“La Jeunesse—Mais quand une chose est vraie.... Bartholo—Quand une chose est vraie! si je ne veux pas qu’elle soit vraie, je prÉtends qu’elle ne soit pas vraie. Il n’y aurait qu’a permettre À tous ces faquins-lÀ d’avoir raison, vous verrez bientÔt ce que deviendrait l’autoritÉ.”

“Le Barbier de SÉville,” Act II, Scene VII.

ALTHOUGH Beaumarchais’s first letter from For-l’EvÊque sounded philosophical, his situation was cruel in the extreme. LomÉnie says: “This imprisonment which fell in the midst of his suit against the Comte de la Blache did him frightful harm; his adversary profiting by the circumstance, worked without relaxation to blacken his character before the judges, multiplying his measures, his recommendations, his solicitations; and ardently pressing the decision of his suit, while the unhappy prisoner whose fortune and honor were engaged in this affair, could not even obtain permission to go out for a few hours to visit the judges in his turn.

“M. de Sartine showed him the greatest good-will but he was unable to do more than mitigate his situation, his liberty depending on the minister.

“Beaumarchais had begun by pleading his cause before the Duke de la VrilliÈre, as a citizen unjustly imprisoned. He sent him memoir after memoir proving ably that he had done no wrong; he demanded to know why he had been detained, and when M. de Sartine warned him in a friendly way that this tone would lead to nothing, he replied with dignity, ‘The only satisfaction of a persecuted man is to render testimony that he is unjustly dealt with.’”

While he was consuming himself in vain protestations, the day for the judgment of his suit approached. To the demands of M. de Sartine soliciting permission for Beaumarchais to go out for a few hours each day the duc de la VrilliÈre replied always, “That man is too insolent, let him follow his affair through his attorney!” and Beaumarchais, indignant and heart-broken, wrote to M. de Sartine:

“It is completely proved to me that they desire that I shall lose my suit, if it is possible for me to lose it, but I admit that I was not prepared for the derisive answer of the duc de la VrilliÈre to solicit my affair through my attorney, he who knows as well as I, that it is forbidden to attorneys. Ah, great heavens! cannot an innocent man be lost without laughing in his face! Thus, Monsieur, have I been grievously insulted, justice has been denied me because my adversary is a man of quality, I have been put in prison, I am kept there, because I have been insulted by a man of quality. They even go so far as to blame me for enlightening the police as to the false impressions they have received, while the immodest gazettes Les Deux-Ponto and Hollande unworthily dishonor me to please my adversary. A little more and they would say that it was very insolent in me to have been outraged in every way by a man of quality, because what is the meaning of that phrase, ‘He has put too much boasting into this affair?’ Could I do less than demand justice and prove by the conduct of my adversary that I was in no way wrong? What a pretext for ruining an offended man, that of saying, ‘He has talked too much about his affair.’ As if it were possible to talk of anything else! Receive my sincere thanks, Monsieur, for having notified me of this refusal and this observation of M. the duc de la VrilliÈre, and for the happiness of the country may your power one day equal your sagacity and your integrity! My gratitude equals the profound respect with which I am, etc.,

“Beaumarchais.
This March 11th, 1773”

But the correspondence of Beaumarchais with M. de Sartine did not advance matters in the least. What M. the duc de la VrilliÈre exacted before everything else was that he cease to be insolent, that is to demand justice, and that he ask for pardon.

Beaumarchais resisted this for about a month, when on the 20th of March he received a letter without signature, written by a man who seemed to interest himself in the situation and who endeavored to make Beaumarchais understand that under an absolute government, when anyone has incurred disgrace at the hands of a minister, and that minister keeps one in prison when one has the greatest possible interest to be free, it is not the thing to do to plead one’s cause as an oppressed citizen but to bow to the law of force and speak like a suppliant.

What would Beaumarchais do? He was on the brink of losing a suit most important for his fortune and his honor, his liberty was in the hands of a man unworthy of esteem, because the duc de la VrilliÈre was one of the ministers the most justly disdained by history, but the situation was such that this man disposed at will of his destiny. Beaumarchais resigned himself at last, humiliated himself. See him in the part of suppliant.

“Monseigneur,

“The frightful affair of M. the duc de Chaulnes has become for me a succession of misfortunes without end, and the greatest of all is that I have incurred your displeasure in spite of the purity of my intentions. Despair has broken me and driven me to measures which have displeased you, I disavow them Monseigneur, at your feet, and beg of you a generous pardon, or if it seems to you that I merit a longer imprisonment, permit me to go during a few days to instruct my judges in the most important affair for my fortune and my honor, and I submit after the judgment to whatever pain you may impose. All my family weeping join their prayers to mine. Everyone speaks, Monseigneur, of your indulgence and goodness of heart. Shall I be the only one who implores you in vain. You can with a single word fill with joy a host of honest people whose gratitude will equal the very profound respect with which we are all, and I in particular, Monseigneur, your, etc.,

“Beaumarchais.
From For-l’EvÊque, March 21, 1773.”

The duc de la VrilliÈre was satisfied in his petty vanity, so a reply was soon forthcoming. The next day, March 22nd, the minister sent to M. de Sartine the authorization to allow the prisoner to go out during the day, under the conduct of an agent of police, but obliging him to eat and sleep at For-l’EvÊque.

In the meantime, however, another disgrace was threatening him. Some enemy had taken advantage of his absence to attack his rights as lieutenant-gÉnÉral des chasses. “From the depths of his prison,” wrote LomÉnie, “he reclaimed them immediately in a letter to the duc de La ValliÈre where he appeared proud and imposing as a baron of the middle ages.”

“Monsieur le duc,

“Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, lieutenant-gÉnÉral at the court of justice of your capitainerie, has the honor of representing to you that his detention by order of the king has not destroyed his civil estate. He has been very much surprised to learn that in violation of the regulation of the capitainerie of May 17th which says that every officer who does not bring valid excuse for not being present at the reception of a new officer will be deprived of his droit de bougies, etc., etc. The exactitude and zeal with which the suppliant has always fulfilled the functions of his charge to the present day makes him hope, Monsieur le duc, that you will be so good as to maintain him in all the rights of the said charge against every kind of enterprise or infringement. When M. de Schomberg was in the Bastille the king permitted him to do his work for les Suisses which he had the honor to command. The same thing happened to the M. the duc du Maine.

“The suppliant is perhaps the least worthy of the officers of your capitainerie but he has the honor of being its lieutenant-gÉnÉral and you will certainly not disapprove, Monsieur le duc, that he prevents the first office of that capitainerie to grow less under his hands or that any other officer takes upon himself the functions to its prejudice.

Caron de Beaumarchais.” In striking contrast to this picture of Beaumarchais defending so proudly his rights before a great noble, is another, also drawn by his own hand, in a letter to a child of six years in which all the warmth and goodness of his heart, as well as the delicacy of his sentiments, manifest themselves.

We already have mentioned the fact that as secretary to the king, Beaumarchais was the colleague of M. Lenormant d’Étioles, the husband of Madame de Pompadour. After the death of his first wife in 1764, he had married a second time and he now had a charming little son, six and a half years old. Beaumarchais, intimate with the family, completely had won the heart of this little boy whose pretty ways were a constant reminder of the child he had lost. Learning that his friend was in prison, the child spontaneously wrote the following letter:

“Neuilly, March 2nd, 1773.
Monsieur,

“I send you my purse, because in prison one is always unhappy. I am very sorry that you are in prison. Every morning and every evening I say an Ave Maria for you. I have the honor to be, Monsieur, your very humble and very obedient servitor

Constant.”

Beaumarchais instantly replied:

“My good little friend Constant, I have received with much gratitude your letter and the purse which you joined to it. I have made a just division of what it contained among the prisoners, my companions, according to their different needs, while I have kept for your friend Beaumarchais the best part, I mean the prayers, the Ave Marias, of which I certainly have need, and so have distributed to the poor people who suffer imprisonment all that the purse contained. Thus intending to oblige only a single man you have acquired the gratitude of many. This is the ordinary fruit of such good actions as yours.

“Bonjour, my little friend Constant,
Beaumarchais.”

And to the child’s mother he wrote at the same time: “I thank you very sincerely, Madame, for having sent me the letter and the purse of my little friend Constant. These are the first outbursts of the sensibility of a young soul which promise excellent things. Do not give him back his purse, in order that he may not think that such sacrifices bring a similar recompense, but later you may give it to him that he may have a reminder of the tenderness of his generous heart. Recompense him now in a way that will give him a just idea of his action without allowing him to pride himself upon it. But what am I thinking of to join my observations to the pains that have caused to germinate and to develop so great a quality as benevolence at an age when the only morality is to report everything to oneself. Receive my thanks and my compliments. Permit that M. l’abbÉ Leroux participate in them. He has not satisfied himself with teaching his pupils to decline the word virtue, he inculcates the love of it. He is a man full of merit and more fitted than anyone to second your views. This letter and the purse have caused me the joy of a child. Happy parents! You have a son capable at the age of six of this action. And I also had a son, I have him no more, and yours gives you already such happiness. I partake in it with all my heart, and I beg you to continue to love him a little who is the cause of this charming outburst of our little Constant. One cannot add anything to the respectful attachment of him who honors himself, Madame, etc.

Beaumarchais.
From For-l’EvÊque, March 4, 1773”

“And this,” says LomÉnie, “is the man whom the Comte de la Blache charitably calls a finished monster, a venomous species of which society should be purged, and at the moment when the count says this, it is the opinion almost universally adopted. It is in vain that Beaumarchais follows his guard and returns every evening to his prison, passing his day in hastening from one to another of his judges, the discredit attached to his name followed him everywhere.

“Under the influence of this discredit, and upon the report of the Counsellor GoËzman, the parliament decided at last between him and M. de la Blache, and gave, April 5th, 1773, a strange judgment from a legal point of view. This judgment, declared nul and of no effect the act made between the two majors, saying that there was no need of lettres de rÉcision, that is to say, that the question of fraud, surprise or error being set aside, Beaumarchais found himself indirectly declared a forger although there was against him no inscription of forgery.”

In the words of Bonnefon, “Precisely the counsellor designated as rapporteur in the affair of Beaumarchais by la Blache was one of the least scrupulous members of that strange parliament. A learned legist, he had begun his career as judge of the superior council of Alsace, and the chancellor Maupeou, in quest of magistrates who could be bought, had raised him to his new functions.

“Valentine GoËzman was not overly scrupulous in regard to the means of conviction employed and if he kept his doors well closed to all litigants it was only to make them open all the wider by the money of those who solicited his audiences.

“Needy himself he had married a second wife, young and coquettish, even less delicate than her husband as to the choice of means. ‘It would be impossible,’ she was heard to say, ‘it would be impossible for us to live from what is given us, but we know how to pick the chicken without making it cry out.’”

It was a certain publisher, who according to LomÉnie, “hearing that Beaumarchais was in despair at not being able to find access to his reporter, sent him word that the only means of obtaining the audience and assuring the equity of the judge was to make a present to his wife, who demanded two hundred louis.”

But of this strange proceeding, let us allow the victim to step forward and speak for himself. In the exposition made in the first of those famous memoirs of which we shall soon speak, Beaumarchais wrote: “A few days before the one appointed for the judgment of my suit, I had obtained from the minister permission to solicit my judges under the express and rigorous conditions of going accompanied by a guard, the sieur Santerre, named for this purpose, and of going only to the judges, returning to the prison for all my meals and to sleep, which exceedingly embarrassed my movements and shortened the time accorded for my solicitations.

“In this short interval I presented myself at least ten times at the office of Monsieur GoËzman without being able to see him. I was not very much affected by this. M. GoËzman was of the number of my judges but there was no pressing interest between us. On the first of April however when he was charged with the office of reporter of my suit he became essential to me.

“Three times that afternoon I presented myself at his door always with the written formula, ‘Beaumarchais prays Monsieur to be so good as to accord him the favor of an audience, and to leave orders with the door keeper setting the hour and day.’ It was in vain. The next morning I was told that Monsieur GoËzman would see no one, and that it was useless to present myself again. I returned in the afternoon; the same reply.

“If one reflects that of the four days which were left me before the decision, one and a half had already been spent in vain solicitations and that twice a friend of Monsieur GoËzman had been to him and vainly pleaded for an audience for me, one can conceive of my disquietude.

“Not knowing what to do, on returning I entered the home of one of my sisters to take council and to calm my mind. It was then that the sieur Dairolles, lodging at my sister’s, spoke of a certain publisher, Le-Jay, who perhaps might procure for me the audience which I desired. He saw the man and was assured that by means of a sacrifice of money an audience would be promptly given.”

At this point let us break the narrative of Beaumarchais while we listen for a moment to Gudin. “I was with him when he was told that if he wished to give money to the wife of the reporter he could obtain the audiences he desired, and that this was only too necessary in our miserable manner of gaining justice. I remember very well the anger which seized him at this proposition and the pride with which he rejected it.

“But his friends and family as well as myself, alarmed at what his enemies were doing to ruin him, united our solicitations and tore from him rather than obtained his consent.”

And Beaumarchais, after giving in great detail the above scene, continues, “To cut the matter short, one of the friends present ran home and brought two rolls of fifty louis each, which I did not possess, and gave them to my sister, and these were finally delivered to Madame GoËzman while I returned to prison.”

The details which follow are too numerous to be given here. It is sufficient to say that though the reporter promised an audience for nine o’clock that same evening, Beaumarchais on arriving found that he was not expected. He was, however, this time not to be rejected and finally succeeded in forcing admittance. It was the moment when Madame and Monsieur GoËzman were preparing to seat themselves at table. A few moments’ conversation convinced Beaumarchais that the judge’s mind was made up and he returned to his prison, more alarmed than ever. His desire for a satisfactory audience was augmented rather than diminished. It was the fourth of April, the following day the final decision was to be given. Through the sieur Dairolles and Le-Jay Madame GoËzman demanded a second hundred louis and promised this time to secure the audience. Beaumarchais did not possess the money but offered a watch set with diamonds which was of equal value. She accepted the watch, but demanded fifteen louis extra as a gratification for her husband’s secretary. Beaumarchais, desperate, gave them, although as he told us, with a very bad grace. The audience was promised for seven o’clock.

Beaumarchais presented himself, but in vain. This time he was unable to force an entrance and returned without seeing the judge.

He continues: “The reader, tired at last of hearing so many vain promises, so many useless steps, will judge how beside myself I was to receive the one and to take the other. I went back to prison, rage in my heart. Now came a new course of intermediaries, this time the curious reply which was brought to me cannot be omitted. ‘It is not the fault of the lady if you have not been received. You may present yourself to-morrow. But she is so honest that if you cannot obtain an audience before the judgment she assures you that you shall receive again all that she has received of you.’

“I argued evil from this new announcement. Why did the lady engage herself to return the money? I had not asked for it. I made the most of the melancholy reflections on this subject. But although the tone and the proceeding seemed absolutely changed, I was none the less resolved to make a last effort to see my reporter the next morning; the only instant of which I could profit before the judgment.”

An interested friend had succeeded in penetrating to the presence of GoËzman the night before and the judge promised to see Beaumarchais the next morning. The latter says: “If ever an audience seemed sure, this one certainly did, promised on the one hand by the reporter while his wife received the price on the other. Nevertheless, in spite of the assurances of all, we were no happier than on former occasions.... Santerre and I remained for an hour and a half, but the orders were positive, we were not allowed to cross the threshold.

“But I had lost my suit, the evil was consummated. The same evening, sieur Dairolles returned to my sister the two rolls of fifty louis each and the watch. As for the fifteen louis, he said since they were required by the secretary of M. GoËzman, Madame GoËzman believed herself discharged from returning them.

“This conduct of the secretary was an enigma to me, I wished to fathom it. In the beginning he had modestly refused ten louis voluntarily offered him. I begged the friend who finally had induced the secretary to accept the ten louis to inquire if he had received the fifteen louis given to Madame GoËzman for him. He replied that they had never been offered to him and if they had been, he would not have accepted them....

“Stung by the dishonest means employed to retain the fifteen louis, believing even that the sieur Le-Jay whom I did not know at all perhaps had wished to keep them, I demanded of him through the sieur Dairolles what had become of them.

“He affirmed that Madame GoËzman had refused to give them back, and assured him that it had been arranged that in any case they were lost to me. He could not endure that it should be supposed that he had kept them, the lady herself was not to be seen, but I might write to her.

“The 21st of April, that is, seventeen days after the judgment, I wrote her the following letter.

“‘I have not the honor, Madame, of being personally known to you and I should be very far from importuning you, if after losing my suit, when you were good enough to return to me the two rolls of louis and my watch, you had at the same time returned the fifteen louis, which the common friend who negotiated between us left you in supererogation.

“‘I have been so horribly treated in the report of Monsieur, your husband, and my defence has been so trampled under foot before him that it is not just that to the immense loss which this report has cost me should be added that of fifteen louis which it is impossible should have strayed in your hands. If injustice must be paid for, it should not be paid by him who has so cruelly suffered.

“‘I hope you will be so good as to respect my demand, and that you will add to the justice of returning me these fifteen louis that of believing me, with the respectful consideration which is due to you

Madam, your, etc.’”

Bonnefon says: “To this demand the wife of the counsellor grew indignant and cried aloud. Beaumarchais was not to be intimidated and maintained his demand. It was then that the counsellor intervened and complained first to Monsieur the duc de la VrilliÈre and then to M. de Sartine; badly instructed perhaps and feeling sure of an easy triumph over an enemy already half-vanquished, he brought a suit for calumny before the parliament.

“Beaumarchais did not draw back. The counsellor accused him of attempt at corruption; his presence of mind did not desert him. He replied to everything with a vivacity and an apropos truly remarkable. Listen to him.

“... ‘It is time that I speak. Let me wash myself from the reproach of corruption by a calculation and some very simple reflections.

“‘It cost me a hundred louis to obtain an audience of M. GoËzman. Be so good as to follow the trace of that money and then judge, if from the distance where I remained from the reporter it was possible that I had formed the mad project of corrupting him.

“‘In ceding to the necessity of sacrificing one hundred louis which I (one person) did not possess; a friend (two persons) offered them to me, my sister (three) received them from his hands, she confided them to sieur Dairolles (four); who gave them to the sieur Le-Jay (five) to be given to Madame GoËzman (six) who kept them, and finally Monsieur GoËzman (seven), whom I could see only at that price and who knew nothing about the whole affair. See then from M. GoËzman to me a chain of seven persons of which he says I hold the first link as corruptor, while he holds the last as incorruptible. Very good. But if he is judged incorruptible how will he prove that I am corruptor?’ ...”

Monsieur LomÉnie, entering into more detail, says of GoËzman: “He must have been convinced that his wife had seriously compromised herself. Compromised himself through her, he had to choose between several different measures; all of them, in presence of a litigant discontented and fearless, offered great disadvantage for his reputation; the one which he adopted was incontestably the most daring, but also the most dishonorable.

“Starting from the idea that Beaumarchais had not the force to resist him, he imagined that in taking the initiative and attacking him while maneuvering in such a way that the truth might not be made known, he might be able to ruin him who had given the fifteen louis, and save her who had received them. It will be seen that the stratagem of GoËzman was baffled and his crime cruelly punished.”

But to return to the decision given by the parliament on the report of GoËzman April 5th. LomÉnie says: “At the same time that this decree dishonored Beaumarchais it was a rude blow to his fortune. The Parliament had not dared award to the Comte de la Blache as he had demanded, the passing of the act of settlement declared by it nul; the iniquity would have been too glaring; but it condemned his adversary to pay fifty-six thousand livres of debt annulled by the act of settlement, the interests of the debt and the costs of the suit.

“It was enough to crush him for at the same time the Comte de la Blache seized all his goods and revenues, other pretending creditors with equally false pretentions, united their persecutions with those of the Comte de la Blache, and the man thus attacked demanded in vain, with loud cries that the doors of his prison be opened.

“‘I am at the end of my courage,’ he wrote April 9, 1773, to M. de Sartine. ‘The opinion of the public is that I am entirely sacrificed, my credit has fallen, my business is ruined, my family of which I am the father and the support is in despair. Monsieur, I have done good all my life without ostentation and I have never ceased to be torn to pieces by those evilly disposed.

“‘If my home were known to you, you would see me in the midst of its members, a good son, a good brother, a good husband, and a useful citizen; I have assembled only benedictions about me, while my enemies calumniate me at a distance.

“‘Whatever vengeance one may wish to take of me for that miserable affair of Chaulnes, will it then have no limits? It is well proved that my imprisonment makes me lose a hundred thousand francs. The form, the ground, everything makes one shudder in that iniquitous sentence, and it is impossible for me to rise above it so long as I am kept in this horrible prison. I have courage to support my own misfortunes; but I have none against the tears of my respectable father, seventy-five years of age, who is grieving himself to death for the abject state to which I have fallen. I have none against the anguish of my sisters, of my nieces, who already feel the horror of my detention and know of the disorder which has come to my affairs because of it. All the activity of my being is again turned inward, my situation kills me, I am struggling against an acute malady of which I feel an agonizing premonition, through loss of sleep and disgust with food. The air of my prison destroys me.’

“It was in this state of deep depression and misery when the soul of Beaumarchais seemed overwhelmed and all his manhood slipping from him, that the petty detail of the fifteen louis came to stir his mind once more to action, and while his sisters wept and his father prayed, his proud and unconquerable spirit rose triumphant out of the abyss into which for a moment it had fallen, and with fresh courage gleaming in his eyes he began pacing the floor of his prison, already ‘meditating his memoirs.’

“The minister de la VrilliÈre allowed himself at last to be touched, and on the 8th of May, 1773, after two months and a half of detention without cause, he gave the prisoner his liberty.

“It is here that out of this lost process sprang suddenly another more terrible still, which should complete the ruin of Beaumarchais, but which saved him and made him pass in a few months from the state of abjection and of misery where to use his own expression, ‘He was an object of disgust and pity to himself, to a state where he is acclaimed the vanquisher of the hated parliament and the favorite of the nation.’”

“He was,” says Grimm, “the horror of Paris a year ago; everyone upon the word of his neighbor, believed him capable of the greatest crimes; all the world dotes on him to-day.” It remains for us now to explain how this change of opinion came about.