On entering it she said, 'I have
a feeling that very interesting things have happened here'! Probably
they had.[40]
[Footnote 40: The facts are taken from Ailesbury's, de Luynes',
Dangeau's, and d'Argenson's _Memoirs_; from Boyer's _History_, and
other printed books, and from the Newcastle, Hearne, Carte, and
Gualterio MSS. in the Bodleian and the British Museum.]
XI
_THE CHEVALIER D'EON_
The mystery of the Chevalier d'Eon (1728-1810), the question of his
sex, on which so many thousand pounds were betted, is no mystery at
all. The Chevalier was a man, and a man of extraordinary courage,
audacity, resource, physical activity, industry, and wit. The real
mystery is the problem why, at a mature age (forty-two) did d'Eon take
upon him, and endure for forty years, the travesty of feminine array,
which could only serve him as a source of notoriety--in short, as an
advertisement? The answer probably is that, having early seized
opportunity by the forelock, and having been obliged, after an
extraordinary struggle, to leave his hold, he was obliged to clutch at
some mode of keeping himself perpetually in the public eye.
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