quittance)?" Well may M. de Loménie | you that I am very unskilful." Then tak

exclaim that this j'en ai la quittance says more in its comic insolence than hundreds of books on the degradation of the aristocratic principle in France.

ing the watch, he opened it, and holding it high up under pretence of examining it, let it drop. Then, with a low bow, "I warned you, Monsieur, of my extreme clumsiness."

To regain, as a gentleman by purchase, the familiar approach to royalty and royal To set the princesses against him, they favourites which had been permitted to were told that he was on bad terms with the watchmaker, might have proved im- his father. Finding himself coldly repracticable even for the happy audacity ceived, and suspecting the cause, he hurof Beaumarchais without one of those ried to Paris for his father, brought him opportune incidents of which he was to Versailles, and contrived, in showing wont to make so adroit a use through life. him over the palace and grounds, to fall Diderot writes in 1760: "I was invited in repeatedly with the princesses. Their last week by the Count Ogniski to hear curiosity was excited, and when, leaving a performance on the harp. I was not the old man in the ante-chamber, he came acquainted with this instrument." It to pay his respects, one of them asked grew into fashion by its novelty, and him with whom he had been walking about Beaumarchais not only learnt to play all day. "With my father." The reaction upon it, but introduced an improvement was complete; the father was presented in the pedals and acquired so much rep- on the instant, and produced the happiest utation by his skill that Mesdames de effect by a burst of honest enthusiasm in France, the daughters of Louis XV., com- | favour of his Grandison son. manded his attendance. Pleased by his The owner of the watch made no atappearance and address, they began tempt to push matters to extremity. But taking lessons from him, and he speedily the Chevalier des C. (the full name is supbecame the manager and principal per- pressed) forced a duel on Beaumarchais, former in a family concert given every which ended fatally, and impressed him week by the princesses to the King, the with a lasting feeling of regret. They Dauphin, the queen Marie Leczinska, fought on horseback, without seconds, and their suite. With admirable tact he under the walls of the park of Meudon. adapted his manners to his company, and Beaumarchais plunged his sword into the was soon placed upon the easiest footing breast of his adversary, who fell, but on of familiarity. On one occasion the King, seeing him on the ground with the blood eager to hear him play and not wishing bubbling from the wound, he dismounted to derange the circle, pushed his own and tried to stanch it with his handkerchair towards him and forced him to take chief. "Save yourself," cried the wounded it. On another, the Dauphin, after a man, "save yourself, Monsieur de Beauconversation of some length, in which marchais; you are lost if you are seen, Beaumarchais affected an excessive frank- if it is known that you have taken my ness, said of him, "He is the only man life."-"You must have help, and I go who speaks truth to me." It need hardly to seek it." Beaumarchais remounts his be added that the ladies of the Court were horse, gallops to the village of Meudon, not behindhand in giving a flattering re- procures a surgeon, tells him where to ception to the handsome amateur musician find the wounded man, puts him in the on whom royal eyes beamed favour and track, and returns to Paris to consider royal lips heaped praise; or that he imme- what is to be done. The wound was dediately became the marked object of envy, clared fatal; but the Chevalier generously scandal, and impertinence. A fine gentle- refused to declare by whom it had been man who had undertaken to disconcert the inflicted. During the eight days which minion of Mesdames, came up to him in intervened between the duel and his the centre of a numerous group, just after death, his friends and relatives could exhe had left the princesses' apartment in tort no answer from him but this: “ I full dress, and producing a very handsome have my deserts: I challenged, to please watch, said: Monsieur, as you are people for whom I have no esteem, an skilled in watch-making, have the good-honourable man who had given me no ness, I beg, to examine my watch, which is out of order.". "Monsieur," coolly replied Beaumarchais, "since I left off this business I have become very unskilful in it."-"Ah, Monsieur, do not refuse me this favour."—" Be it so, but I forewarn

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offence." Whilst it was still uncertain whether the secret would be discovered and the family call for vengeance, Beaumarchais demanded the protection of Mesdames, to whom he communicated the whole of the details. They told the

King, who replied, "Take care, my children, that nothing is said to me on the subject;" and they are reported to have taken measures accordingly.

All this time Beaumarchais' Court favour, far from being a source of profit or solid advantage, was a heavy tax on his income and his time. Mesdames de France, nicknamed by their royal father, Mme. Victoire Coche, Mme. Adelaide Loque, Mme. Sophie Graille, and Mme. Louise Chiffe, although excellent women in their way, had been brought up in habits which made them expect all their caprices to be gratified on the instant, and led them to believe that to charge a man with a commission of any sort was to do him honour. Madame du Deffant tells a tory of the quince-preserve for which Orleans was famous, so impatiently desired by Loque, that the King sends in hot haste to the Premier, M. de Choiseul, who sends in equal haste to the Bishop of Orleans, who is called up at three in the morning to his extreme discomfort, to receive this missive from Louis XV.:

en to his wits' end for money, he sends in an account, showing a balance of 2,000 livres, to Mme. d'Hoppen, the intendante of Mesdames.

The manner in which he at length contrived to convert his credit with these royal ladies into the source of pecuniary gain was as strange and as little to be counted on, as the rest of the expedients which rarely failed him in an emergency. Pâris Du Verney was a celebrated financier who had amassed a colossal fortune and attained a high degree of credit at Court; so much, indeed, that he was supposed to have brought about, through Madame de Pompadour, the appointment of Richelieu to the command of the army which, under d'Estrées, had won the battle of Hastenfeld in 1757. It was Du Verney who made the fortune of Voltaire, by giving him a share in the army contracts of 1741. Relying on the durable favour and support of the royal mistress, he undertook the construction of the Military School in 1751, but her influence diminished apace during the Seven Years' War, and long before the completion of the establishment, the bare fact of his having patronized it caused it to be coldly regarded by the royal family and the ministry.

Monsieur the Bishop of Orleans: My daughters are longing for quince preserve; they wish to have it in very small boxes. If you have none by you, I beg you,- here intervened a pen-and-ink sketch of a sedan-chair, send to your episcopal city for some immedi- The main hope of Du Verney, in 1760, ately, and let the boxes be very small. Where- lay in procuring a state visit from the upon, Monsieur the Bishop of Orleans, may King, which he calculated would be God have you in his holy keeping.— LOUIS. deemed a kind of consecration and a Then a little lower down came a post-in vain, the thought struck him of applypledge. After trying every direct interest cript:

The sedan-chair signifies nothing: It was drawn by my daughters on this sheet of paper which came nearest to hand.

ing to the young musician whom he saw in daily communication with the princesses. Beaumarchais was not slow to perceive the advantages he might draw A courier was instantly despatched to from obliging a man like Du Verney, and Orleans and the quince-preserve arrived taking his stand upon the fact that he the next day; by which time (adds Ma-had never yet asked a favour from Mesdame du Deffant) the princesses were longing for something else. Beaumarchais, who had no courier at his disposal, was sent to and fro on errands equally frivolous. Thus a lady in waiting writes:

Madame Victoire has a fancy to play this very day on the tambourine, and charges me to write to you on the instant to procure her one

dames, he made it his first, his last, his only request and prayer, that they would pay a visit to the Military School; frankly avowing to them that, in case of their compliance, he fully expected that Du Verney would be useful to him in return. They went accordingly they were received in state by the Director, to whom they clearly intimated that they came to oblige their protégé; and a few days afterwards the King was induced by their representations, or driven by their imporHe had to buy a tambourine worthy of tunities, to go too. The financier, who being offered to a princess; the next day had opened the negotiation by offering it was a harp, the day after a flute, and so "his assistance, his credit, his heart," on. At length, having exhausted his kept faith. "He initiated me," says means, slender enough at this period, in Beaumarchais, "in the affairs of finance, paying for the required articles, and driv-in which all the world knows he was at

as soon as you possibly can. I hope that you have got rid of your cold, and that you can execute Madame's commission without delay.

home; I worked at my fortune under his direction; I undertook, at his suggestion, many enterprises; in some he aided me with his funds or his credit, in all with his advice."

discovered that the treacherous Spaniard had been intriguing against him, and by accusing him of a criminal plot had obtained a Government order for his arrest and expulsion from Madrid. He had an A Grandmastership of Waters and For- interview with the minister, managed ests having become vacant, the purchase- even to get access to the King, procured money, 50,000 livres, was advanced by the dismissal and disgrace of his enemy, Du Verney, and deposited with a notary; and ended by marrying his sister, with nothing was wanting but the royal assent, her reputation repaired and her heart, it and this Mesdames de France had under- is to be hoped, not irremediably damaged, taken to procure, when Beaumarchais' col- to a fellow-countryman. The importance leagues that were to be (there were eigh- of this episode (which was over in a teen grand-masters when the number was month) lay not so much in the circumcomplete), although five or six of them stances or the direct result, as in its were not better born than himself, formal- bringing him to Madrid, where he stayed ly protested against the admission of the a year, engaged in a succession of specuex-watchmaker, and managed to enlist the lations or projects, commercial or politminister on their side. The required as-ical, and accumulating the materials for sent was withheld, and Beaumarchais was the character, manners, and machinery of obliged to cancel the arrangement, yet his plays. He wrote to his father in Janthat his disappointment was exclusively uary, 1765: — owing to personal animosity, is proved by the permission soon afterwards accorded to him to purchase the more distinguished charge of Lieutenant-General of the Chase in the Captainry of the Warren of the Louvre, a sort of deputy-rangership which associated him with nobles, and carried with it judicial powers over poachers and trespassers. It was remembered among the anomalies of his life, when the game and forest laws had been swept away with the other relics of feudalism which he satirized, that he had condemned many a peasant to fine and imprisonment for snaring a rabbit or fencing a garden against deer.

If you heard of me from any inhabitant of Madrid, you would be told: "Your son is amusing himself here like a king. He passes all his evenings at the Russian Ambassador's or Lady Rochford's; he dines four times a week with the Commandant of Engineers, and drives about Madrid in a carriage drawn by six mules. He dines every day with the French Ambassador, so that his journeys are in good company, for which I am born, that I charming, and cost him very little." . . It is find my resources (moyens); and when you see the products of my. pen, you will agree that it is not walking but running to one's object.

Amongst other products of his pen were Memoirs on commercial concesHis affair with Clavijo in 1764 has be- sions, with plans for supplying all the come famous as well by his own melodra- Spanish colonies with negroes, and all matic recital as by being made the subject the cities with white bread; for colonizof a drama by Goethe. Two of his sis- ing the Sierra Morena and provisioning ters were settled in Madrid: one married the Spanish armies in every quarter of to an architect, and one unmarried but the world. These schemes sound so betrothed to a Spanish man of letters wild, that it is difficult to conceive how named Clavijo. They were to be married they could have been seriously enteras soon as the gentleman should obtain tained; yet it is clear from the diplomatic an employment which he was soliciting, correspondence of the period that he was but when this preliminary was fulfilled, living the life he describes, in constant and the banns published, he suddenly communication with the ministers, and a broke off the engagement in a manner favoured guest at the Russian, French, calculated not merely to affect the happi- and English embassies. It was no idle ness of the lady but her fair fame. On boast that he was born for good company; being apprised of what had taken place, for, whenever it fell in his way, he was Beaumarchais hurried to Madrid, and by received into it, and shone in it, as easily a combination of energy, coolness, and and naturally as if he had never known tact compelled the recreant lover to clear any other. With so many irons in the her honour at the expense of his own; fire, it is no wonder that he sometimes nay, frightened or persuaded him into an burnt his fingers; and we learn from M. overture for a reconciliation; and there de Loménie that his industrial speculaseemed a fair chance of the marriage tions in Spain proved failures, "but he coming off after all, when Beaumarchais | returned richer than he was himself

aware; for he carried in his head the lineaments of those so strongly-marked and original figures of Figaro, of Rosine, of Almaviva, of Bartholo, of Basile, which, some day or other, were to make the glory of his name."

remorse.

public with "Gil Blas." Beaumarchais committed a similar mistake when he started as a dramatist. Instead of the light, sparkling, vivacious comedy, redolent of fun and frolic, defying the conventions and proprieties, he broke ground in the domestic bourgeois drama which had been brought into vogue by Diderot ; in which characters taken from ordinary life were to speak the common language of their class, and be placed in situations coming home to the genuine, if homely, feelings of humanity. In the preface of “Eugénie,” the first of his plays com

The chapter following that on the Spanish expedition is devoted to a love affair, which began in 1763. The heroine was a Creole heiress, endowed with considerable personal attractions, named Pauline. She was at one time much attached to Beaumarchais, or pretended to be. “Adieu, love!" she writes, "adieu, my soul, adieu, my all! When posed on this principle, Beaumarchais you come back, it will be for me the sun protests against the monopoly of tragic of a beautiful day. Adieu!" Yet, when interest claimed for kings and conquerors. the actual adieu came, she bore it with It is simply (he urged) our vanity that is commendable equanimity, and conferred gratified with being initiated into the her hand on a rival without emotion or secrets of a court: the spectator is really Beaumarchais, on his part, most affected by the misfortunes of a was not a very ardent lover at any time. state of life approximating to his own: Rochefoucauld says, "It is with true love "That is to say, a tradesman on his way as with ghosts; which many talk about, to make a declaration of bankruptcy is and few have seen: Love lends his name more dramatic than a dethroned soverto an infinity of affairs which are attrib-eign, or a warrior who has just lost a uted to him, but with which he has no battle." The dramatis persona of “Eumore to do than the Doge with what is génie," however, are taken from the going on at Venice." Beaumarchais was higher class, the heroine being the engaged in many such affairs, but they daughter of a baron: the hero a marquis exercised no mastery over his imagina- and nephew of the Minister of War. tion or his heart. "Je me délasse des She has been deceived by a false maraffaires avec les belles-lettres, la belle riage (like that in the "Vicar of Wakemusique et quelquefois les belles femmes." field ") and arrives, far gone in the family Such is his antithetical confession; which way, just as he is about to marry a rich may be accepted as a correct statement, heiress. In the original manuscript the with the suppression of quelquefois; for scene was laid at Paris: the seducer was it was rare to find him without some the Marquis de Rosenpré, and the liaison of the lighter order on his hands. seduced Mademoiselle de Kerbalec. But The affair with the Creole ended prosa- the false marriage was pronounced imically enough. During the engagement probable, if not impracticable, in France: he had looked over the accounts of her the censor, susceptible for the national property at St. Domingo, and advanced honour, interfered; and in the acted some money for its improvement, which play the scene is laid in London; Euher husband, the suitor who had cut him génie is the daughter of a gentleman of out, showed no eagerness to reimburse. Wales, and a Lord Clarendon is the There is a letter from her in 1769, three villain of the piece. The first representayears after her marriage, which concludes, tion is thus mentioned in the "Année Let him sleep in peace, he shall be Littéraire " of Fréron: paid." He never was paid.

Le Sage and Fielding are two striking examples (amongst many) of men of genius beginning in the wrong direction and only hitting upon the true vein by accident. If the pleasure of quizzing Richardson had not luckily led to the production of "Joseph Andrews," the author of "Tom Jones" would be best known as the author of "Tom Thumb"; and Le Sage was the chosen butt of the wits as an indifferent playwright when he flashed upon an astonished and delighted

"Eugénie," played for the first time the 29th January of this year (1767), was badly enough received by the public; and, indeed, this reception had all the air of a fall. It has been revived with éclat by dint of retrenchments and corrections. It has long occupied the public, and this success does much honour to our actors.

Grimm, who might have been expected to speak favourably of a drama in the style of his friend Diderot, wrote thus:

This work is the first attempt of M. de was no alternative but to commence legal Beaumarchais in the drama and in literature. proceedings for the balance, and, considHe is, I hear, a man of about forty (he was ering the nature of the defence, the Prince thirty-five); rich, holding a little place at de Conti had some reason for the recourt, who has hitherto played the petit-maître mark, "Il faut que Beaumarchais soit and has been ill-advised enough to turn author. . . . This man will never do anything, paye ou pendu." Beaumarchais, never at even mediocre. There is only one phrase in a loss, retorted, "But if I gain my cause, all the piece which pleased me. It is in the. I think my adversary should also pay fifth act, when Eugénie, recovering from a cordialement un peu de sa personne." long fainting fit, opens her eyes and finds Clarendon at her feet. She throws herself back and exclaims, J'ai cru le voir! phrase is so happy, it is so out of keeping with the rest, that I would wager he is not the author of it.

This

The Court of First Instance decided in

his favour; their judgment, reversed upon appeal, was fully confirmed by the Supreme Court at the end of seven years' litigation, which incidentally gave rise to (with one exception) the most signal triumph of his pen. But before coming to it, we must notice an intervening adven

In his second drama, "Deux Amis," Beaumarchais literally acted on his theory by making the interest turn on a bank-ture, eminently characteristic of the ruptcy: the friends being a merchant of period and the man. Mdlle. Ménard, a Lyons who has a sum to make up, and a young and pretty actress, was living unreceiver-general who surreptitiously aids der the protection of the Duc de Chaulnes, the other by slipping public money into a man whose faults of temper and his strong box. The prosaic tone of the frequent aberration of reason were ill repiece was a little elevated by a love affair deemed by his acquirements and accombased on his own with Pauline; but plishments. "Banished for five years, he the failure, after a few days' struggle, had visited the pyramids, associated with was pronounced final and complete. A the Bedouins of the desert, and brought man in the pit gave the coup de grâce back many objects of natural history, inby calling out, The business in hand is cluding an unhappy monkey which he a bankruptcy; I am in for my twenty overwhelmed with blows every day." His sous." Grimm has preserved the follow-mistress fared little better than the moning epigram:

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J'ai vu de Beaumarchais le drame ridicule; Et je vais en un mot vous dire ce que c'est: C'est un change où l'argent circule Sans produire aucun intérêt. Whilst his failure was still freshly remembered, Beaumarchais, à propos of an unsuccessful opera, told Sophie Arnauld, "Within eight days you will have no audience or next to none." She replied, "Your Deux Amis' will send us one."

Although his dramatic career was suspended by this check, and his literary fame was still in embryo, his position at the beginning of 1770 was highly prosperous upon the whole. His first wife having died some years before, he had married in April, 1768, a young and beautiful widow of large fortune; and he was making money fast by a speculation in partnership with Du Verney. But his second wife died in the November of that year, and Du Verney in July. Although half her fortune consisted of an annuity for her life, he was accused of poisoning her; and although the balance on a signed settlement of accounts was against Du Verney, Beaumarchais was accused of embezzlement, fraud, and forgery, by the heir, a Comte de la Blache. There

key. He had for some time inspired her with no other feeling than fear, when he suddenly took a great fancy to Beaumarchais, and introduced him to her. As a matter of course the Duke soon became jealous of his friend, who, at her request, discontinued his visits; but finding no change for the better, she took refuge in a convent, and did not return to her house till she had finally broken with the Duke. She then wrote to Beaumarchais to propose the renewal of their intimacy, which was renewed and continued without interruption for some months, when one fine morning in February, 1773, the Duke broke into her room and announced his intention to have a deadly encounter with his rival within the hour. Beaumarchais was in the exercise of his judicial functions at the Captainry, when the Duke entered the court and insisted on his coming out to be put to death upon the spot. Although the Duke was a giant and had obviously lost all self-control, Beaumarchais, at the conclusion of the sitting, gets into the same carriage with him, and, in answer to repeated insults of the grossest kind, replies, "Hold M. le Duc, when a man really wants to fight, he does not talk so much. Come to my house with me: I will give you dinner,