his vast MSS., d'Eon declares that
he went to Russia disguised in 1755. But he represents himself as then
aged twenty, whereas he was really twenty-seven, and this he does in
1773, before he made up his mind to pose for life as a woman. He had a
running claim against the French government for the expenses of his
first journey to Russia. This voyage, in 1776, he dates in 1755, but
in 1763, in an official letter, he dates his journey to Russia, of
which the expenses were not repaid, in 1756. That is the true
chronology. Nobody denies that he did visit Russia in 1756 attired as
a male diplomatist, but few now believe that in 1755 he accompanied
Douglas as that gentleman's pleasing young niece.

MM. Homberg and Jousselin, in their recent work,[42] declare that
among d'Eon's papers, which lay for a century in the back shop of a
London bookseller, they find letters to him, from June 1756, written
by Tercier, who managed the secret of Louis XV. There are no known
proofs of d'Eon's earlier presence in Russia, and in petticoats, in
1755.

[Footnote 42: _Le Chevalier d'Eon_, p. 18.]

He did talk later of a private letter of Louis XV., of October 4,
1763, in which the King wrote that he 'had served him usefully in the
guise of a female, and must now resume it,' and that letter is
published, but all the evidence, to which we shall return, tends to
prove that this paper is an ingenious deceptive 'interpolation.' If
the King did write it, then he was deceiving the manager of his
secret policy--Tercier--for, in the note, he bids d'Eon remain in
England, while he was at the same time telling Tercier that he was
uneasy as to what d'Eon might do in France, when he obeyed his
_public_ orders to return.[43] If, then, the royal letter of October
4, 1763, testifying to d'Eon's feminine disguise in Russia, be
genuine, Louis XV. had three strings to his bow. He had his public
orders to ministers, he had his private conspiracy worked through
Tercier, and he had his secret intrigue with d'Eon, of which Tercier
was allowed to know nothing. This hypothesis is difficult, if not
impossible, and the result is that d'Eon was not current in Russia as
Douglas's pretty French niece and as reader to the Empress Elizabeth
in 1755.

[Footnote 43: Broglie, _Secret du Roi_, ii. 51, note.]

In 1756, in his own character as a man and a secretary, he did work
under Douglas, then on his second visit, public and successful, to
gain Russia to the French all