oyed at
having made my conquest. She told me that her sister's lover was a
Neapolitan, calling himself Marquis de Petina, and that they were to get
married as soon as he was out of prison. It seemed he was expecting
remittances, and the mother would be delighted to see her daughter a
marchioness.

"How much does the marquis owe?"

"Twenty guineas."

"And the Neapolitan ambassador allows him to languish in prison for such
a beggarly sum? I can't believe it."

"The ambassador won't have anything to do with him, because he left
Naples without the leave of the Government."

"Tell your sister that if the ambassador assures me that her lover's name
is really the Marquis de Petina, I will get him out of prison
immediately."

I went out to ask my daughter, and another boarder of whom I was very
fond, to dinner, and on my way called on the Marquis of Caraccioli, an
agreeable man, whose acquaintance I had made at Turin. I found the famous
Chevalier d'Eon at his house, and I had no need of a private interview to
make my inquiries about Petina.

"The young man is really what he professes to me," said the ambassador,
"but I will neither receive him nor give him any money till I hear from
my Government that he has received leave to travel."

That was enough for me, and I stayed there for an hour listening to
d'Eon's amusing story.

Eon had deserted the embassy on account of ten thousand francs which the
department of foreign affairs at Versailles had refused to allow him,
though the money was his by right. He had placed himself under the
protection of the English laws, and after securing two thousand
subscribers at a guinea apiece, he had sent to press a huge volume in
quarto containing all the letters he had received from the French
Government for the last five or six years.

About the same time a London banker had deposited the sum of twenty
thousand guineas at the Bank of England, being ready to wager that sum
that Eon was a woman. The bet was taken by a number of persons who had
formed themselves into a kind of company for the purpose, and the only
way to decide it was that Eon should be examined in the presence of
witnesses. The chevalier was offered half the wager, but he laughed them
to scorn. He said that such an examination would dishonour him, were he
man or woman. Caraccioli said that it could only dishonour him if he were
a woman, but I could not agree with this opinion. At the end of a year
the bet was decl