to congratulate the illustrious Chevalière. M. de Lalande, with the gravity befitting an astronomer and an academician, wrote to her:

I heartily rejoiced when I saw that you had subjected England to the laws of honour, while at the same time punishing in France the rashness of the man who would have feared the Chevalier, but thought he might brave the Chevalière. Your jests are at once as bitter and amusing as your style is noble and majestic when you write to a minister. Permit me, Mademoiselle, to send this letter to you by one of my friends who has never seen a heroine, and is longing to pay his respects to you; allow him to present mine also, with this tribute of admiration, gratitude, and esteem.

Another member of the French Academy, the Comte de Tressan, whom d’Eon had thanked for a book that had recently appeared by sending two of her works, replied in the same eulogistic vein, adding:

The letter with which you have honoured me fills me with gratitude: it is an equal distinction to merit your approbation, whether as a soldier or as an academician.

Your letter, Mademoiselle, having been forwarded on Tuesday last to Paris, I would have hastened to call on you, to thank you in person; but being seized that day with a sort of catarrh accompanied by fever, I wrapped myself up well and returned at once to my hermitage. Feeling better, I seize the first opportunity of telling you how extremely touched I am by the kindness of the one person in the world whom I have always admired, whether wielding the sword or the pen. You have realised in your person the valour of both Morphiso and Bradamante, so nobly sung by Ariosto. But you have done more, you have parried the attacks of the spoiled child to whom everybody yields, and you set an example to the world of a mind which is proof against every form of weakness. You were born, Mademoiselle, to vanquish the warrior, the diplomat, and love itself, and deserve the worship of the friends who have the honour of living with you and of enjoying the charm as well as the advantage of listening to you. There is no one of either sex who does not feel some emulation when listening to you, no one who is not moved by your speech and encouraged by your example to become still braver or more virtuous. As soon as I am able to return to Paris, Mademoiselle, I will hasten to assure you of the regard, the attachment, and the admiration which I have for you.

While welcoming these polite speeches with all the sensibility of a woman of his time, d’Eon had already thought of an excellent way of “vanquishing love,” and was forming projects for retiring into a convent for a few months. Full of his part, and taking a malicious pleasure in the comedy, he chose the most equivocal situations, and amused himself in playing the cynical dilettante. Having obtained permission, through M. de Reine, to retire to the convent of Saint Louis, at Saint Cyr, he had been obliged to give up the idea, “as the Bishop of Chartres, who was then in Rome, could alone grant so rare a favour.” On being acquainted with the Chevalière’s desire, the nuns had, without the slightest hesitation, admitted her to their parlour for want of the coveted cell, and d’Eon, short as had been his visit, had left among the venerable dames a pleasant impression which is expressed in the following note:—

Our Mother-Superior, Madame de Montchevreuil, has given me a most agreeable commission, Mademoiselle, in charging me to assure you once more of the pleasure which your visit has afforded us, and also to express the esteem with which you have inspired all the inhabitants of our house. She wishes to convince you of the sincerity of these sentiments, and she suggests Monday or Tuesday next as the day for the second visit with which you propose to honour us. But, Mademoiselle, as it is always well to hasten the enjoyment of that which affords us legitimate pleasure, we trust that your choice will fall on Monday.... I remind you of your promise, which you cannot fail to fulfil without being untrue to yourself. As for myself, who had the honour of being in attendance on you and of seeing you more frequently, I beg to assure you that to my esteem and admiration for the Chevalier d’Eon I add my attachment to Mademoiselle....

On reading this letter d’Eon was full of gratitude to these saintly women and of humility towards himself. He remembered that in his youth his knowledge of Holy Writ had won for him the degree of Doctor of Canon Law, and his answer to the invitation he had received was couched in the language of an earnest, devout and repentant person. In a few pages, the writing of which must have afforded him the keenest enjoyment (he kept three copies of this letter), d’Eon succeeded in judging himself with an impartiality that would have been meritorious in any other circumstance.

... I purpose going alone (he wrote), so that nothing shall divert my attention whilst on my way to the house of the Lord’s elect, and that I may be the better able to benefit by the holiness of your discourse, which is the living expression of the purity of your lives, and of the peace that reigns in your hearts.