;
And the light of bliss in those lordly groves
Is pure as it shone in the lowly shed.

But one of the most extraordinary instances of disguise was that of
the Chevalier d'Eon, who was born in the year 1728, and was an
excellent scholar, soldier, and political intriguer. In the service of
Louis XV., he went to Russia in female attire, obtained employment as
the female reader to the Czarina Elizabeth, under which disguise he
carried on political and semi-political negotiations with wonderful
success. In the year 1762, he appeared in England as Secretary of the
Embassy to the Duke of Nivernois, and when Louis XVI. granted him a
pension and he went over to Versailles to return thanks for the
favour, Marie Antoinette is said to have insisted on his assuming
women's attire. Accordingly, to gratify this foolish whim, D'Eon is
reported to have one day swept into the royal presence attired like a
duchess, which character he supported to the great delight of the
royal spectators.

In the year 1794, he returned to this country, and, being here after
the Revolution was accomplished, his name was placed in the fatal list
of _emigres_, and he was deprived of his pension. The English
Government, however, gave him an allowance of L200 a year; and in his
old days he turned his fencing capabilities to account, for he
occasionally appeared in matches with the Chevalier de St. George, and
permanently reassumed female attire.

This eccentric character was the subject of much speculation in his
lifetime, and, curious to say, in the year 1771, it was proved to the
satisfaction of a jury, on a trial before Lord Chief Justice
Mansfield, that the Chevalier was of the female sex. The case in
question arose from a wager between Hayes, a surgeon, and Jacques, an
underwriter, the latter having bound himself, on receiving a premium,
to pay the former a certain sum whenever the fact was established that
D'Eon was a woman. One of the witnesses was Morande, an infamous
Frenchman, who gave such testimony that no human being could doubt the
fact of D'Eon being of the female sex, and two French medical men gave
equally conclusive evidence. The result of this absurd trial was that
the jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff, with L702 damages.[45]
But all doubt was cleared away when D'Eon died, in the year 1810, for,
an examination of the body being made, it was publicly declared that
the Chevalier was an old man. Walpole collected some fac