“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?’
“‘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’œuvre, 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.”
“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’œuvre 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’œuvre 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.”