"Now welcome, Lady!" exclaimed the youth; "This castle is thine, and these dark woods all." She believed him wild, but his words were truth, For Ellen is Lady of Rosna Hall! And dearly the Lord of Rosna loves What William the stranger woo'd and wed; 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 _emigrés_, and he was deprived of his pension. The English Government, however, gave him an allowance of £200 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 £702 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 facts about this remarkable man, and writes: "The Due de Choiseul believed it was a woman. After the death of Louis XV., D'Eon had leave to go to France, on which the young Comte de Guerchy went to M. de Vergennes, Secretary of State, and gave him notice that the moment D'Eon landed at Calais he, Guerchy, would cut his throat, or D'Eon should his; on which Vergennes told the Count that D'Eon was certainly a woman. Louis XV. corresponded with D'Eon, and when the Duc de Choiseul had sent a vessel, which lay six months in the Thames, to trepan and bring off D'Eon, the king wrote a letter with his own hand to give him warning of the vessel."