“AprÈs le bonheur de commander aux hommes, le plus grand honneur, Monsieur, n’est-il pas de les juger?”

PrÉface du Barbier de SÉville.

BUT while public opinion was expressing itself so loudly in his favor, the situation of Beaumarchais was in reality cruel in the extreme.

The breaking up of his household had necessitated the separation of the members of his family. His father went to board with an old friend, while Julie retired temporarily to a convent. The two sisters whose acquaintance we made while Beaumarchais was in Madrid, had returned to France, the elder a widow with two children. All of these were dependent upon the generosity of the brother and uncle. Madame de Miron, the youngest sister, had died during the same year, so that it was at the home of the next to the oldest member of the family, Madame LÉpine, that the family reunions were held.

M. de LomÉnie has drawn an admirable picture of these gatherings, where eager and devoted friends met to discuss, suggest, and criticise with Beaumarchais the composition of his memoirs.

He says: “His coadjutors are his relatives and nearest friends. First of all it is the elder Caron, who with his seventy-five years of experience, gives his advice about the memoirs of his son. It is Julie, whose literary aptitudes we are already acquainted with. It is M. de Miron, the brother-in-law of Beaumarchais, homme d’esprit, of whom we have spoken elsewhere, who furnishes notes for the satirical parts; it is Gudin, who very strong in ancient history, aids in composing several erudite portions and whose heavy and pale prose grows supple and takes color under the pen of his friend. It is a young and very distinguished lawyer named Falconnet who superintends the drawing up by the author of parts where it is as a question of law. It is at last a medical doctor from the Provence, named Gardanne, who especially directs the dissection of the ProvenÇaux his compatriots, Marin and Bertrand.”

This is the little phalanx that Madame GoËzman, in her memoirs, calls a “clique infame” and which the grand Bertrand, less ferocious and more reasonable names simply, la bande joyeuse.

They were in fact very joyful, all those spirituals bourgeois, grouped around Beaumarchais, combating with him a crowd of enemies, and not without running personal risk, because Julie notably was formally denounced by GoËzman. There was a printed petition of this judge directed especially against her, although it had no consequences. All of them, however, underwent interrogations, confrontations, and verifications, but they came out none the worse for it and their gaiety supported the courage and the ardor of the man to whom they were devoted heart and soul. Beaumarchais, forced to live en camp volant at the mercy of the sheriffs of the Comte de la Blache and the persecutions of the judge GoËzman, was always on the wing but he came to the home of Madame LÉpine near the Palais de Justice to prepare with his friends his means of defense and attack. It is in this house that the elements of each memoir were discussed. All the first draughts were written by the hand of Beaumarchais, all the brilliant portions are rewritten by him three or four times. Like all who wish to write well, he corrects and rewrites many times, he cuts out, amends, concentrates and purifies. If at times he allows himself to be too easily satisfied, he has friends prompt to censure him who do not spare him.

M. de Miron especially criticises in detail and with persistent candor. “Beaumarchais profited from all these aids, so that if his memoirs against GoËzman do not present from the nature of the subject all the interest of the ‘Barbier de SÉville’ or the ‘Mariage de Figaro,’ they are none the less, so far as style is concerned, the most remarkable of all his works, the one where the good qualities of the author are the least mixed with faults. They contain portions of a really finished perfection.”

Monsieur de LomÉnie assures us further, that a certain passage, which is cited at times as being one of the most graceful of the memoirs, is due largely to Julie. He quotes at length the rough draughts of the passage in question as it appeared in its different stages, at first rather dry as written by Beaumarchais, then colored and animated by the brush of Julie, finally very skillfully retouched by her brother. It is where the plaideur replies to the attack of Madame GoËzman upon the ancestry and profession of his father. The printed text is as follows:

“You begin your chef-d’oeuvre by reproaching me with the condition of my ancestors; alas madame, it is too true that the last of all united to several branches of industry a considerable celebrity in the art of watchmaking. Forced to pass condemnation on that article I admit with sorrow that nothing can wash from me the just reproach which you make me of being the son of my father.... But I pause, because I feel him behind me, who, watching while I write, laughs while he embraces me. Oh you, who reproach me with my father, you have no idea of his generous heart. In truth, watchmaking aside, there is no one for whom I would exchange him; but I know too well the value of time which he taught me to measure to waste it by similar trifling.”

Supported as Beaumarchais was by the constant affection of those nearest to him the loss of his fortune and the dissolution of his household were the least of the calamities weighing upon him. He had known, as we have seen, how to gain the support of the nation at large, but he remained still completely at the mercy of the parliament which he had so hopelessly offended in daring to open up before the whole world those proceedings which it was never intended should be exposed to the light of day. It was of this period that La Harpe says, “Afterwards prosperity came of itself, it was during the combat and the oppression that his glory was gained.”

The unique character of this contest as well as its sublimity lies in this, that it is not simply a personal matter in which he was engaged. The blows he dealt so deftly had behind them the force of a nation eager to avenge itself, a nation whose favorite weapon was ridicule. Never was that weapon wielded by “a hand more intrepid and light. It seemed to amuse him to lead before the public so many personages like animals for combat.” “Simpletons,” says La Harpe, “are by no means rare and they bore us; to put them before us in a way to make us laugh so heartily and so long, to make them amusing to the point of finding pleasure in their stupidity, is surely no common talent, it is that of good satire and good comedy.”

This was the talent of Beaumarchais. The public laughed, it is true, but the simpletons thus led forward did not laugh, nor did the chancellor Maupeou. They were waiting, rage in their hearts, for the day of vengeance which was not far off.

Begun in August, 1773, the suit had gone on until February of the following year. “The day of judgment,” says LomÉnie, “arrived on the 26th of February, 1774, in the midst of universal interest.

“‘We are expecting to-morrow,’ wrote Madame du Deffand to Horace Walpole, ‘a great event, the judgment of Beaumarchais.... M. de Monaco has invited him for the evening to read us a comedy de sa faÇon, which has for the title le Barbier de SÉville.... The public is crazy over the author who is being judged while I write. It is supposed that the judgment will be rigorous and it may happen that instead of supping with us he will be condemned to banishment or to the pillory; this is what I will tell you to-morrow.’

“Such is the dose of interest which Madame du Deffand takes in people. What a pity for her if the accused had been condemned to the pillory. She would have lost the reading of the Barbier. She lost it anyway. For twelve hours the deliberation of the judges prolonged itself. Beaumarchais addressed to the prince of Monaco the following note which belongs with the letter of Madame du Deffand.

“‘Beaumarchais, infinitely sensible of the honor which the Prince of Monaco wishes to do him, replies from the Palace where he has been nailed since six o’clock this morning, where he has been interrogated at the bar of justice, and where he waits the sentence which is very long in coming; but, in whatever way things turn, Beaumarchais who is surrounded by his family at this moment cannot flatter himself to escape them until he has received either their congratulations or their condolence. He begs therefore that the Prince of Monaco will be so good as to reserve him his kindness for another day. He has the honor of assuring him of his very respectful gratitude.

“‘This Saturday, February 26th, 1774.’”

“The evening before the judgment,” says Gudin, “he arranged his private affairs, passed the night at work, and went to the gate of the palace before it was day, saw the judges pass before him and submitted to his last interrogation. When it was finished and it only remained to the judges to decide, Beaumarchais returned to the home of his sister who lived near the Palais de Justice. Fatigued from so much labor and very certain that there was nothing left for him to do in that critical time, he went to bed and slept as profoundly as though no one in the universe were occupied with the thought of him. I arrived and found him sunk in a sleep such as only comes to a pure, strong soul, and a truly superior mind, because at such a moment it would have been considered pardonable in anyone to have felt the anguish of anxiety. He slept while his judges watched, tormented by the furies. Divided among themselves, they deliberated in tumult, spoke in rage, wishing to punish the author of the memoirs but foreseeing the clamor of the public ready to disavow them. At last after almost fifteen hours of contradictory opinions and violent debates, they abandoned reciprocally their victims.

“The lady of the fifteen louis was blÂmÉe and Beaumarchais was condemned also to blÂme which seemed a contradiction. The magistrate, husband of the woman, was put out of court which was equivalent to blÂme for a magistrate, who thus remained incapable of filling any function of the magistracy.

“I was by his side with all the family when a friend came running, terrified to tell him this absurd judgment. He did not utter an angry word or make a gesture of indignation. Master of all his movements as of his mind, he said, ‘Let us see what there yet remains to be done.’”

LomÉnie says: “The penalty of blÂme was an ignominious one which rendered the condemned incapable of occupying any public office, and he was supposed to receive the sentence on his knees before the court, while the president pronounced the words, ‘The court blames thee and declares thee infamous.’”

Gudin says, “This sentence had been so badly received by the multitude assembled at the doors of the chamber, the judges had been so hissed on breaking up the audience, although many of them took themselves out of the way by passing through the long corridors unknown to the public, which are called les dÉtours du palais, they saw so many marks of discontentment that they were not tempted to execute to the letter the sentence which attracted to them only the blÂme universel.”

Before speaking of the veritable triumph which the public accorded to Beaumarchais in return for this cruel sentence, let us finish with the parliament Maupeou.

“It was not destined,” says LomÉnie, “long to survive this act of anger and vengeance. In striking with civil death a man whom public opinion carried in triumph, it had struck its own death-blow. The opposition which had slept, now roused, let itself loose upon the parliament with redoubled fury. Pamphlets in prose and verse took on a new virility, the end of the reign assured its fall, and one of the first acts of the new king, Louis XVI was to establish the old parliament.” Louis XV died in May, 1774, the old parliament was re-established in August of the same year.

“There were not lacking those,” says Bonnefon, “who called the destruction of the parliament Maupeou, the Saint-Bartholomew of the ministers.”

The Spanish ambassador, quick at repartee, added, “that in any case it was not the massacre of the Innocents.”

But to return to Beaumarchais. “All the gentlemen at court,” says Gudin, “all the most distinguished persons of Paris, inscribed themselves at his door. No one spoke of anything but of him.”

“It was at the very moment,” says Beaumarchais, “when they declared that I was no longer anything, that everyone seemed the most eager to count me for something. Everywhere I was welcomed, sought after; offers of every nature were showered upon me.” The Prince of Conti was the first to set the example.

“We are of a sufficiently illustrious house,” he said, “to show the nation what is her duty toward one who has deserved so well of his country.” He left his name the same day at the door of the man whom the parliament had attempted to degrade, inviting him to a princely festival the next day where some forty or more of the greatest personages of the realm were present. The Duke of Chartres showed a like attention. It was in the midst of all these ovations that M. de Sartine wrote to him:

“‘I counsel you not to show yourself any more publicly. What has happened is irritating to many people. It is not enough to be blamed, one must be modest as well. If an order came from the king I should be obliged to execute it in spite of myself. Above everything do not write anything, because the king wishes that you publish nothing more upon this affair.’”

Gudin says: “Determined as was Beaumarchais to break this iniquitous sentence, he was yet conscious that the royal power was a rock against which prudence might well fear to throw herself. He therefore took the wise policy of submitting to the weakness of the king, to obey him and to keep silent.”

“Wishing, however, to show to the world,” says Lintilhac, “that his silence was not cowardice, he withdrew from France and retired into an obscure place in Flanders.”

“It could not be expected,” says Bonnefon, “that Beaumarchais would rest tranquilly under the blow of a condemnation which struck him with civil death and ruined his career.” His first thought was to appeal for a second judgment. But he feared lest the parliament might confirm the sentence by a second act and foreseeing that it was already doomed, his great desire was to secure from the king a reprieve, which would allow him the right of appeal, no matter how long the period of time elapsed since the decree was issued.

Several days after the judgment he wrote to his friend La Borde, banker at court and particular friend of Louis XV.

“They have at last rendered it; this abominable sentence, chef-d’oeuvre of hatred and iniquity. Behold me cut off from society and dishonored in the midst of my career. I know, my friend, that the pains of opinion should trouble only those who merit them; I know that iniquitous judges have all power against the person of an innocent man and nothing against his reputation. All France has inscribed itself at my door since Saturday! The thing which has most pierced my heart on this sinister occasion is the unhappy impression which has been given the king concerning me. It has been said to him that I was pretending to a seditious celebrity; but no one has told him that I only have defended myself, that I never ceased to make my judges feel the consequences which might result from this ridiculous suit.

“You know my friend that I always have led a quiet life, and that I should never have written upon public matters if a host of powerful enemies had not united to ruin me. Ought I to have allowed myself to be crushed without attempting self-justification? If I have done it with too much vivacity is that a reason for dishonoring me and my family, and cutting off from society an honest subject whose talents might perhaps have been employed usefully for the service of the king and the state? I have courage to support a misfortune which I have not merited, but my father with his seventy-five years of honor and work upon his head and who is dying of sorrow, my sisters who are women and weak, their condition is what kills me, and renders me inconsolable. Receive, my generous friend, the sincere expression of the ardent gratitude with which I am, etc.

“Beaumarchais.”

A second letter to La Borde, written from his retreat in Flanders, shows that the much desired reprieve had been granted him. He wrote, “The sweetest thing in the world to my heart, my dear La Borde, is the generosity of your sincere friendship. Everyone tells me that I have a reprieve; you add to this the news that it is the king’s free will that I obtain it. May God hear your prayers, my generous friend!”

To be sure the king had granted the reprieve but he set a price upon this favor. “Judging from the very dexterity which Beaumarchais had displayed in the GoËzman affair,” says LomÉnie, “Louis XV felt that he had need of such skill and promised letters of relief to put him in a position to recover his civil estate, if he should fulfill with zeal and success a difficult mission to which the king attached a great importance. So it was that the vanquisher of the Parliament Maupeou presently went to London in the capacity of secret agent of the king.”

But before entering into a consideration of this new phase of adventure, let us ask the faithful historian, Gudin, to relate to us a charming incident which came at the moment of the triumph of Beaumarchais, to add sweetness to its brilliancy. Gudin wrote:

“The celebrity of Beaumarchais attracted to him the attention of a woman endowed with wit and beauty, a tender heart and a firmness of character capable of supporting him in the cruel combats that were destined to come to him. She did not know him at all, but her soul, touched by reading his memoirs, by the fame of his courage, called to that of this celebrated man. She burned with a desire to see him. I was with him when, under the frivolous pretext of busying herself with music, she sent a man of her acquaintance, and of that of Beaumarchais, to beg him to lend her his harp for a short time. Such a demand under such circumstances disclosed her intentions. Beaumarchais comprehended, he replied, ‘I lend nothing, but if the lady wishes to come with you I will hear her play and she may hear me.’ She came, I was witness to their first interview.

“I already have said that it was difficult to see Beaumarchais without loving him. What an impression must he have produced when he was covered with the applause of the whole of Paris; when he was regarded as the defender of an oppressed liberty, the avenger of the public. It was still more difficult to resist the charm attached to the looks, the voice, the hearing, the discourse of Mademoiselle de Willermawlaz. The attraction of the first moment was augmented from hour to hour, by the variety of their agreeable accomplishments and the host of excellent qualities which each discovered in the other as their intimacy increased. Their hearts were united from that moment by a bond which no circumstance could break and which love, esteem, time, and the law rendered indissoluble.”

Of the charming woman here described who subsequently became the third wife of Beaumarchais we shall have occasion to speak later. For the present, his situation was such that marriage was out of the question, their union was not solemnized until later. Their one and only daughter, EugÉnie, was born in 1777. She was the darling of her father, the source of his deepest happiness and the cause of his cruelest suffering. It was for her that we shall find him, old and broken in health, setting himself with almost juvenile vigor, at the time of his return from exile after the Reign of Terror, to gather together the shattered remains of his fortune.

At the moment of his triumph in 1774, flattered, praised, and loved as we have seen him, this condition was offset not only by the judgment of parliament which ruined his career, but by a domestic trouble which was at that moment preparing for him.

His father’s health had been so shattered by the terrible strain through which he had been obliged to pass by the succession of calamities which had befallen his son that in the end the vigor of his mind became impaired.

It was thus that shortly before his death in 1775, at seventy-seven years of age, without the knowledge of his son, he united himself in marriage with the woman who had been provided for him, as caretaker. M. de LomÉnie says of this individual, “She was a cunning old maid, who made him marry her in the hope of being ransomed by Beaumarchais.

“Profiting by the weakness of the old man, she had had assigned to her in their contract of marriage, the dowry and the part of a child. However, the elder Caron left no fortune. The portion which he had received from his second wife had gone towards partly covering the advances made to him by his son who in addition gave him a lifetime pension. A written settlement guaranteed Beaumarchais; but the third wife of the elder Caron, speculating upon the celebrity of the son and his repugnance to a suit of such a nature at the very moment when he had scarcely recovered himself from the suit GoËzman, threatened to attack the settlement and to make a noise.

“For the first time in his life,” continues LomÉnie, “Beaumarchais capitulated before an adversary and disembarrassed himself by means of 6,000 francs of the person in question, a person, by the way, very subtle, very daring, and assez spirituelle, to judge from her letters.

“Upon the package of documents relating to this affair I find written in the hand of Beaumarchais these words: ‘Infamie de la veuve de mon pÈre pardonnÉe’ (Infamy of the widow of my father, pardoned). It is to the influence of this rusÉe commÈre that we must attribute the only moment of misunderstanding between the father and the son during an intimate correspondence which embraced the last fifteen years of the life of the former; and it must be added that the misunderstanding lasted but a moment, because the letter of the father on his death-bed which has already been cited proves that harmony had been completely re-established between them at the time of the death of the elder Caron towards the end of August, 1775.”