MM. Homberg and Jousselin, in their recent work,[42] declare that
among d'Eon's papers, which lay for a century in the back shop of a
London bookseller, they find letters to him, from June 1756, written
by Tercier, who managed the secret of Louis XV. There are no known
proofs of d'Eon's earlier presence in Russia, and in petticoats, in
1755.
[Footnote 42: _Le Chevalier d'Eon_, p. 18.]
He did talk later of a private letter of Louis XV., of October 4,
1763, in which the King wrote that he 'had served him usefully in the
guise of a female, and must now resume it,' and that letter is
published, but all the evidence, to which we shall return, tends to
prove that this paper is an ingenious deceptive 'interpolation.' If
the King did write it, then he was deceiving the manager of his
secret policy--Tercier--for, in the note, he bids d'Eon remain in
England, while he was at the same time telling Tercier that he was
uneasy as to what d'Eon might do in France, when he obeyed his
_public_ orders to return.[43] If, then, the royal letter of October
4, 1763, testifying to d'Eon's feminine disguise in Russia, be
genuine, Louis XV.
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