“Mais que dira-t-on quand on apprendra que ce Beaumarchais, qui jusqu’À prÉsent n’est connu que par son inaltÉrable gaÎtÉ, son imperturbable philosophie, qui compose À la fois un air gracieux, un malin vaudeville, une comÉdie folle, un drame touchant, brave les puissants, rit des sots et s’amuse aux dÉpens de tout le monde?”

Marsolier—“Beaumarchais À Madrid,” Act IV, Scene V

WE have come at last to the turn of the tide in the career of Beaumarchais, which in his case is no ordinary tide but a tidal wave so gigantic in force that he is carried by it to such a height of popularity as fixes upon him for the time the attention of Europe.

“The degree of talent which he displayed,” says La Harpe, “belongs to the situation. It came from his perfect accord with the time in which he lived and the circumstances in which he found himself. The secret of all great success lies in the power of the man to see with a comprehensive glance what he can do with himself and with others.”

Already we have had occasion to note that in this harmony between Beaumarchais and the circumstances of his life lies the secret of his genius. He is no moralizer, but he sees things clearly and in just proportion and he knows how to take advantage of his own position as well as of the weakness of his adversaries.

In relation to the lawsuit of which we now write, La Harpe further says, “What would have disconcerted or rendered furious an ordinary person did not move the spirit of Beaumarchais. Master of his own indignation and strong with that of the public, he called upon it to witness the fraud which has been employed against him.” At first many cry out that it is ridiculous to make such a fuss about fifteen louis; his family, his friends, Gudin among the number, implore him to desist; wiser than they, he instinctively feels that in the very pettiness, the absurdity of the charge, lies its gigantic force.

Again quoting La Harpe, “It was a master stroke, this suit about the fifteen louis; and what joy for the public, which in reading Beaumarchais saw in his different memoirs which rapidly succeeded one another, only the hand which took upon itself to revenge the people’s wrongs. The facts did not speak, they cried!”

When Beaumarchais found himself actually charged with a criminal accusation capable of sending him to the public infamy of the pillory or the galleys, unable to find a lawyer willing to plead his cause, it was then that the whole power of his genius was revealed to him. Instantly he realized that he was to be his own lawyer, and that from the magistracy before him, it was to the people that he must appeal, “that judge of judges,” and we see him flinging forth one factum after another, while all the force of his soul, the gaiety of his character, the brilliancy of his wit, returned to him in overabundant measure. The family and friends, lately so depressed, rose with the rising of his courage, lent to him the whole force of their beings and formed the constant inspiration of his ever-increasing success.

In a few weeks his first memoir had attracted the attention of all France, while in less than three days after the publication of the fourth, more than six thousand copies had been sold. At the ball or the opera, people tore them from one another’s hands, and in the cafÉs and foyers of the theaters they were read out loud to enthusiastically admiring crowds.

What could be more surprising? Judicial factums or memoirs universally recognized as being the dryest and most uninteresting of writings come to be preferred to all others?

It was, as Voltaire said, after reading the fourth memoir, “No comedy was ever more amusing, no tragedy more touching,” and Lintilhac taking up this judgment and applying it to the memoirs has made perhaps the most brilliant of the many criticisms which this subject has called forth.

“The judgment of Voltaire,” he says, “reveals to us the most original of their merits, that of being a tragi-comedy in five acts. The unity of the subject is placed in evidence by this question which is so often raised. Who is culpable of the crime of corruption—the judge whose surroundings put his justice at auction, or the litigant thus constrained to scatter gold about the judge?

“The five memoirs mark the phases of the debate. The first is a perfect exposition of the subject destined to soothe the judges. After having made a rÉsumÉ of the preceding incidents, and taken his position, Beaumarchais engages the offensive and orders his intrigue by light skirmishes in the form of episodes. Then he opens a dramatic perspective upon the sudden changes of the contest.

“From the first to the second memoir during the entre-act the action has advanced. A rain of ridiculous and arrogant factums, of false testimonies and infamous calumnies has poured down upon the victim of the piece. The black intrigue is knotted, the scenes press varied and picturesque. At first it is that of the registrar, then Madame GoËzman comes before us with insults but ends with artful pretty faces. After this comic prelude, the two principal characters engage in the background, in a dramatic contest.

“‘Give me your hand,’ cries Beaumarchais, and illuminating the scene, he ousts his crafty adversary, seizes him, drags him frightened like a thief in the night to the nearest lamp post, that is to say, the crude illumination of the foot lights, crying in his face the invective: ‘And you are a magistrate! To what have we come, great heavens!’

“Similar to the third act of a strongly intrigued play, the third memoir throws the adversaries on the scene and engages them in a furious fray. We have just seen the judge imprudent enough to descend from the tribunal to the arena, he lies there panting under the grip of his adversary, it is then that fly to his aid ‘that swarm of hornets.’ The image is piquant, the scene, does it not renew the parabase des GuÊpes? ‘Six memoirs at once against me!’ cries the valiant athlete in an outburst of manly gaiety. He takes up the glove, salutes them all around with an ironic politeness, and then sends all of them, Marin, Bertrand, Arnaud, Baculard, even to Falcoz, who in vain tries to turn in a whirligig upon an absurdity, to bite the dust by the side of GoËzman. It is the moment to bring up the reserves. They arrive in serried ranks. Here comes a president and a whole host of counsellors. ‘My, what a world of people occupied to support you, Monsieur!’

“A daring offensive alone can disengage Beaumarchais. He instantly makes it, and following his favorite tactics, he wears it as an ornament, an accusation of forgery well directed against GoËzman changes the rÔles; this is the grand counter movement of the piece.

“A sudden stupor has broken up the allies, their adversary knows how to profit by their confusion, and throws out his petition of mitigation. It is the fourth act. He prepares briefly and wisely the fifth. Beaumarchais with an affected and deadly moderation, sums up the facts, fortifies himself in the conquered position and prepares the supreme assault.

“At last in the fourth memoir he gives out the fifth act of the peace.

“Without ceding in the least to the third memoir in point of composition, the fourth in spite of an occasional ‘abuse of force,’ according to La Harpe, surpasses it by its heat and brilliancy.

“There reigns above everything else an ease that Beaumarchais announces from the beginning. ‘This memoir,’ he says, ‘is less an examination of a dry and bloodless question, than a succession of reflections upon my estate as accused.’

“It is the best of his dramas, a mÉlange of mirth and pathos, where are centered and dissolved with an authoritative cleverness, all the elements of interest and of action which he draws from the heart of his subject and which are multiplied by his fancy and his fears. In the beginning, an invocation, the prelude of a hÉroÏque-comique drama, then thanking a host of honest people who applaud and whose aid he skilfully declines, the hero springs with one bound into the fray.

“He directs his finishing blows to each one of his adversaries, and making a trophy of their calumnies, he awards himself an eloquent apology which he modestly entitles, ‘Fragments of my voyage in Spain.’ The episode of Clavico, thanks to the touching interest which it excites, crowns the memoir like the recitals which unravel the plot in classic plays, and whose discreet eloquence leads the soul of the auditor to a sort of final appeasement.

“If the action is dramatic, the characters are no less so. First Madame GoËzman advances, a scowl upon her face, but at a gracefully turned compliment from her adversary, ‘at once a sweet smile gives back to her mouth its agreeable form.’”

And so with the rest. “But the most vivid of all his portraits is that of the principal personage, the author himself, this propagandist always en scÈne, who is never weary, whom one sees or whom one divines everywhere, animating everything with his presence, the center of all action and interest. He is endowed with such a beautiful sang-froid, which acts under all circumstances, and such vivid sensibility that everything paints itself in his memory, everything fixes itself under his pen. So that he appears to us in the most various attitudes; here the soul of gallantry, advancing to offer his hand to Madame GoËzman; there of modesty lowering his eyes for her, or again, hat in hand very humbly inclining before the passage of some mettlesome president.”

But as Gudin assures us, “The courage of Beaumarchais was not insensibility. The tone of his memoirs showed his superiority but he was none the less deeply affected. I have seen him shed tears, but I have never seen him cast down. His tears seemed like the dew which revivifies. The hour of combat gave him back his courage. He advanced, dauntless, against his enemies; he felled them to the ground and caused to react upon them the outrages with which they attacked him. In their despair they published that he was not the author of his memoirs. ‘We know,’ they cried, ‘where they are composed and who composes them.’

“It was this accusation which gave to Beaumarchais the opportunity for one of his wittiest retorts. ‘Stupid people, why don’t you get your own written there?’”

Gudin was even accused of writing them,—faithful Gudin, whose history of France in thirty-five volumes never found a publisher, and “whose prose,” says LomÉnie, “resembled that of Beaumarchais about as the gait of a laboring ox resembles that of a light and spirited horse.”

Rousseau when he heard the accusation cried out, “I do not know whether Beaumarchais writes them or not, but I know this, no one writes such memoirs for another.”

Voltaire in the depths of his retreat read the memoirs with eager interest. Personal reasons had made him in the beginning a supporter of the parliament Maupeou. Little by little, he changed his opinion; “I am afraid,” he wrote, “that after all that brilliant, hare-brained fellow is in the right against the whole world.” And a little later, “What a man! He unites everything; jesting, gravity, gaiety, pathos,—every species of eloquence without seeking after any; he confounds his adversaries; he gives lessons to his judges. His naÏvetÉ enchants me.”

As to the most atrocious calumnies circulated against him, La Harpe who knew him well, although never intimately, has said: “I have not forgotten how many times I heard repeated by persons who did not believe in the least that they were doing wrong, that a certain M. de Beaumarchais who was much talked about had enriched himself by getting rid successively of two wives who had fortunes. Surely this is enough to make one shudder, if one stops to reflect that this is what is called scandal (something scarcely thought sinful) and that there was not the slightest ground for such a horrible defamation. He had, it is true, married two widows with fortunes, which is surely very permissible for a young man with none. He received nothing from the one, because in his grief he forgot to register the contract of marriage duly, and this alone which rendered the crime useless was sufficient to prove his innocence.

“He inherited something from the second who was a very charming woman, whom he adored. She left him a son, whom he lost soon after his wife’s death. I do not know why no one ever accused him of poisoning the child, that crime was necessary to complete the other. It is evident, even if he had not loved his wife, that in keeping her alive he had everything to gain, as her fortune was in the main hers only during life.

“These are public facts of which I am sure, but hatred does not look for the truth, and it knows that it will not be required of it by the thoughtless. Where are we, great Heavens, if a man cannot have the misfortune to inherit from his wife without having poisoned her?...”

When Voltaire, who had heard the calumny, read the memoirs of Beaumarchais, he said, “This man is not a poisoner, he is too gay.”

La Harpe adds, “Voltaire could not know as I do, that he was also too good, too sensible, too open, too benevolent to commit any bad act, although he knew very well how to write very amusing and very malicious things against those who blackened him.”

Compelled to defend himself and to prove himself innocent of a crime so horrible that its name could scarcely be forced to pass his lips, he replies with a gentleness, but a power of eloquence which confounds his adversaries. “Cowardly enemies, have you then no resource but base insult? Calumny machinated in secret and struck out in the darkness? Show yourselves then, but once, if for nothing more than to tell me to my face that it is out of place for any man to defend himself. But all honest people know very well that your fury has placed me in an absolutely privileged class. They will excuse me for taking this occasion to confound you, where forced to defend a moment of my life I am about to spread a luminous daylight over the rest. Dare then to contradict me. Here is my life in a few words.

“For the last fifteen years I honor myself with being the father and the sole support of a numerous family, and far from being offended at this avowal which is torn from me, my relatives take pleasure in publishing that I have always shared my modest fortune with them without ostentation and without reproach.

“O you who calumniate me without knowing me, come and hear the concert of benedictions which fall upon me from a crowd of good hearts and you will go away undeceived.

“As to my wives, from having neglected to register the contract of marriage, the death of the first left me destitute in the rigor of the term, overwhelmed with debts and with pretentions which I was unwilling to follow, not wishing to go to law with the relatives, of whom, up to that moment, I had no reason to complain. My second wife in dying carried with her more than three-fourths of her fortune, so that my son, had he lived, would have found himself richer from the side of his father than that of his mother....

“And you who have known me, you who have followed me without ceasing, O my friends, say, have you ever known in me anything but a man constantly gay, loving with an equal passion study and pleasure, inclined to raillery but without bitterness, welcoming it against himself when it was well seasoned, supporting perhaps with too much ardor his own opinion when he believed it to be just, but honoring highly and without envy everyone whom he recognized as superior, confident about his interests to the point of neglecting them, active when he is goaded, indolent and stagnant after the tempest, careless in happiness but carrying constancy and serenity into misfortune to the point of astonishing his most intimate friends....

“How is it that, with a life and intentions the most honorable, a citizen sees himself so violently torn to pieces? That a man so gay and sociable away from home, so solid and benevolent in his family, should find himself the butt of a thousand venomous calumnies? This is the problem of my life. I search in vain for its solution.”

It was by such outbursts of feeling that Beaumarchais won the hearts of all except those who for personal reasons were bent upon his ruin. But as the admiration of the one side increased, the fury of the other was proportionally augmented. Under the able guidance of M. de LomÉnie, let us examine a few of the adversaries who presented themselves, and from the few, the reader may judge of the rest.

First of all is Madame GoËzman, “who,” says LomÉnie, “wrote under the dictates of her husband and threw at the head of Beaumarchais a quarto of seventy-four pages, bristling with terms of law and Latin quotations.

“Beaumarchais sums up in a most spirituelle manner the profound stupidity of the factum when he cries out, ‘An ingenuous woman is announced to me and I am presented with a German publicist.’

“But if the memoir of Madame GoËzman is ridiculous in form, it is in matter of an extreme violence. ‘My soul,’ it is thus that Madame GoËzman begins, ‘has been divided between astonishment, surprise, and horror in reading the libel of sieur Caron. The audacity of the author astonishes me, the number and atrocity of his impostures excite surprise, the idea he gives of himself fills me with horror.’ When we remember that the honest lady who speaks has in her drawer the fifteen louis, whose reclamation excites the astonishment, surprise, and horror, one is inclined to excuse Beaumarchais for having permitted himself certain liberties of language. It is very well known with what mixture of ironic politeness and pressing argumentation he refutes, irritates, embarrasses, compliments, and confounds Madam GoËzman.

“Who has not burst into laughter on reading that excellent comic scene where he paints himself dialoguing with her before the registrar? The scene is so amusing that one would be tempted to take it for a picture drawn at fancy. This is not the case however....”

A few extracts from this comic scene will give the reader an idea of la force de tÊte of the pretty woman attempting to face so subtle an adversary as Beaumarchais.

“Confrontation of myself with Madame GoËzman.

“No one could imagine the difficulty we had to meet one another, Madame GoËzman and I. Whether she was really indisposed as many times as she sent word to the registrar, or whether she felt the need of preparation to sustain the shock of a meeting so serious as that with me, nevertheless we at last found ourselves facing each other.

“Madame GoËzman, summoned to state her reproaches if she has any to formulate against me, replied, ‘Write that I reproach and rÉcuse monsieur because he is my capital enemy and because he has an atrocious soul, known for such in Paris, etc.’ The phrase seemed a little masculine for a lady, but on seeing her fortify herself, leave her natural character, inflate her voice to utter these first injuries, I decided that she felt the need of beginning her attack by a vigorous period and so I did not mind her bad temper.

“Her reply was written verbatim and I was questioned in my turn. Here is my answer: ‘I have no reproach to make against madame, not even for her little bad humor which dominates her at this moment; but many regrets to offer for the necessity of a criminal process in order to present to her my homage. As to the atrocity of my soul I hope to prove to her by the moderation of my replies and by my respectful conduct that her counsel has evilly informed her in my regard.’

“And it was written down. This is the general tone that prevailed during the eight hours that we passed together the twice that we met.”

After several pages of this interrogation, Beaumarchais gives us, “The Confrontation of Madame GoËzman With Me.” From which we give the following extracts:

“I took the liberty of saying, ‘To-day, Madame, it is I who hold the attack, we shall first take up your interrogations.’

“I took the papers to run them over.

“‘What? This Monsieur here, has he the liberty to read all that I have been made to write?’

“‘It is a right, Madame, which I shall use with all possible deference. In your first interrogation, for instance, to the sixteen consecutive questions upon the same subject, that is, to know whether you received one hundred louis from Le-Jay to procure an audience for le sieur Beaumarchais I see to the great honor of your discretion that the sixteen replies are not charged with any superfluous ornaments.

“‘Questioned as to whether you have received one hundred louis in two rolls?’

“You reply, ‘That is false.’

“‘If you put them in a case ornamented with flowers?’

“‘That is not true.’

“‘If you kept them until the day after the suit?’

“‘Atrocious lie.’

“‘If you did not promise an audience to Le-Jay for the same evening?’

“‘Abominable calumny.’

“‘If you had not said to Le-Jay, money is not necessary, your word is sufficient?’

“‘Diabolical invention,’ etc., etc. Sixteen negations following one another in relation to the same subject.

“And yet you admit freely at the second interrogation that ‘It is true that Le-Jay presented one hundred louis, that I put them away in an armoire and kept them a day and a night, but simply to accommodate that poor Le-Jay, because he was a good man and did not realize the consequences, and because the money might make him tired in carrying it about.’ (What goodness, the sums were in gold!)

“‘As these replies are absolutely contrary to the first, I beg you madame to be so good as to tell us which of the two interrogations you decide to hold to in this important matter?’

“‘Neither to the one nor to the other, Monsieur, all that I said there means nothing, and I shall only hold to my verification which is the only thing that is true.’ All this was written down.

“‘It must be admitted, Madame,’ I said to her, ‘that the method of recusing this your own testimony after having recused that of every one else would be the most convenient of all if it could only succeed. In waiting for the parliament to adopt it let us see what is said of the one hundred louis in your verification.’

“Madame GoËzman here assured us that she begged Le-Jay to take away the money with him and that when he was gone she was astonished to find it in a case decorated with flowers which was on the mantel piece. She sent three times during the day to that poor Le-Jay begging him to come and get his money, which he did not do until the day after.

“‘Observe, Madame, that in the first instance of all, you have rejected the one hundred louis with indignation, then put them aside with complaisance, while in the last case it is without your knowledge that they remained with you. Here are three narrations of the same act, what is the true version I beg you?’

“‘I have said to you, Monsieur, that I shall hold to my verification,’ etc., etc., etc.”

Then comes the question of the fifteen louis: “I begged her to be so good as to tell us clearly and without equivocation whether she had not required fifteen louis of Le-Jay for the secretary, and if she had not put them in the bureau when Le-Jay gave her the money.

“‘I replied clearly and without equivocation that Le-Jay never spoke to me of the fifteen louis, neither did he give them to me.’

“‘Observe, Madame, that there would be more merit in saying, ‘I refused them,’ than in maintaining that you know nothing about them.’

“‘I maintain, Monsieur, that no one ever spoke to me of them. Would there have been any sense of offering fifteen louis to a woman of my quality, after having refused a hundred the day before?’

“‘The day before what, Madame?’

“‘Eh, monsieur, the day before the day——’ (she stopped suddenly and bit her lip.)

“‘The day before the day,’ I said to her, ‘on which no one ever spoke to you about the fifteen louis, n’est-ce-pas?’

“‘Stop this,’ she said, rising furious to her feet, ‘or I will give you a box on the ears. I’ve had enough of those fifteen louis! With all your despicable little tournures de phrases you try to confuse me and make me blunder, but I tell you in truth that I shall not answer you another word.’ And her fan assuaged by redoubled strokes the fire which had mounted to her face.... She was like a lioness feeling that she had just escaped being taken.

“After Madame GoËzman came Bertrand who began with this epigram taken from the Psalms ‘Judica me, Deus, et discerne causam meam de gente non sancta, et ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me.’”

Beaumarchais avenged himself on le grand Bertrand by indicting upon him the celebrity of ridicule. Here, as elsewhere, the shade of the physiognomies is perfectly grasped. It is in vain that Bertrand attempted to deal terrible blows, in vain that he committed to writing such phrases as, “cynic orator; buffoon; brazen-faced sophist; unfaithful painter who draws from his own soul the filth with which he tarnishes the robe of innocence; evil, from necessity and from taste; his heart hard, implacable, vindictive; light-headed from his passing triumph; and smothering without remorse human sensibility ...” instead of paying back anger for anger, Beaumarchais contented himself with painting his enemy. He painted him talkative, shrewd for gain, undecided, timid, hot-headed, but more stupid than bad, in a word exactly as he showed himself in the four grotesque memoirs with which he has enriched this famous suit.

The fourth champion who precipitated himself upon Beaumarchais, the head lowered to pierce him through by the first blow, was a novelist of the time, amusing enough in a melancholy way, who prided himself as he said, upon having l’embonpoint du sentiment. It is d’Arnaud-Baculard, who, to be agreeable to the judge GoËzman, wrote a letter containing a false statement and who, after being very politely set right in the first memoir of Beaumarchais, replied in this style:

“Yes, I was on foot and I encountered in the rue de CondÉ, the sieur Caron en carrosse—dans son carrosse,” and as Beaumarchais had said that d’Arnaud had a somber air, he grew indignant and cried, “I had an air, not somber but penetrating. The somber air goes only with those who ruminate crime, who work to stifle remorse and to do evil—There are hearts in which I tremble to read, where I measure all the somber depths of hell. It is then that I cry out, ‘thou sleepest, Jupiter! for what purpose then hast thou thy thunderbolts?’”

“One sees,” said LomÉnie, “that if d’Arnaud on his side was not mÉchant, it was not from lack of will. The reply of Beaumarchais perhaps will be found interesting; there it will be seen with what justice he gave to each one his deserts, and what attractive serenity he brought into the combat. He began by reproducing the phrase of d’Arnaud about the carrosse.

“‘Dans son carrosse,’ you repeat with great point of admiration, who would not believe after that sad, ‘yes I was on foot’ and that great point of admiration which runs after my carrosse, that you were envy itself personified. But I, who know you to be a good man, I know that the phrase dans son carrosse, does not signify that you were sorry to see me in my carrosse, but only that you were sorry that I did not see you in yours.’

“‘But console yourself, Monsieur, the carrosse in which I rode was already no more mine when you saw me in it. The Comte de la Blache already had seized it with all my other goods. Men called À hautes armes, with uniforms, bandoliers and menacing guns guarded it, as well as all my furniture; and to cause you, in spite of myself, the sorrow of seeing me in my carrosse it was necessary that same day that I had that of demanding, my hat in one hand and a gros Écu in the other, the permission to use it, of that company of officers, which I did, ne vous dÉplaise, every morning, and while I speak with such tranquillity the same distress reigns in my household.

“‘How unjust we are! We are jealous of and we hate such and such a one whom we believe happy, who would often give something over, to be in the place of the pedestrian who detests him because of his carrosse. I, for example: could anything be worse than my actual situation? But I am something like the cousin of HÉloise, I have done my best to cry; the laugh has to escape from some corner. This is what makes me gentle with you. My philosophy is, to be, if I can, contented with myself and to let the rest go as it pleases God.’

“And at the end, after the honey comes the sting. ‘Pardon, Monsieur, if I have not replied by an express writing to you alone, to answer all the injuries of your memoir, pardon, if, seeing you measure in my heart the somber depths of hell, and, hearing you cry, “Tu dors, Jupiter; À quoi te sert donc ta foudre?” I have replied lightly to so much bombast. Pardon, you were a school boy, no doubt, and you remember that the best blown up balloon needs only the stick of a pin.’”

But it is impossible without becoming wearisome to draw forth all the characters and to allow them to pass in review. Let us turn our attention for a few moments to the sublime invocation of the fourth memoir, and with it a few observations of M. de Sainte-Beuve, taken from his admirable criticism of the memoirs of Beaumarchais in his famous “Causeries de Lundi.”

In this invocation the orator supposes himself to be speaking with God, “that Beneficent Being who watches over all.” The Supreme Being deigns to speak even to him, saying, “I am He who is all. Without me thou didst not exist. I gave thee thy body, healthy and strong, I placed in it the most active of souls. Thou knowest the profusion with which I have poured sensibility into thy heart, and gaiety into thy character; but, filled as I see thee with the happiness of thinking, of feeling, thou wouldst be too happy if some sorrow did not balance the state of thy fortune, therefore I will overwhelm thee with calamities without number, thou shalt be torn by a thousand enemies, deprived of liberty, of thy property, accused of rapine, of forgery, of imposture, of corruption, of calumny, groaning under the opprobrium of a criminal lawsuit, attacked upon every point of thy existence by absurd, ‘they say’ and tossed about to the scrutiny of public opinion....”

Then he prostrates himself before the Supreme Being accepting his whole destiny and saying, “Being of all Beings, I owe to Thee all things, the happiness of existence, of thinking, of feeling. I believe that Thou hast given us the good we enjoy and the evil we suffer in equal measure; I believe that Thy justice has wisely compensated all things for us and that the variety of pains and pleasures, fears and hopes, is the fresh wind which sets the vessel in motion and causes it to advance upon its way....”

In relation to the above Sainte-Beuve says: “I have wished to cite this fresh and happy image which impresses us like a morning breeze, which in spite of everything reached him across the bars of his prison. This was the true Beaumarchais, truer than he ever painted himself elsewhere.

“In his invocation he continues to address himself humbly to the Supreme Being, begging, since he must have enemies that they be given him according to his choice, with the faults, the stupid and base animosities which he designates, and then with admirable art and vivifying brush, he sketches one after another all his adversaries, giving them an unmistakable resemblance. ‘If,’ he says, ‘my misfortune must begin by an unforeseen attack by a greedy legatee, for a just debt, for an act founded on the reciprocal esteem and the equity of the contracting parties, accord me for adversary, a man, miserly, unjust and known so to be’—and he designates the Comte de la Blache so vividly that every one has named him already. It is the same for the counsellor GoËzman, for his wife, and for their acolytes, but here his ardent spirit outstrips its bounds, it can no longer be contained—at the end of each secondary portrait the name escapes of itself and this name is an additional comic touch, ‘Supreme Goodness—Give me Marin! Give me Bertrand! Give me Baculard!’

“The whole idea,” says Sainte-Beuve, “the manner of its conception and execution, with so much breadth, superiority of gaiety and irony, all with one stroke, one breath, composes one of the most admirable pieces of eloquence which our oratorical literature can offer.”

It was by such outbursts as these, that the nation was aroused from the semi-torpor into which it had fallen after the subsidence of the resistance offered to the establishment of the new parliament. With one voice Beaumarchais was hailed as the deliverer of the rights of the people, and the saying, “Louis the XV founded the parliament which fifteen louis destroyed,” was the slogan of a new era of public acclaim for justice and equity. In every country of Europe Beaumarchais’s memoirs were read, and they excited the liveliest admiration. In the memoirs of Goethe it is told how at a social gathering where those of Beaumarchais were being read aloud, a young woman suggested to the poet that the incident of Clavico might be converted into a drama, where Beaumarchais should come upon the scene. From Philadelphia even came warm expressions of interest, while from every corner of France letters of congratulation, of sympathy and admiration poured upon the hero of the hour.

A few extracts will be sufficient to give an idea of the reigning enthusiasm. The wife of one of the presidents of the ancient parliament, Madame de MeiniÈres, wrote after reading the fourth memoir: “I have finished, Monsieur, that astonishing memoir. I was angry yesterday at the visits which interrupted that delicious reading and when the company was gone, I thanked them for having prolonged my pleasures by interrupting them. On the contrary, blessed forever be le grand cousin, the sacristan, the publicist and all the respectables who have been worth to us the relation of your trip to Spain. You really owe a reward to those people. Your best friends could never have done for you, by their praises or their attachment, what your enemies have done in forcing you to talk about yourself. Grandison, the hero of the most perfect of romances, does not come to your foot. When one follows you to the home of that Clavico, that M. Whall’s, to the ambassador’s, to the King’s presence, the heart palpitates and one trembles and grows indignant with your indignation. What magic brush is yours, Monsieur! What energy of soul and of expression, what quickness of esprit! What impossible blending of heat and prudence, of courage and of sensibility, of genius and of grace!

“When I saw you at Madame de Sainte-Jean’s you seemed to me as amiable as the handsome man that you are, but these qualities are not what make a man attractive to an old woman such as I. I saw too that you had gifts and talents, that you were a man of honor and agreeable in every way, but I would never have dreamed, Monsieur, that you were also a true father of your family, and the sublime author of your four memoirs. Receive my thanks for the enthusiasm into which your writings have thrown me and the assurances of the veritable esteem with which I have the honor to be, Monsieur, etc.

“Guichard de MeiniÈres.
This 18th of February, 1774.”

A second letter from the same pen, speaks in even stronger terms.

“Whatever the result of your quarrel with so many adversaries, I congratulate you, Monsieur, to have had it. Since the result of your writings is to prove that you are the most honest man in the world, in turning the pages of your life no one has been able to prove that you have ever done a dishonorable deed, and assuredly you have made yourself known as the most eloquent man, in every species of eloquence which our century has produced. Your prayer to the Supreme Being is a chef-d’oeuvre, the ingenious and astonishing blending of which produces the greatest effect. I admit with Madame GoËzman that you are a little malin and following her example, I pardon you, because your malice is so delicious. I hope, Monsieur, that you have not a sufficiently bad opinion of me to pity me for having read eight hundred pages when you have written them. I begin by devouring them, and then return on my steps. I pause, now at a passage worthy of Demosthenes, now at one superior to Cicero, and lastly a thousand quite as amusing as MoliÈre; I am so afraid of finishing and having nothing more to read afterwards, that I recommence each paragraph so as to give you time to produce your fifth memoir, where without doubt we shall find your confrontation with M. GoËzman; I beg you simply to be so good as to notify me by la petite poste the day before, that the publisher may send copies to the widow Lamarche; it is she who furnishes them to me. I always take a number at a time for us and for our friends, and I am furious always, when, not knowing in time of their publication, I send too late, and word is brought me that I must wait until the next day.”