MADAME DE BEAUMARCHAISMADAME DE BEAUMARCHAIS
MADAME DE BEAUMARCHAIS
Now that his anxieties for his family were allayed, Beaumarchais was not idle, for his stay in Hamburg was occupied in drawing up memoirs upon matters of public utility, in commercial negotiations, and in agreeable companionships with distinguishedémigréswho like himself were anxiously awaiting the moment when they could return to France.
As for Beaumarchais, the affair of the 60,000 guns had ended, distressingly enough for his coffers, by the English carrying them off. They consented, however, at the urgent request of the merchant friend, to pay an arbitrary sum which was, however, far below their real value, but saved Beaumarchais from complete ruin. The affair ended, his only desire was to return home. This he was prevented from doing because of the proscription unjustly continued against him, which all the efforts of his friends and his family had been as yet unable to have removed.
Finally a member of the committee which he was serving, the same Robert Lindet before mentioned, wrote in his behalf to the minister of police, Cochon, the following letter:
“You have asked me to enlighten you regarding the second mission of Citizen Beaumarchais, and upon the exact time when that mission ended or should end.
“In charging the Citizen Beaumarchais with a mission, the committee of public safety proposed to itself two objects. The first was to procure the 60,000 guns deposited in the armory at Tervère, as objects of commerce; the second was to prevent these guns from falling into the power of the enemy.
“The Committee was obliged to pay for them only at the agreed price on condition that they should be delivered and placed at their disposition in one of the ports of the Republic, within five or six months, The negotiation mighttake longer, but these terms were used to excite the zeal of the Citizen Beaumarchais.
“Before the expiration of the term he sent from Holland to Paris, the Citizen Durand, his friend, who had accompanied him on his journey, to give an account of the obstacles which delayed the execution of the enterprise and to propose measures which he thought were needful.
“Citizen Durand was sent back to Citizen Beaumarchais with a revised passport, which ran thus; ‘to conduct him to his destination and to continue his mission;’ because it seemed important to procure the guns for the government at whatever time that should be found possible, and also that the enemy should be prevented from seizing and distributing them in Belgium among the partisans of the house of Austria.
“The department of Paris placed the Citizen Beaumarchais upon the list ofémigrésand placed seals upon his property.
“The committee decreed that since the Citizen Beaumarchais was on a mission he should not be treated as anémigré, because he was absent on a mission for the government. The department removed the seals.
“Some time after, the citizen Beaumarchais was replaced on the list ofémigrés. There had been no new motive. The mission was not finished, his negotiations continued to be useful, he had not been recalled.... However, they persisted in considering him anémigré! ... the presence of citizen Beaumarchais in a foreign country was necessary up to the moment when the secret of his mission having been divulged, the English carried off the guns from the armory at Tervère to their ports, which they did last year.
“Nothing would then have prevented citizen Beaumarchais from returning to France because he could no longer hopeto be able to fulfil his mission; but his name still rested on the list ofémigrésand he could not return until it was erased.
“It was an injustice ever to have placed it upon the list ofémigrés, since he was absent for the service of the Republic.
“Robert Lindet.”
“To the Minister of Police.”
This letter and the ardent solicitations of the wife and friends of the proscribed man, finally induced the committee to have his name erased from the list ofémigrés, and so after three years of absence the author of theMariage de Figarowas able to return to his native land.
“Qu’étais’je donc? Je n’étais que moi, et moi tel que je suis resté, libre au milieu des fers, serein dans les plus grands dangers, faisant tête a tous les orages, menant les affaires d’une main et la guerre de l’autre, paresseux comme un âne et travaillant toujours, en butte à mille calomnies, mais, heureux dans mon intérieur, n’ayant jamais été d’aucune coterie, ni litéraire, ni politique, ni mystique, n’ayant fait de cour à personne, et partout repoussé de tous.... C’est le mystère de ma vie, en vain j’essaie de le résoudre.”
Beaumarchais After His Return from Exile—Takes Up All His Business Activities—Marriage of Eugénie—Her Portrait Drawn by Julie—Beaumarchais’s Varied Interests—Correspondence with Bonaparte—Pleads for Lafayette Imprisoned—Death of Beaumarchais—Conclusion.
ON his return to Paris, July 5th, 1796, “Beaumarchais,” says Loménie, “found himself faced with a fortune ruined, not alone as so many others had been in the general crisis, but still more, by the confiscation of his revenues, the disappearance of his papers, and of the debts owing to him. His beautiful house was going to destruction, his garden torn up. While on one hand his debtors had disembarrassed themselves of their obligations by settling with the state in paper money, his creditors were waiting to seize him by the throat. He had accounts to give to, and to demand of the State, who, after confiscating his fortune, held still274745,000 francs deposited by him when he undertook the mission to secure the 60,000 guns....”
Not to go into all the perplexing details of the decisions and counter decisions rendered by the State, the anxieties, the almost insuperable difficulties that surrounded him on every side, let it suffice to say that with old age advancing apace, he still retained almost the same vigor, the same tenacity of purpose, the same indefatigable energy that have characterized him through life. Without ceasing, he drew up memoirs, conferred with the ministers, worked day and night to re-establish his fortune, so that those dear to him might not be left in want.
That he eventually succeeded in this may be judged by the fact that his family continued to inhabit their splendid residence until 1818, when the French government under the Restoration bought it for purposes of public utility. Moreover, the report rendered after his death by his bookkeeper, shows that the fortune which he was able to will his family rose very near the million mark, and this, not counting the debts owing him and lawsuits still pending, notably that with the United States.
But at the moment of his return to France it was not simply with his shattered fortune that Beaumarchais’s mind was occupied. During their sojourn at Havre in 1792, the wife and daughter of Beaumarchais had made the acquaintance, says Bonneville, “of a young man of distinguished family, Louis André Toussaint Delarue, whose sister, a woman of remarkable intelligence, had married M. Mathias Dumas, a soldier with a very great future, who, after having taken part brilliantly in the war of American Independence as aide-de-camp of Rochambeau, was now Adjutant General of the Army under the orders of Lafayette, and had attached to him his young brother-in-law asofficier d’ordonnance....In 1792 they all found themselves waiting in Havre for an opportunity to escape into England.”
It was there that M. Delarue met Mlle. Eugénie.... The two young people coming together under these unusual circumstances soon learned to love one another. His determination to obtain her hand in marriage was not at all affected by the fact that at that moment the entire possessions of her father were lost. Beaumarchais on his return to France, touched by so much constancy and devotion, hastened to assure the happiness of the young people. “Five days after my arrival,” he wrote to a friend, “I made him the beautiful present.... They will at least have bread, but that is all, unless America discharges her debt to me, after twenty years of ingratitude.”
They were married June 15th, 1796, Eugénie being nineteen, and her husband twenty-eight years of age. On the eve of her marriage, the Aunt Julie sketches for a friend the portrait of the young girl, in which she shows her as one in every way worthy of her father’s affection—and with a character which, while indicating many contradictory possibilities, had, nevertheless, great charm and lovableness as well as intellectual force. It shows, too, that the terrible experiences through which she had passed, had left their trace upon her. Time, however, softened this very complex and somewhat formal young lady. “Dying in 1820 the daughter of the author of theMariage de Figaro,” says Loménie, “left in the hearts of all who knew her, the memory of a person of charming vivacity, offinesseand goodness; loving and cultivating the arts with passion, an excellent musician, woman of the world, and at the same time an accomplished mother.”
The young man whom she married proved himself in every way worthy of her. In 1789 he was aide-de-camp of GeneralLafayette, and later held honorable official positions under the empire, the Restoration, and the government of July. In 1840 he was mademaréchal de camp de la garde nationiale, which post he held until 1848 when he resigned, at the age of eighty-four years. “In 1854,” writes Loménie, “he still lives, surrounded in his flourishing old age by the respectful affection of all those who know how to appreciate the noble qualities of his heart and his character.”
But to return to Beaumarchais; hardly had he found himself reunited to his family than he wrote to his faithful Gudin, bidding him return. The Revolution, however, had left this good man so destitute that he was obliged to request a loan in order to make the journey. This was at once promised. He wrote, August 26, 1796, “I start as soon as I shall have received the ten louis.... My whole heart glows at the thought of finding myself again under the roof with your happy family. And Oh, I shall see you again! How I regret that aerostatic machines are not already perfected.... But any conveyance is good, if it only conducts me to you. Adieu my good friend; keep well. I will write you the moment of my setting out.”
Of their meeting, he writes later, “I came from the depths of my retreat to embrace my friend. Meeting after so many years, after so many atrocious events, was it not to be saved from the dangers of shipwreck and to find ourselves upon the rocks? It was in a way like escaping from the tomb, to embrace each other among the dead, after an unhoped for resurrection.”
Beaumarchais’s activities of this period continued to be the most varied. He entered with interest into the changing fortunes of the republic—which he accepted and over whose future he tried at times to become enthusiastic. In March, 1797, he had written to a friend:
“Yesterday’s dinner, my dear Charles, is one that will long remain in my memory because of the precious choice ofconviveswhich our friend Dumas [General Mathieu-Dumas, brother-in-law of M. Delarue] had assembled at the house of his brother. On former occasions when I dined with the great ones of the State, I have been shocked at the assemblage of so many whose birth alone allowed them to be admitted.Des sots de qualité, des imbéciles en place, des hommes vains de leurs richesses, des jeunes impudents, des coquettes, etc. If it was not the ark of Noah, it was at least the court of theRoi Petaut; but yesterday out of twenty-four persons at table, there was not one whose great personal merit would not have given him a right to his place. It was, I might say, an excellentextraitof the French Republic, and I, who sat silent, regarding them, applied to each the great merit which distinguished him. Here are their names:” And then, after making the inventory, he terminates thus:
“The dinner was instructive, in no way noisy, very agreeable, in a word such as I do not remember to have ever before experienced.
“Caron Beaumarchais.”
“Four months later,” says Loménie, “un coup d’étathad proscribed nearly every one of those twenty-fourconvives.”
“The deputies of the people,” says Gudin, “were taken from their sacred seats, locked up in portable cages like wild beasts, tossed on board vessels and transported to Guyan.” Thiscoup d’étatcooled very considerably the republican ardor of Beaumarchais; “He was totally at a loss,” continues Gudin, “to understand either the men or their doings; he failed to comprehend anything relative to the forms or the means employed in those times without rule or principle. He called upon reason, which had helped himtriumph so many times; reason had become a stranger, she was, if we dare say it, a species ofémigréewhose name rendered suspicious anyone who invoqued her.”
But though Beaumarchais was forced to leave the political revolution to take its course without attempting to change it, his mind ever alert, found innumerable points of contact with the age in which he lived. “Although afflicted with almost complete deafness we see him,” says Loménie, “rising above his personal preoccupations and the sorrows that assailed him, to apply his mind with the whole force of his indefatigable ardor to questions of public utility, to literary affairs, and a thousand other incidents foreign to his own interests. Now he points out with indignation, in the journals of the times, the unbelievable negligence which permits the body of Turenne, rescued from the vandalism of the Terror, to remain forgotten and exposed among skeletons of animals in theJardin des Plantes, until he finally brings about a decree of the Directory which puts an end to this scandal; again he writes letters and memoirs upon all subjects of public interest ... now to the government, now to such deputies as Baudin des Ardennes, who represent ideas of moderation and legality.
“He bestirred himself for the agents of rapid locomotion, aided Mr. Scott in the development of aerostatic machines; celebrated in verse a motor called thevelocifère, talked literature and the theatre with amiable Collin d’Harleville, or pleaded still with the Minister of the Interior for the rights of dramatic authors against the actors, ... and occupied himself at the same time with having his dramaLa Mère Coupablebrought again before the public.”
This drama which had been written immediately preceding the outbreak of the Revolution, had been read and accepted by the Théâtre Français in 1791, but following this, Beaumarchaishad been chosen by the Assembly of Dramatic Authors to represent their interests before thecorps législatif, which was about to pronounce judgment, and he had acquitted himself with so much ardor that a rupture had followed between himself and the Théâtre Français. Another troupe of the neighborhood demanded the play with so much insistence that he allowed them to produce it upon their new theatre; here it was performed for the first time in June, 1792. But the piece was so poorly played that its success was indifferent. During the time of the Revolution its performance was not to be thought of, but it will not be considered surprising that one of Beaumarchais’s first concerns, after the settlement of the most pressing of his family affairs, was to have the piece brought again before the public and played at the Comédie Française. This was effected in May, 1797. Its complete success brought a great happiness to his declining years.
The characters ofLa Mère Coupableare the same as those ofLe Barbier, andLe Mariage de Figaro—although from a literary point-of-view it is very far from rivaling the two earlier productions, “the subject,” says Loménie, “taken in itself, is at the same time, very dramatic and of an incontestable morality.”
Among the numerous letters, written or received by Beaumarchais in regard to this drama, is one addressed by him to the widow of the last of the Stuarts, the Countess of Albany, who happening to be in Paris in 1791 had begged Beaumarchais to give a reading ofLa Mère Coupable, in her salon. He replied:
“Paris, 5th February, 1791.
“Madame la Comtesse:
“Since you insist absolutely upon hearing my very severe work, I cannot refuse you. But observe that when I wish tolaugh, it isaux éclats; if I must weep, it isaux sanglots. I know nothing between butl’ennui. Admit then, anyone you wish Tuesday, only keep away those whose hearts are hard, whose souls are dried, and who feel pity for the sorrows that we find so delicious.... Have a few tender women, some men for whom the heart is not a chimera, and who are not ashamed to weep. I promise you that painful pleasure, and am with respect, Madame la Comtesse, etc.,
“Beaumarchais.”
But from his own interests let us turn with him again to those of national importance.
“As ardent an imagination as that of Beaumarchais,” says Loménie, “could not be expected to remain a stranger to the universal enthusiasm which in 1797 was inspired by the youthful conqueror of Italy.”
Through the intervention of the General Desaix, Beaumarchais who had celebrated in prose and verse the movements of the young conqueror across the Alps, was able to address a letter to him directly, to which he received the following concise reply:
“Paris, the 11germinalAn VI,
March, 1798.
“General Desaix has handed me, citizen, your amiable letter of the 25ventose. I thank you for it. I shall seize with pleasure, any circumstance which presents itself, to form the acquaintance of the author ofLa Mère Coupable.
“I salute you,
“Bonaparte.”
“Thus,” says Loménie, “for the General Bonaparte, Beaumarchais is above all else, the author ofLa Mère Coupable. Can this be an indication of a literary preference for thisdrama, or a certain political repugnance for theMariage de Figaro, or simply the result of the fact thatLa Mère Coupablehad recently been placed upon the stage? This is a question that seems difficult to answer.
“I find,” continues Loménie, “among the papers confided to me by the family of Beaumarchais, another letter of Bonaparte, at that time first Consul, addressed to Mme. de Beaumarchais after the death of her husband, which is a reply to a petition. It reads:
“Paris,vendémiaireAn IX.
“Madame:
“I have received your letter. I will bring into this matter all the interest which the memory of a justly celebrated man merits, and that yourself inspires.
“Bonaparte.”
In one of themauvais vers(from a literary viewpoint) with which Beaumarchais in his old age commented upon the career of the great general, is one which, says Loménie, “honors his sensibility.” It was written in 1797, and runs thus:
“Young Bonaparte, from victory to victory,Thou givest us peace, and our hearts are moved;But dost thou wish to conquer every form of glory?Then think of our prisoners of l’Olmutz.”
“Young Bonaparte, from victory to victory,Thou givest us peace, and our hearts are moved;But dost thou wish to conquer every form of glory?Then think of our prisoners of l’Olmutz.”
The allusion in the verse was to Lafayette and his fellow-prisoners, who for five years had been detained, first in a prison in Prussia, and later in the Austrian fortress of Olmutz. In 1792, Lafayette had been declared a traitor by the National Assembly after the fateful tenth of August, and been forced to cross the frontier and give himself up to the Austrians, who were then fighting againstFrance. He was held as a prisoner of State. His wife and family, having been unable to secure his release, were permitted to share his captivity with him. Napoleon, who never had entertained a very high opinion of the military capacity of Lafayette, nevertheless stipulated for his release and for that of his fellow-prisoners in the treaty of Campo Formio, which was signed during the year 1797.
But to return to the private life of Beaumarchais. Gudin, after visiting his friend, had not consented to remain under his roof, feeling that now he would be a burden and so had returned to his country retreat to await events. It was there that he learned of the joy that was about to crown the old age of his friend. He wrote to Beaumarchais:
“I remember the songs you made for Eugénie, when you cradled her on your knees, and it seems to me that I can hear you sing others for her child. Kiss her for me, my dear friend, compliment her for me, and all of you rejoice over your domestic happiness; it is the sweetest of all, the most real perhaps.”
For Beaumarchais, this was indeed the crowning blessing of this life. On January 5th, 1798, Madame Delarue gave birth to a daughter, Palmyr, as they called her. This event caused her grandfather to give way to “transports of joy,” though at first his only thought was “for his beloved Eugénie.”
With the reëstablishment of Beaumarchais’s fortune, Gudin, who had in the meantime settled his own affairs, returned to live with his friend.
“I came again,” he says, “to my native city, delighted to see my friend, and to find his family augmented. We tasted the sweetness of friendship the most intimate. I saw him abandon himself in our conversations to the most vivid hope for the prosperity of the state and of our arms.
“Beaumarchais, at this time, was full of force and of health. Never were his days devoured by so many plans, projects, labors and enterprises.... His age allowed us to hope that we might retain him a long while.
“We had spent the day together in the midst of his family, with one of his oldest friends. He had been very gay and had recalled in the conversation several events of his youth, which he recounted with a charming complacency.... I did not leave him until ten o’clock; he retired at eleven, after embracing his wife. She was slightly indisposed; he recommended her to take some precautions for her health,—his own seemed perfect. He went to bed as usual, and wakened early. He went to sleep again and wakened no more. He was found next morning in the same attitude in which he placed himself on going to bed.”
An attack ofapoplexie foudroyantehad carried him off at the age of sixty-seven years and three months. This was on the 18th of May, 1799.
The suddenness of the death of Beaumarchais caused, as may be imagined, the most profound sorrow to his family and friends.
Madame de Beaumarchais wrote a few days after his death:
“Our loss is irreparable. The companion of twenty-five years of my life has disappeared, leaving me only useless regrets, a frightful solicitude and memories that nothing can efface.... He forgave easily, he willingly forgot injuries.... He was a good father, zealous friend, defender of the absent who were attacked before him. Superior to petty jealousies, so common among men of letters, he counselled, encouraged all, and aided them with his purse and his advice.
“To the philosophic eye, his end should be regarded as afavor. He left this life, or rather, it left him, without struggle, without pain, or any of those rendings inevitable in the frightful separation from all those dear to him. He went out of life as unconsciously as he entered it.”
“The inventory,” says Gudin in his narrative, “which is made at a man’s death, often reveals the secrets of his life. That of Beaumarchais showed us that to succor families in distress, artists, men of letters, men of quality, he had advanced more than 900,000 francs without hope that these sums ever should be repaid. If one adds to these, sums that he had lavished without leaving the least trace, one would be convinced that he had expended more than 2,000,000 in benevolences.”
The mortal remains of Beaumarchais were laid to rest in a sombre avenue of his garden which he himself had prepared. “In planting his garden,” says Gudin, “he had consecrated a spot for his eternal rest.... It was there that we placed him. It was there that his son-in-law, his relatives, his friends, a few men of letters, paid him their last respects, and that Collin d’Harleville read a discourse which I had composed in the overflowing of my sorrow, but which I was not in a condition to pronounce.”
“A beautiful copy of the Fighting Gladiator,” says Lintilhac, “decorated the entrance to the ostentatious mansion where campedla vieillesse militanteof Beaumarchais. The posture of the combat, like the face of the gladiator, betrayed a manly agony. What expressive symbol of his life and work!”
In pausing now to cast a backward glance over the achievements of this one man, we scarcely can fail to admit with Lintilhac that Beaumarchais was not boasting when he wrote toward the end of his life: “I am the only Frenchman, perhaps, who never has demanded anything of anyone,and nevertheless, among my great labors, I count with pride, to have contributed more than any other European towards rendering America free.”
That he ever looked upon his work in the cause of American Independence, as his strongest claim to immortality among men, can be judged from his constant return to the subject and especially from what he says in his memoir of self-justification delivered before the Commune of Paris in September, 1789. (Given in Chapter XI.) It may be said that the very persistence of his reclamations in this regard was responsible for the indifference with which they were universally received. A man so rich, so happy, so prosperous, so gay, so universally successful in all his undertakings, could not expect to be taken seriously when he loudly decried the universal ingratitude of mankind, even though his accusations might be just. What Beaumarchais essentially lacked, as La Harpe has pointed out, was above everything else,measureandgood taste. He was too ostentatious, too expansive, talked too much of himself, pushed himself forward with too much noise, was too brilliant, too daring, too successful; and yet, as M. de Loménie has said in the remarkable résumé of the character of Beaumarchais given at the end of his work: “It does not seem to us possible to contest the fact that Beaumarchais is one of those men who gains the most by being seen at close range and that he is worth infinitely more than his reputation.” And the same author continues:
“Beaumarchais had implacable enemies; but one very important point is to be noted, namely that all those who attacked him with fury either knew him very little, or did not know him at all; while those who lived intimately with him loved him passionately. All the literary men who knew him in life, and who spoke of him after his death, have spokenwith affection and esteem. Two minds as different as those of La Harpe and Arnault meet, in regard to him, with the same expressions of sympathy, and I have not found a trace in all the papers left after his death of a single man who, after knowing him intimately, became his enemy. On the contrary, I constantly have found testimonials of attachment that are far from common. I have found that friendships, begun in his youth, when he was a simple watchmaker, orcontrôleurof the house of the king, follow him for thirty or forty years without ever changing or weakening, but on the contrary, redouble in intensity and manifest themselves in the greatest tenderness, and in the most disinterested ways....
“The goodness of the author of theMariage de Figaro, extended not only to those about him. Gudin affirms that M. Goëzman fallen into misery was succored by him; that Baculard was on his register for 3,600 frs. which were never returned.
“A charming trait of his character often has been remarked, in relation to the inscription engraved upon the collar of his little dog, which was as follows:—‘I am Mlle. Follette; Beaumarchais belongs to me. We live on the Boulevard.’
“We can therefore say with La Harpe and Arnault who knew him, that although the author of theMariage de Figaro, was followed all his life by black calumnies, he resembled in nothing the portrait which his enemies have left us of him. It is true that his good qualities are often somewhat veiled bylégèreté d’espritanddéfaut de tenue. His friend d’Atilly painted him to nature, when he said, ‘he has the heart of an honest man, but he often hasthe tone of a bohemian.’ The frivolity of the century in which he lived had too much colored his ideas ... and indeed equitablyto judge the character of the man in its entirety, one must not forget either the situation in which he found himself, or the century in which he lived.”
Louis de Loménie wrote in 1854, more than half a century after the death of Beaumarchais. Since the appearance of his work, many others have taken up the pen to discuss the pros and cons of this many-sided character. The last of these, M. Eugène Lintilhac, calls attention to the crowd of obliges from the scepter to the shepherd’s crook. “What man in need,” he says, “great lord or modest author, ever came and knocked at his door, without carrying away consolation in words and species? To how many oppressed, mulattos, slaves, Jews, protestants has he not held the hand?”
Sainte-Beuve says somewhere, that the Society of Dramatic Authors should never assemble without saluting the bust of Beaumarchais. It can do so henceforward because they have placed in the hall where their meetings are held, a marble bust of its founder.
On the one hundredth anniversary of the first production of theMariage de Figaro, on April 27, 1884, the play was performed again at the Théâtre Français. At the close of the performance the bust of Beaumarchais was brought forward, and crowned while Coquelin recited verses to his praise written for the occasion by M. Paul Delair.
Thus to have survived a veritable death from oblivion, and to have come after a century of neglect into a resurrection of honor and fame, is sufficient proof of the real greatness of the literary genius of Beaumarchais to convince all unbelievers. This has been the act of reparation accorded him by France. The debt of gratitude owed him by America is still unpaid. It remains to be seen whether the same resurrection of honor awaits him among us.
This book is a first attempt to state fully the facts of the life of Beaumarchais for the American people, so that they may know the man who was their friend, even before they came into existence as a nation, and it is put out in the hope that they may share the sentiment renewed in M. Eugène Lintilhac and so forcibly expressed by Gudin—“I soon found that I could not love him moderately when I came to know him in his home.”
And so with this expression of a friend’s esteem, let us leave Beaumarchais in company with his faithful Gudin, Gudin, “whose great work,” says Lintilhac, “the History of France, still sleeps in theBibliotèque Nationale, ... but whose author has found a surer path to glory in taking the first place in the cortège of his illustrious friend,—Beaumarchais.”
Although America has been slow to recognize the claims of Beaumarchais to her gratitude, yet Time, the great leveler, is restoring all things to their place; and to-day, if our “friend” is cognizant of what history is doing, he realizes that this same United States, which his services did so much to found, is repaying this debt with interest so far as money goes, but still more with warm affection and heartiest friendship cemented by the life blood of both nations—and to-day he repeats what he wrote in December, 1779—“As for me, whose interests lose themselves before such grand interests; I, private individual, but good Frenchman, and sincere friend of the brave people who have just conquered their liberty; if one is astonished that my feeble voice should have mingled with the mouths of thunder which plead this great cause, I will reply that one is always strong enough when one has right on his side....
“I have had great losses. They have rendered my labors less fruitful than I hoped for my independent friends, but asit is less by my success than by my efforts that I should be judged, I still dare to pretend to the noble reward which I promised myself; the esteem of three great nations; France, America, and even England.
“Caron de Beaumarchais.”
FOOTNOTE:[1]Beaumarchais had aided in placing Grand on firm footing with the American Commission (Doniol II, 613).
[1]Beaumarchais had aided in placing Grand on firm footing with the American Commission (Doniol II, 613).
[1]Beaumarchais had aided in placing Grand on firm footing with the American Commission (Doniol II, 613).
Beaumarchais et son Temps par Louis de Loménie, Paris, 1850. Translated by H. S. Edwards. N. Y. 1857
Histoire de Beaumarchais, Gudin de la Brenellerie.Edited by Maurice Tourneux, 1888
Œvres Complètes, précédées d’une notice sur sa vie et ses ouvrages par Saint Marc Gerardin, 1828, 6 tomes
Nouvelle Edition Augmentée de quatre pièces de Théâtre et des documents divers inédits avec une introduction par M. E. Fournier, ornée de vingt portraits, etc.1876
H. Doniol—Histoire de la Participation de la France dans l’établissement des Etats-Unis, 5 tomes. Paris, 1886-1892
E. Lintilhac—Beaumarchais et ses œuvres; précis de sa vie et histoire de son esprit, etc.Paris, 1887
Beaumarchais the Merchant.Hon. John Bigelow inHours at Home, June 1870
Marie Thérèse Amélie Caron de Beaumarchais d’après sa correspondence inédite par Bonneville de Marsangy, 1890
Bibliographic des œuvres de Beaumarchais.H. Cordier, 1883
Beaumarchais: eine Biographie.A. Bettleheim, 1886
Mémoires sur le Chevalier d’Eon, suivis de douze lettres inédites de Beaumarchais.F. Gaillardet, 1866
New Material for the History of the American Revolution.J. Durand, 1889
Diplomatic Correspondence.Francis Wharton
Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution.J. Sparks, 1829-1830
Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin.James Parton, 1864
Deane Papers, (6 vols.). 1887
A Vindication of Arthur Lee, designed as a refutation of the charges found in the writings of Benjamin Franklin, as exhibited by Jared Sparks, etc. 1894
Beaumarchais: étude par P. Bonnefon, 1887
Beaumarchais and Sonnenfels.A. von Arnett
Mémoires de Beaumarchais. Nouveile édition, précédée d’une appréciation tirée des Causeries du Lundi par M. Sainte-Beuve, 1878
Cours de Littérature ancienne et moderne par La Harpe, 1799-1803
A History of England, in the 18th Century.By W. E. H. Lecky (4 Vols.) 1887
Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, 1890-93
Judgement—qu’approuve le nouvel échappement de montres du Sieur Caron, 1754
Claims of the Heirs of Beaumarchais Against the United States.House Documents
Report of the Committee of Claims on the Petition of the Heirs of Beaumarchais.1812-1817
Le Barbier de Séville.1902. 20th Century Text-Books
Life of F. W. von Steuben, with an Introduction by George Bancroft, 1859, by F. Kapp
Beaumarchais.Vortrag von Dr. S. Born, 1881
Beaumarchais.A. Hallays, 1897
La Fin de l’ancien Régime.1879. Imbert de St. Amand.
Les Femmes de la cour de Louis XV.1876. Imbert de St. Amand
Les beaux jours de Marie Antoinette, Imbert de St. Amand
The Lost Million.Charles J. Stillé
Silas Deane.Paper read before the American Historical Association of Boston and Cambridge, 1887, by Charles Islam
The Marquis de La Fayette in the American Revolution.Charlemagne Tower, 1895
The American Revolution.2 vols. John Fiske, 1891
House Documents, Vol. 9. Report 111. Fifteenth Congress, First Session.