The first move was that “they” tried to trick d’Eon into fighting a duel. He tells the story in his confessions. A suspicious character named Vergy had recently arrived from France and was usually to be found hanging about the Embassy. One night when the chevalier was dining there, Vergy picked a quarrel with him, or vice versa, and a few days later called on him to deliver a challenge. D’Eon was not at home, but when he returned he found the message. (It all sounds most unlike our usual ideas of dueling. Until I read this account I always assumed for some reason that a man was invariably at home to receive such a challenge. On second thought, I don’t see why this must always be true.) D’Eon, at any rate, got the message, rather as if he had read it on a telephone pad, and then he changed his clothes and went out to a dinner the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, was giving for Guerchy.
Most people in the duels I have read about also keep quiet when they intend to fight. After all, it is usually against the law. But this impending affair of honor was probably on the poor chevalier’s mind, and he began to talk about it in full company. He could scarcely have picked a group more likely to be startled by the information. Halifax suggested, tactfully at first, that he give up the whole idea. D’Eon refused, and Halifax said that in that case he had no choice but to give his guest in charge. A confused and somewhat drunken scene ensued, at the end of which the fiery Burgundian was actually placed under guard, where he remained until he signed a declaration that he would not disturb the peace without first communicating with Lords Sandwich and Halifax.
Poor d’Eon. After that evening he began to suspect all manner of other plots against him. Guerchy one evening doped his wine with opium, he declared, with the object of kidnaping him once he had fallen asleep. “They” kept spies on him, too, day and night. They supplied a new lock for his door when he attempted to change the one he had, but he was too clever for them: he knew what they were about. By far the most fiendish thing they did was to hire a chimney sweep to drive him mad by tapping on the walls all night. Had he gone mad as they wished, said the chevalier, they could with impunity have carried him off for a lunatic.
Again the chevalier was too smart for his enemies. He moved. He went to stay with La Rozière, and fortified the house. The whole ground floor was mined. Furthermore, “He kept a lamp burning throughout the night, and had a red-hot poker at his side during the day. His arsenal included four brace of pistols, two guns, and eight sabres. The garrison consisted of several dragoons of his old regiment, for whom he had sent, and some deserters whom he picked up in London.…”*
After the embarrassing affair of the duel and the declaration in Lord Halifax’s house, the French Foreign Office decided that as one of the cats was out of the bag in any case it was no use to go on pretending nothing was wrong between d’Eon and his Government. With the reluctant permission of Louis, who was thinking of The Papers, Praslin directed Guerchy to apply for extradition of their fugitive minister plenipotentiary. Louis added a personal letter, saying that the ambassador was to hold himself ready as soon as extradition was granted to seize all papers which d’Eon had in his possession, and bring them back in person to France, there to hand them over to Louis himself. We can well imagine what a coil the monarch was in, and how he worried and said to himself, as soon as these letters were dispatched, “Yes, but what if Guerchy grows suspicious of my marked interest in this matter? What if he takes a little peep at the papers I have mentioned? Of course he will. I was a fool to have made such a point of it. I must take more precautions yet.”
So he sat down again, and wrote to the chevalier, and warned him about the request for extradition. “If you cannot make your escape, save at least your papers, and do not trust M. Monin [an assistant to d’Eon’s secret intelligence work, who had come over with Guerchy].… He is betraying you.” If trying to follow Louis’s mental processes makes us dizzy, how much more confusing the effort must have been for the chevalier’s already puzzled brains!
For no one knows exactly what reason, d’Eon now sent his kinsman and host, La Rozière, to France with a selection of innocuous embassy papers. At his first glance at these Louis was overjoyed with relief, thinking they were the whole lot. He hastily decided he did not need the chevalier’s good will any more, and gave orders to increase pressure on him in London. Until then the English had refused extradition; but with Louis himself backing up the demand, they permitted word to go out that d’Eon, having been pronounced guilty of high treason, was henceforth forbidden to attend court and was formally divested of diplomatic status, with all his arrears forfeit to the Crown of France. Then, after thus abandoning his hitherto faithful servant, Louis discovered that he did not, after all, hold the most dangerous of The Papers safe in his hand. The chevalier had tricked him.
Like a wicked producer in an American novel about Hollywood, Louis hastened to make up to d’Eon again and repair the damage. But he kept tripping over his own former behavior. How was he to placate the man without stimulating suspicion in the Foreign Office? There was Broglie nagging at him to do something to reassure d’Eon, reminding him that France could not possibly face war as yet, and Louis knew very well that England might attack if the story of the invasion conspiracy should come out. But Praslin was determined to punish the impertinent creature, and Louis had already slipped the leash on Praslin; he dared not control his Foreign Minister again on the d’Eon question.
The King simply could not cope, and for a long time nothing at all was done. Vainly waiting in London for some secret reassurance, penniless and disgraced, the chevalier at last began to behave exactly as Broglie had feared he would do. He published.
He broke all the rules of diplomacy (he was not the first nor the last disgruntled diplomat to do that) and told, if not all, at least very much too much. The essence of his secret work he held back; England was not yet to know, evidently, of Louis’s perfidy. D’Eon kept the faith on that. But for the rest he took the world into his confidence. He blasted away at Guerchy, jeering at the envoy for his ignorance of writing, which as a matter of cruel truth did come very close to illiteracy. He published any amount of private correspondence from the embassy archives. Some of this—quite a lot of it—related to his own grievances, but there was a portion which had nothing whatever to do with the case of d’Eon vs. Guerchy. It was put into the volume of Lettres, Mémoires et Négotiations du Chevalier d’Eon only to confound and embarrass the unfortunate ambassador and those who dared to support him. And he promised a second installment soon. More than ever, the situation was uncomfortable for Louis. It might be described as The Monarch’s Nightmare.
They absolutely loved the book in London. Horace Walpole, especially, enjoyed it, and became a prominent d’Eon fan. It was more than mere amusing scandal, however, to the higher-ups, who pricked up their ears. The chevalier was soon able to write to Tercier that the opposition had offered him any money he might require for the rest of the papers.
“You must feel how repugnant such an expedient must be to me,” he said artlessly, “and yet if I am forsaken what would you have me do?” What indeed? The chevalier’s mind was fixed on Guerchy as the author of all his misfortunes; even more than his own future, his enemy’s punishment preoccupied him. “If I am entirely forsaken, and if between now and Easter Sunday” (it was nearing the end of March 1764, when he wrote) “I do not receive a promise, signed by the King or by Comte de Broglie, to the effect that reparation will be made to me for all the ills that I have endured at the hands of M. de Guerchy, then I declare to you formally I shall lose all hope; and in forcing me to embrace the cause of the King of England … you must make up your mind to a war at no distant period.…”
Threats of blackmail, hasty messengers from Broglie, more messengers from the French Foreign Office, secret offers to buy The Papers, kidnaping plots—none of these had the effect either Louis or Praslin wanted, for d’Eon remained uncaptured and unrepentant, and grew more and more violent and paranoiac. He went about London heavily armed, even t
o the theater, and boasted wildly to the world of what he would do if anyone tried to take him prisoner.
The attitude of the British public toward all this was a strange one. Society observed developments with a cold amusement which leads one to wonder if the English would have been so horrified by a revelation of the invasion plans after all. Perhaps nothing would have shocked these people, who had few illusions at the best of times. Everyone seemed quite sure that the chevalier’s ravings were not without foundation, and they were perfectly right. The whole thing, one gathers, was merely what Londoners would have expected; they watched the drama with an interest unmarred by any trace of partisan indignation or sympathy. Would France get the chevalier at last, or would he outwit the Foreign Office and save himself? Languidly, gentlemen laid bets on the question.
Then their sport was spoiled. D’Eon, sued for libel by Guerchy on account of his memoirs, was found guilty, but his trial was held in absentia. The chevalier had gone underground.
It is reasonably safe to suppose that nobody ever before escaped a libel suit or evaded a judicial sentence in quite the same manner as that employed by our hero. He did not conceal himself in an unimaginative manner by staying indoors. His method was much simpler. All the chevalier found it necessary to do was to step into female clothing and move to a house far from his former haunts, a house of the sort qualified by the phrase “ill fame,” run by a Frenchwoman, Madame Dufour. Heaven knows how d’Eon happened to know of Madame or her house, but there he was, safely incognito, for as long as he found the masquerade convenient. Certainly he was better fitted than most men of his acquaintance to play such a part. In woman’s dress the chevalier, as long as he was careful to shave, was remarkably convincing. He moved about the streets of London quite freely.
Also, he was able without interruption to carry on his one-man war against the French ambassador from the call house. He sent a challenge to Guerchy, but the envoy declined the honor, retorting that since their military ranks were so widely disparate, such a duel would not be proper.
Then d’Eon joined forces with Vergy and brought suit against Guerchy in the English court, alleging attempts to drug, murder, kidnap or otherwise do away with him. Guerchy was actually indicted on Vergy’s evidence, but d’Eon never followed up the matter, to the great relief of the British authorities, who were not sure just how far they would be able to proceed with such grave charges against a foreign ambassador.
In the meantime, in France, Louis’s ministers had nearly caught on to the plans which he had until now so carefully concealed from them. Something definite would have to be done, and quickly; Louis’s own safety was not involved, but that of the Broglies and many others was, and the King could not afford such a loss of his following as discovery would involve. At last the Comte de Broglie prevailed upon Louis to make overtures of peace to the recalcitrant and fugitive chevalier. The first offer, which was ambiguous, d’Eon flatly refused. Haggling continued, until at last the ante was raised to what the chevalier considered a respectable level. He was to have a pension of twelve thousand livres a year, guaranteed by Broglie’s own property; there would be no reprisals, and he would carry on as before with his work as intelligence agent in England. Gratified and reassured—had he not won his battles all along the line?—the chevalier stepped out of hiding, once more in breeches, and appeared in public. He also resumed his secret reporting. A man in better mental condition would have realized that his King would never again trust him, nor rest until he was silenced, but d’Eon had no qualms. That is, he had no qualms concerning his safety as long as he held onto the mass of incriminating documents. To all suggestions that he give them up the chevalier turned an absent ear. One letter only he exchanged, for a written promise from Louis respecting his pension. He went on living in London, writing for his own amusement and spying out of long habit.
The whisper first started as a joke, perhaps, like the jokes the Russians had made years before, during jovial parties in St. Petersburg. Then it was reinforced from an unexpected source. Madame Dufour on a visit to her native land blabbed to someone, in the hope of getting a reward from Louis for the information, that the Chevalier d’Eon had once found refuge with her and had dressed as a woman for a long stretch of time, fooling everybody. Or were they fooled? Was it not, perhaps, the other way about, that the chevalier was in reality a chevalière, who spent the greater part of her life in masquerade?
Nobody paid Madame Dufour for her little bit of scandal, but the story spread. Or, rather, it seeped. It took years to get a grip on the British public; it moved slowly, collecting inference as it went, until in time the inference, from being so often repeated, began to sound like evidence. Was the chevalier a woman? To be sure, he had a beard, but bearded women were not unknown. Could any female step forward and swear, from personal experience, that he was a man? Whether anyone could is a mystery; at any rate, no female did. Tittering, whispering, the world continued to speculate—to speculate in a genuine sense: people began to bet on it.
D’Eon himself acted in a manner strangely coy. The wagering reached enormous proportions before he would make any official statement whatever on the subject, although privately, among friends, he was willing enough to talk about how disgraceful and ridiculous the whole question was. When there seemed real danger of his being kidnaped, stripped, and examined by force, he disappeared from town and went on a journey. Coming back to a much quieter atmosphere, when he deemed himself safe from outrage, he announced that he would never permit himself to be examined. Naturally, such a statement did nothing to stop the talk.
In 1771 when the uncertainty was raging at its highest pitch of excitement, Broglie asked d’Eon outright, by letter, to tell him once and for all what he was. The chevalier replied with what was evidently perfect frankness. He was, he said, a man, but a man without sex urges. Sexless men are apt to cause that sort of talk, he explained. Broglie and Louis believed this, until a year later when one of their agents—a trusted one, not a pensioned menace like the chevalier himself—brought from London what he swore was positive proof that d’Eon was a female. This convinced them.
However, there did not seem to be anything to do about it. D’Eon, no matter which sex he was, remained, as far as Versailles was concerned, what he had been for many years, a nuisance who must be kept quiet at a price. Recently he had shown fresh signs of restlessness, wanting to come home, but Louis would not consider granting this request. D’Eon with The Papers had become so accepted a danger that he was almost a myth in France, and the situation might have continued indefinitely had the rest of the Continent’s politics remained static. Unfortunately for d’Eon, politics don’t stay fixed and kings are mortal. Louis XV died.
He discovered just before he died that his secret service was not so awfully secret after all. Other monarchs as well as himself knew how to bribe, trick, and snoop, and the Black Cabinet of Vienna possessed accurate copies of his most carefully cherished documents. What might have happened to his secret service if Louis had continued to live is a moot point. It would seem to have outlived its usefulness, but it had become an ingrained habit with the King; could he have done without it? The point was settled in any case by death, for when Louis XVI heard what an unsavory organization he had inherited, he lost no time in dispersing the agents and pensioning them off. Thus the matter of the chevalier was again reviewed, and again the court began sending messengers to bargain with him.
The intervening years had reduced the value of the secrets the chevalier was holding onto, but he did not realize it. He made enormous demands. He asked so much, to begin with, that Louis XVI nearly withdrew all offers. After all, it was not his own name he was protecting, and it seemed rather farfetched to suppose England would now go to war over an outdated plan of his predecessor. Still, many living people were involved; it would be better to hush it all up. So he continued to send messengers to d’Eon, trying to make him see reason and abate his desires.
No one succeeded until, quite by
accident at first, Caron de Beaumarchais blundered into the affair. Beaumarchais, now remembered chiefly because he wrote the story of The Barber of Seville, was a man of many talents, but was not overburdened with nicety of conscience. In his way as great an adventurer as the chevalier himself, he scented a possible advantage in d’Eon’s quandary.
D’Eon appealed to him for help when the latest of the King’s men had lost patience and gone back to France. Could not Beaumarchais resolve this problem, he asked, and make the court see reason? If so, the author would himself profit by it; the chevalier would divide with him.
Beaumarchais hung back. The chance of making his fortune was tempting, but he probably felt that a man as tricky as the chevalier would cheat him after the settlement had been made. He was still hesitating when d’Eon played his trump card. He would hold nothing back, said the chevalier; the time had come to confess. Beaumarchais had doubtless heard the rumor that he was a woman? Yes, said Beaumarchais, everyone had heard it. Well, said d’Eon, shyly hanging his head, it was true.…
We will never know, now, just why d’Eon did this. He may have thought it out coolly and carefully, blurting as he did merely in order to push through the bargain with Beaumarchais, but even so it was an extraordinary idea, just as it had been extraordinary to disguise himself as he had done chez Madame Dufour. Admittedly there are many transvestites and other inverts to whom such a role would appeal, but d’Eon had never until now behaved at all like an invert. Perhaps, however, he didn’t know why he did it. Did he feel attraction for Beaumarchais? Possibly.
Beaumarchais for his part was later to declare that he had been tricked, lured into a lot of trouble by his fatal kindness of heart. Here was a poor old maid in the devil of a fix, begging him to help her out. How could any normally chivalrous man refuse? Moreover, she gave him to understand that she loved him. She led him on. He fell in love with her, said Caron de Beaumarchais.