"LOUIS QUINZE a détruit l'ancien Parlement; quinze louis ont détruit le nouveau," said the wits of that day. These fifteen louis, once the property of Beaumarchais, did veritably upset the parliament Maupeou, and have therefore, like Hampden's ship-money, a right to a place in the cabinet of history. Casti, the Italian poet, wrote a hundred sonnets on his 'Tre Guili,' but it required greater talent and more courage to write such pleadings as those of Beaumarchais about these fifteen louis.

The story of the trial about this sum of money has not only intrinsic historic interest, but makes us intimately acquainted with a man whose splendid talents have never been so widely appreciated as they deserved. Not Voltaire, or Diderot, or Rousseau is a more characteristic representative of the eighteenth century than Beaumarchais. During the last thirty years of his life he was connected with all the great contemporary political and social movements; and his wit and genius, as displayed in literature, were also most essentially of his time. Gay, clever, witty, versatile, active, all-enterprising and indomitable, he was, like his own Figaro, everything by turns, but on a grander scale and more serious fashion. He, like Figaro, "made haste to laugh at everything for fear he should be obliged to cry;" and he had his own life assuredly in view when he made Figaro say that he was "accueilli dans une ville, emprisonné dans l'autre, et partout supérieur aux événements, loué par ceux-ci, blâmé par ceux-là, aidant au bon temps, supportant le mauvais, se moquant des sots, bravant les méchants, riant de sa misère, et faisant la barbe à tout le monde;" for Beaumarchais passed his life himself, "en faisant la barbe à tout le monde." He quitted his first occu

pation of watchmaker at twentyfour, and became successively a courtier, a teacher of the harp to royal princesses, a merchant, army victualler, a contractor and speculator, a writer for the stage, both in sentimental melodrama and in comedy, a composer of operas, a publicist, a manufacturer, a publisher, a secret diplomatic and court agent, a ministerial adviser, and, above all, the character in which we here principally deal with him— the most brilliant pleader in his own lawsuit the world has ever seen. Nothing was too high, nothing too low, for his mercurial intellect; the same man who in his youth invented a new escapement for a watch, and amused his age with its two most daring and witty comedies, drove a false parliament from its benches, using by turns the lath of Harlequin and the scourge of indignant eloquence; planned new political alliances; sent out a fleet of forty vessels of his own, whose officers jestingly called him their

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sovereign," and got decorated for their valour for the brilliant part they took in naval actions with Beaumarchais's ships. But not only in what he did, but in what he suffered, was Beaumarchais a most remarkable man. His good and ill luck were equally singular. Fortune was to him a capricious, passionate, uneven-tempered mistress. Close on the heels of every success followed some signal disaster. The most placable of men, his life was a long series of lawsuits. He chose for epigraph, My life is a combat. Law, chicane, envy, malice, and detraction waited for him at every upward step he made. His despair was so great at one time that suicide seemed the only escape from a life of ignominy. That which he considered as his greatest political achievement, the alliance of France with the revolted colonies

of America, was the cause of endless tribulation. He got the thanks of Congress for his services in a public vote, but he was nearly ruined by the advances of money which he had made in their cause, and his claims upon the American Government were only settled in part to his grandchildren in 1836. Finally, during the Revolution, a patriotic undertaking brought upon him proscription, daily and hourly fears for his life, flight, imprisonment, exile, and every calamity of the Reign of Terror except the guillotine, from which his own head, and those of his wife and daughter and sister, had the most miraculous escapes. One circumstance alone will give an idea of the incongruous character of his destiny. He had built for his old age, after he had acquired a splendid fortune, a magnificent house on the Boulevards, one of the sights of Paris; but so unconscious was he of the approach of the Revolution, that he fixed his house in sight of the Bastile, in the jaws of the Revolution itself, in the volcanic regions of the Faubourg St Antoine, so that at every outbreak of the populace his was the very first habitation to be deluged with the uprising of revolutionary fury. But in his very darkest hour his naïveté and his bonhommie never left him, and care to the end of his life could make no more impression on his heart than on a child's.

The following sketch of himself from his own pen was recognised by his friends as a faithful portrait

miliar friends."

The descendants of Beaumarchais preserve with religious care a small piece of paper, framed with pasted strips to keep it together— a piece of paper blackened and thumbed and tattered with long and hard usage, with the turning over and over of countless hands, which have held it up to see if it scrutinising eyes to were a forged document or no. This was nothing more than a short statement of accounts between Beaumarchais and Paris Duverney, the celebrated financier, and the primary cause of the two great lawsuits of Beaumarchais. The heir of Paris Duverney, the Comte de la Blache, declared it to be forgery; and such was the first point at issue in a cause destined to agitate France and interest all Europe, and nearly consign Beaumarchais to the hands of the comWas the lightmon hangman. hearted Barber of Seville to be reduced to beggary, and to be branded with hot iron as a cheat, a felon, and a calumniator of justice? He was within an ace of being so, but his wit, his genius, and his courage saved him, and nothing else.

Beaumarchais's name, as is wellknown, was not originally Beaumarchais, but Caron-Pierre Augustus Caron-born in 1732, son of Caron a well-known watchmaker in the Rue St Denis. In the second stage of his famous lawsuit, Madame Goezman, the wife of his adversary, a judge of Alsatian origin, spoke contemptuously of the condition of his father.

"Vous entamez ce chef-d'œuvre," he replied, "par me reprocher l'état de mes ancêtres. Helas! Madame, il est trop vrai que le dernier de tous re. unnissait à plusieurs branches de commerce une assez grande célébrité dans l'art de l'horlogerie. Forcé de passer condamnation sur cet article, j'avoue douleur que je ne puis

avec

me

laver du juste reproche que vous me faîtes d'être le fils de mon père. Mais vous qui me reprochez mon père, vous n'avez pas l'idée de sa généreux cœur. En verité, horlogerie à part, je n'en vois aucun contre qui je voulusse le troquer; mais je connais trop bien la valeur du temps qu'il m'apprit à mesurer pour le perdre à relever de pareilles fadaises."

We need hardly repeat the wellknown anecdote of the "grand seigneur" advancing to Beaumarchais, as in after life he was traversing one of the salons of Versailles, and presenting him before a crowd with his watch and asking him to examine it, and of Beaumarchais taking it, pretending to look at it, and letting it drop, with the answer, "qu'il n'avait pas la main bien sure aujourd'hui." Beaumarchais, how ever, was an inventive young watchmaker, for he invented, we said, a new escapement, and was called to Court to explain his invention to the King; and Madame de Pompadour wore one of the new invention, marked Caron fils, so small that it could be set in a ring.

He continued watchmaking till he was twenty-four. His invention and his father's position as Court watchmaker brought fine ladies to his shop: one of them, a widow, was smitten by Beaumarchais's good looks, and married him. With the widow's money he bought the office of her late husband at Court-controlleur de la bouche du roi-and a grant of nobility, taking the title from one of his wife's estates, and he was thus set up as a courtier—in those days the only road to fortune, and the only way of public life. Beaumarchais said his title of nobility was unimpeachable-it was in real parchment sealed with green wax, and "J'en ai la quittance."

This wife did not live more than a year after her marriage with Beaumarchais, and he was accused later by his enemies of having poisoned her, as he was also of

of

having poisoned his second wife; to which he replied that "it was well known he had also eaten his grandmother between slices bread and butter." If he had poisoned her he would have acted with less than his usual ability, for he had omitted to register his marriage-settlement, and so lost all her fortune; nevertheless the marriage was the occasion of his quitting the watchmaker's shop, and getting a footing at Versailles, where, being a good musician, his knowledge of the harp caused him to become teacher of that instrument to the king's daughters - Coche, Loque, Chiffe, and Graille,-but a teacher without pay, with unlimited commissions to buy music and musical instruments, and to pay for them and get paid as he best could. It speaks well for him that the Dauphin who died, and was one of the few good people of Versailles, liked Beaumarchais. The familiarity of Beaumarchais with the Princesses enabled him to gratify Paris Duverney, and to obtain for him a royal visit to the Military School which the financier assisted in founding. And Paris Duverney, who was now a very old man and had made the fortune of Voltaire, resolved in gratitude to make that of Beaumarchais also.

He lent Beaumarchais money, purchased for him various posts about Court; the finest of all, allowed Beaumarchais to sign himself, Pierre Augustus Caron de Beaumarchais, Conseiller Secrétaire du Roi, Lieutenant-Général des Chasses au Bailliage et Capitanerie de la Varenne du Louvre, grande Vénérie et Fauconnerie. The money lent by Duverney was to be repaid, and was repaid, by the gains of Beaumarchais in various commercial enterprises into which the financier introduced him, one of which was an army-victualling contract; another, the farming of the forest of Chinon in Touraine. Under the wing of Paris Duverney, Beaumarchais made rapid progress in becoming a suc

cessful speculator and man of business; he was quick, shrewd, penetrating, and indefatigably industrious in all his undertakings, and the energy with which he was ready to throw himself into all sorts of new enterprises was astounding. During a rapid visit to Spain, he overwhelmed the Ministers with projects of every kind for imparting new life to their desolate country, and was on the point of being appointed contractor for the supply of the Spanish army all over the world. Later, he never forgot his obligations to Duverney, for in his fine house in the Faubourg St Antoine, a bust of his benefactor formed one of the Penates of the hall, with the inscription

"Il m'instruisit dans mes travaux, Je lui dois le peu que je vaux." Beaumarchais is indeed one of those men of whom posterity form a false conception, because they know him only in the light of a literary success, which success does not represent at all the most vigorous and serious part of his character. The 'Barbier de Seville,' which is immortal on the French stage, and which has been further immortalised by Rossini-which draws at the Théâtre Français better at the present day than any play of Molière -merely represents Beaumarchais the wit, when the man himself was of a wonderfully multiplex nature, comprising three or four other Beaumarchais far more serious in

his own eyes. There was Beaumarchais the patriot, Beaumarchais the man of business, Beaumarchais the sentimental dramaturge, and Grandison Beaumarchais,-for it is strange enough that Beaumarchais made his debut on the stage in the sentimental melodrama, following in the steps of Diderot; and in his own family, and among his most intimate friends, he was styled Grandison, from the generous and grand seigneur fashion with which he sustained his first burst of good fortune. Nevertheless his

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prosperity had made him many enemies: he confessed later that he was perhaps, at the period of his life immediately preceding his great trial, un peu avantageux; and a foyer de haines secrètes was, in the words of La Harpe, gradually gaining strength, ready to break out into a blaze if the shadow of adversity should fall upon him for a while. Such a shadow, and indeed a tolerably thick darkness, did come about him in the celebrated prosecution of the Comte Faloz de la Blache.

The Comte Faloz de la Blache was the nephew and sole heir, and legatee of the rich, old, childless Paris Duverney. He was malignant, covetous, and revengeful, and had viewed the sudden fortune of Beaumarchais, formed under the auspices of his uncle, with the most envious eyes. Ever on the watch about the old man to protect his expectations, he had besieged his deathbed with a notary to extract from him all it was possible in the way of testamentary dispositions. He made a profession of hating Beaumarchais, and said he would spend 100,000 crowns to ruin him. No sooner, then, was the breath out of old Duverney's body than La Blache called Beaumarchais to account for all monies received of his late patron. Beaumarchais answered by producing the above-mentioned document, the purport of which was, that all accounts had been settled between Duverney and himself, and that on the settlement 15,000 livres were due to him,. Beaumarchais. La Blache declared this document to be a forgery, and proceeded to prosecute Beaumarchais at law before the parliament of Paris; and during the course of the trial, which lasted seven years, spared neither money nor villany to ruin his adversary, and indeed brought him to the very brink of despair and absolute ruin. La Blache was defeated at a first trial before the real Parliament of France, but he appealed again to the corrupt Maupeou parliament

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which had taken its place, and got a verdict; so that Beaumarchais found himself engaged to clear his reputation in a conflict with the most venal magistrature which ever sat in his country, and his quarrel became one of public importance, since the appointment of this false parliament had upset the only remaining protection against arbitrary power in France, and was detested throughout the kingdom.

La Blache, indeed, began by a brilliant stroke of Machiavellianism. He contrived to discredit Beaumarchais with the royal Princesses, whose favour had done so much for the advancement of his adversary; he persuaded them that Beaumarchais had made an improper use of their names in the affair, and so got the Princesses to publish a declaration that they took no interest in his trial.

But Beaumarchais himself, with that extraordinary facility which accompanied him through life of getting into additional scrapes when already up to the ears in trouble, fell into a new difficulty at the very outset, which had a most prejudicial effect on the commencing stages of his trial.

The Duc de Chaulnes was a descendant of the famous Duc de Luynes, the favourite of Louis XIII. Of immense muscular frame, with a nature so savage, violent, and ungovernable that all his family stood in terror of him, this grand seigneur had already been banished from France for outrageous conduct, when fate brought him into collision with Beaumarchais. During his banishment he had been in the East, lived among the Bedouins, and brought back an ape, whom he shamefully ill-used, though it was the only living creature he could get to stay with him. This furious nature was nursed into a state of ungovernable fury against Beaumarchais, by jealousy of the good graces in which the latter stood with a certain Mademoiselle Menard, an actress of the Comédie

Française, who received the first wits of the day-Chamfort, Rulhières, Marmontel, and others—at her house, together with some of the grand seigneurs of the Court, and whom the Duke was violently anxious to protect. Mademoiselle Menard, on her side, felt nothing but a wish to keep the Duke at a distance, though obliged to be careful, since, indeed, her theatrical prospects had suffered severely since she had refused to be protected by the Duc de Richelieu, who, notwithstanding his eighty years, a red nose, and a wrinkled parchment face, still thought he had claims to be a protector, and, as first gentleman-in-waiting on the King, was all-powerful in theatrical matters. Mademoiselle Menard, however, silly creature, fell violently in love with Beaumarchais, who, having this La Blache trial before him, with all necessity for keeping his head clear and his hands free, and no wish to come into collision with such grand seigneurs as the Duc de Richelieu and the Duc de Chaulnes, had, on becoming aware of the inclinations of the actress, avoided her house, and determined not to put himself in the way of temptation. Six months passed away, during which Beaumarchais had kept out of the way of La Menard, when one morning Beaumarchais's faithful friend and cashier Gudin called on the actress, and she burst into tears, and reproached Beaumarchais with having deserted her. The Duc de Chaulnes enters, hears Beaumarchais's name mentioned, bursts into a blaze of wrath, and flies off with threats of vengeance. Gudin rushes away to warn his friend, and was mounting the steps of the Pont Neuf when he was seized violently by the skirts from behind, and fell back into the arms of the Duke, who bore him off under his arm like a bird of prey. Gudin faintly hopes "M. le Duc will not murder him." The Duke replies, with an oath, he will murder nobody but Beaumar