All this has afforded me the opportunity for becoming better acquainted with the creature with whom I have to deal. . . . the feeling of resentment against the late ministers and their friends of thirty years' standing is so strong in her, that too great a barrier cannot be placed between the contenders. Written promises to be prudent do not suffice to keep in check one whose blood boils at the simple mention of Guerchy. The positive declaration of her sex, and her promise to live for ever after in female attire, will be the only means of putting an end for the future to all kind of clamour and its consequences. I have been resolute in exacting this, and have succeeded.' 1

1 Beaumarchais to the Count de Vergennes, October 7, 1775. Loménie, i. 422.

CHAPTER XIV.

D'Eon surrenders the King's papers-Earl Ferrers' share in their custodyCovenant between Beaumarchais and D'Eon, who receives permission to return to France-and is ordered to resume female attire.

THE next few weeks were employed in arranging the terms of that Covenant by which D'Eon irrevocably bound himself to renounce his style as a man, and appear for ever thereafter in the character of a female, that being the sex to which he more properly belonged. During this interval also the iron safe was opened, and its contents declared by Beaumarchais to be far from meriting the importance attached to them. D'Eon insisted, on the contrary, that they were very precious, including, as they did, the earliest instructions supplied to the Duke de Nivernois on his proceeding to England; the earliest despatches of that minister giving the secret details of the negotiations for peace; and the family pact of the House of Bourbon, together with the secret convention-the whole of which were made up into four bundles; but he admitted that the papers of the greatest consequence were not in the iron safe at all. To produce these he took Beaumarchais to his residence, led him into his bedroom, and from beneath the flooring withdrew four parcels securely sealed and directed: Secret papers to be given to the King only, which, he avowed, completed the collection. D'Eon then drew up a list of the whole, in detail, Beaumarchais affixing his initials and a numeral to each sheet as he hastily perused it.

R

In conferring with Lord Ferrers, whose name appeared on D'Eon's list as one of his principal creditors, Beaumarchais shrewdly observed that either the debt owed to him was imaginary, or his debtor had been imposing upon him, by obtaining large sums of money on the security of papers held to be of considerable importance, but which papers had never really been consigned to him, they having been concealed in his own residence. To this Lord Ferrers replied that he regretted Beaumarchais should seek to create a breach between his friend the Chevalier and himself-he little cared to which sex he belonged-as he valued him for the spirit he showed and for his virtues. He had not been deceived, he said, on the nature of the papers in the iron safe, represented to have been State papers, and having seen the inventory of them, signed by Beaumarchais himself, he was more than ever convinced of the Chevalier's honesty and truthfulness, such papers being all he could have desired as security for his money. Even had his creditor died, he might have easily recovered what was owed to him, for the Court of France, or at any rate, the British Court, would have paid ten times the sum he claimed, rather than that publicity should be given to their contents. He was surprised, he added, at the dishonourable treatment by the French Court and its ministers of so extraordinary a person as the Chevalier D'Eon, who had worthily served his country, and yet had been so badly used.

Defending himself against the charge of having deceived Lord Ferrers, D'Eon says:

'M. de Beaumarchais makes me aver, upon his own private authority, what I never thought of or said. When I deposited the iron safe with his lordship he never even asked to see the

BEAUMARCHAIS' COVENANT WITH D'EON. 243

outside coverings of the papers. He trusted entirely to my word when I declared to him that it contained State papers, and the detailed list signed by M. de Beaumarchais has proved to his lordship that I told the truth. . . . I know how to conduct myself abroad, and especially amongst the natural enemies of France, with the prudence and policy acquired by long experience and a residence of twenty-two years in foreign lands. Mine was consequently an act of wisdom and prudence, in not revealing to an admiral, an English peer allied to the royal family, the fact of my holding secret correspondence with the King, and that the said voluminous correspondence was hidden beneath the flooring of my bed-chamber. It was for me alone to know this, and that the papers were near a mine of gunpowder which would have blown all into the air had any attempt been made to drive me out of my last retrenchment. How can M. de Beaumarchais distinguish by the name of deceit the reticence I have necessarily observed towards everybody except himself, coming to me as he did, in behalf of the King and of his minister? Should he not rather blush at having betrayed to an English nobleman, through a feeling of revenge, my secret, which was that of the late King, who commanded me not to breathe a word thereon to any living soul? But M. de Beaumarchais thinks that all secrets, even the most important of State secrets, are but green-room secrets.''

In the Covenant 2 between Beaumarchais and D'Eon, settling the terms for the surrender of the King's papers, and the return of the latter to France. the emendations and alterations, as they appear in footnotes, are written in the Chevalier's hand.

'We, the under-signed, Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, specially entrusted with the private instructions of the King of France, dated Versailles, August 25, 1775, communicated to the Chevalier D'Eon in London, and of which a

1 Note by D'Eon, written in 1776 (?)

2 Dictated by M. de Beaumarchais, then corrected by him and the Chevalier D'Eon.'-Note by D'Eon.

copy certified by me shall be annexed to the present act-on the one part:

'And Demoiselle Charles - Geneviève - Louise - Auguste André-Timothée D'Eon de Beaumont, spinster of age, hitherto known by the name of the Chevalier D'Eon, squire, formerly captain of dragoons, knight of the royal and military order of Saint Louis, aide-de-camp to Marshal the Duke and to the Count de Broglio, minister plenipotentiary from France at the Court of Great Britain, late doctor of civil law and of canon law, advocate in the Parliament of Paris, Censor Royal for history and belleslettres; sent to Russia with the Chevalier Douglas for effecting the reconciliation of the two Courts, secretary of Embassy to the Marquis de l'Hôpital, ambassador plenipotentiary from France at the Court of her Imperial Majesty of all the Russias, and secretary of Embassy to the Duke de Nivernois, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary from France to England for the conclusion of the late peace, are agreed upon what follows, and have subscribed our names :

'Art I. That I, Caron de Beaumarchais, do require, in the name of the King, that all official and private papers having reference to the several political negotiations with which the Chevalier D'Eon has been entrusted in England, notably those concerning the peace of 1763, correspondence, minutes, copies of letters, cyphers, &c., at present deposited with Lord Ferrers, Earl, Peer, and Admiral, of Upper Seymour Street, Portman Square, London, ever a particular friend of the said Chevalier D'Eon in the course of his troubles and law-suits in England, that the said papers, enclosed in a large iron safe of which I have the key, be delivered to me after having been initialled by me and by the said Chevalier D'Eon, and of which the inventory shall be added and annexed to the present act, as a proof that the said papers have been faithfully delivered.

'Art. II. That all papers of the secret correspondence between the Chevalier D'Eon, the late King, and the several persons entrusted by his Majesty to entertain that correspondence, designated in the letters by the names deputy, solicitor, in the same way in which his Majesty himself was styled the counsellor-which secret correspondence was concealed beneath the flooring of the bed-chamber of the said Chevalier D'Eon,