When I got back to my small seraglio I supped merrily with the five nymphs, and spent a delicious night with Victoire, who was overjoyed at having made my conquest.  She told me that her sister’s lover was a Neapolitan, calling himself Marquis de Petina, and that they were to get married as soon as he was out of prison.  It seemed he was expecting remittances, and the mother would be delighted to see her daughter a marchioness.

“How much does the marquis owe?”

“Twenty guineas.”

“And the Neapolitan ambassador allows him to languish in prison for such a beggarly sum?  I can’t believe it.”

“The ambassador won’t have anything to do with him, because he left Naples without the leave of the Government.”

“Tell your sister that if the ambassador assures me that her lover’s name is really the Marquis de Petina, I will get him out of prison immediately.”

I went out to ask my daughter, and another boarder of whom I was very fond, to dinner, and on my way called on the Marquis of Caraccioli, an agreeable man, whose acquaintance I had made at Turin.  I found the famous Chevalier d’Eon at his house, and I had no need of a private interview to make my inquiries about Petina.

“The young man is really what he professes to me,” said the ambassador, “but I will neither receive him nor give him any money till I hear from my Government that he has received leave to travel.”

That was enough for me, and I stayed there for an hour listening to d’Eon’s amusing story.

Eon had deserted the embassy on account of ten thousand francs which the department of foreign affairs at Versailles had refused to allow him, though the money was his by right.  He had placed himself under the protection of the English laws, and after securing two thousand subscribers at a guinea apiece, he had sent to press a huge volume in quarto containing all the letters he had received from the French Government for the last five or six years.

About the same time a London banker had deposited the sum of twenty thousand guineas at the Bank of England, being ready to wager that sum that Eon was a woman.  The bet was taken by a number of persons who had formed themselves into a kind of company for the purpose, and the only way to decide it was that Eon should be examined in the presence of witnesses.  The chevalier was offered half the wager, but he laughed them to scorn.  He said that such an examination would dishonour him, were he man or woman.  Caraccioli said that it could only dishonour him if he were a woman, but I could not agree with this opinion.  At the end of a year the bet was declared off; but in the course of three years he received his pardon from the king, and appeared at Court in woman’s dress, wearing the cross of St. Louis.

Louis XV. had always been aware of the chevalier’s sex, but Cardinal Fleuri had taught him that it became kings to be impenetrable, and Louis remained so all his life.