Volume V Part 69 (1/2)
”I like it, and I will prove the omen a true one”
Victoire, as tender and passionate, made me spend two delicious hours, which coht before
When our exploits were over, I said,--
”Dearest Victoire, I aht here as soon as she is free Here are twenty guineas for you”
She did not expect anything, and the agreeable surprise made her in an ecstasy; she could not speak, but her heart was full of happiness I too was happy, and I believed that a great part of ood deed We are queer creatures all of us, whether we are bad or good Froave ht persons every day, and told them that I was only at home to Goudar I spent money madly, and felt that I ithin a measurable distance of poverty
At noon the mother came in a sedan-chair, and went to bed directly I went to see her, and did not evince any surprise when she began to thank enerosity She wanted hters forty guineas for nothing, and I let her enjoy her hypocrisy
In the evening I took them to Covent Garden, where the castrato Tenducci surprisedhed at people who said that a castrato could not procreate
Nature had ht remain a lands had been destroyed the re one was sufficient to endow hilio I supped ht with Victoire, as overjoyed at having made my conquest She toldhiet married as soon as he was out of prison It see rehter a marchioness
”How uineas”
”And the Neapolitan aarly sum? I can't believe it”
”The a 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 naet hihter, and another boarder of whom I was very fond, to dinner, and on reeable 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 toman is really what he professes to me,” said the aive him any money till I hear from my Government that he has received leave to travel”
That was enough forto d'Eon's a story
Eon had deserted the embassy on account of ten thousand francs which the departn affairs at Versailles had refused to allow hiht He had placed hilish laws, and after securing two thousand subscribers at a guinea apiece, he had sent to press a huge volu all the letters he had received from the French Government for the last five or six years
About the same tiuineas 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 hiree 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 fro the cross of St Louis
Louis XV had always been aware of the chevalier's sex, but Cardinal Fleuri had taught his to be impenetrable, and Louis reave the eldest Hanoverian twenty guineas, telling her to fetch herhiht she would have died with joy