regular plot was laid for the
kidnapping of de la Motte, at Newcastle, after the affair of the
Diamond Necklace. In 1752 a Marquis de Fratteau was collared by a sham
marshal court officer, put on board a boat at Gravesend, and carried
to the Bastille!

D'Eon, under charge of libel, lived a fugitive and cloistered
existence till the man who, he says, was to have assassinated him, de
Vergy, sought his alliance, and accused de Guerchy of having suborned
him to murder the little daredevil. A grand jury brought in a true
bill against the French ambassador, and the ambassador's butler,
accused of having drugged d'Eon, fled. But the English Government, by
aid of what the Duc de Broglie calls a _noli prosequi_ (_nolle_ being
usual), tided over a difficulty of the gravest kind. The granting of
the _nolle prosequi_ is denied.[44] The ambassador was mobbed and took
leave of absence, and Louis XV., through de Broglie, offered to d'Eon
terms humiliating to a king. The Chevalier finally gave up the warrant
for his secret mission in exchange for a pension of 12,000 livres, but
he retained all other secret correspondence and plans of invasion. As
for de Guerchy, he resigned (1767), and presently died of sheer
annoyance, while his enemy, the Chevalier, stayed in England as London
correspondent of Louis XV. He reported, in 1766, that Lord Bute was a
Jacobite, and de Broglie actually took seriously the chance of
restoring, by Bute's aid, Charles III., who had just succeeded, by the
death of the Old Chevalier, to 'a kingdom not of this world.'

[Footnote 44: _Political Register_, Sept. 1767; Buchan Telfer, p.
181.]

The death of Louis XV., in 1774, brought the folly of the secret
policy to an end, but in the same year rumours about d'Eon's dubious
sex appeared in the English newspapers on the occasion of his book,
_Les Loisirs du Chevalier d'Eon_, published at Amsterdam. Bets on his
sex were made, and d'Eon beat some bookmakers with his stick. But he
persuaded Drouet, an envoy from France, that the current stories were
true, and this can only be explained, if explained at all, by his
perception of the fact that, his secret employment being gone, he felt
the need of an advertisement. Overtures for the return of the secret
papers were again made to d'Eon, but he insisted on the restoration of
his diplomatic rank, and on receiving 14,000_l._ on account of
expenses. He had aimed too high, however, and was glad to come to a
compromise with