h bookseller.' No other reference as to
authenticity is given, and some letters to d'Eon of supreme importance
are casually cited, but are not printed. On the other hand, we have
many new letters for the later period of the life of the hero. The
best modern accounts are that by the Duc de Broglie, who used the
French State archives and his own family papers in _Le Secret du Roi_
(Paris, 1888), and _The Strange Career of the Chevalier d'Eon_ (1885),
by Captain J. Buchan Telfer, R.N. (Longmans, 1885), a book now out of
print. The author was industrious, but not invariably happy in his
translations of French originals. D'Eon himself drew up various
accounts of his adventures, some of which he published. They are oddly
careless in the essential matter of dates, but contain many astounding
genuine documents, which lend a sort of 'doubtsome trust' to others,
hardly more incredible, which cannot be verified, and are supposed by
the Duc de Broglie to be 'interpolations.' Captain Buchan Telfer is
less sceptical. The doubtfulness, to put it mildly, of some papers,
and the pretty obvious interpolations in others, deepen the
obscurity.]

Charles d'Eon was born on October 7, 1728, near Tonnerre. His family
was of _chetive noblesse_, but well protected, and provided for by
'patent places.' He was highly educated, took the degree of doctor of
law, and wrote with acceptance on finance and literature. His was a
studious youth, for he was as indifferent to female beauty as was
Frederick the Great, and his chief amusements were fencing, of which
art he was a perfect master, and society, in which his wit and gaiety
made the girlish-looking lad equally welcome to men and women. All
were fond of 'le petit d'Eon,' so audacious, so ambitious, and so
amusing.

The Prince de Conti was his chief early patron, and it was originally
in support of Conti's ambition to be King of Poland that Louis XV.
began his incredibly foolish 'secret'--a system of foreign policy
conducted by hidden agents behind the backs of his responsible
ministers at Versailles and in the Courts of Europe. The results
naturally tend to recall a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera of
diplomacy. We find magnificent ambassadors gravely trying to carry out
the royal orders, and thwarted by the King's secret agents. The King
seems to have been too lazy to face his ministers, and compel them to
take his own line, while he was energetic enough to work like Tiberius
or Philip II. of Sp